Following DII remarks on milk price collapse, ICMSA call on them to table their detailed proposals ASAP

Responding to remarks made by Dairy Industry Ireland in which that organisation dismissed the likely effectiveness of an EU-wide Voluntary Milk Reduction and instead argued for a movement towards risk-management, the President of ICMSA, Denis Drennan, said that he looked forward with great interest to the detailed proposals that DII must surely be ready to ‘table’.

“We can assume that they have those proposals ready to show the rest of us and we need to see them ASAP”, said Mr. Drennan

“If we are to halt and then reverse the ongoing collapse in milk price then ICMSA obviously favours the Voluntary Reduction Scheme. That’s our option because it was tried before and worked effectively on that occasion. If DII have another option ‘ready to go’, then we all look forward to it being published in detail and made available to study.   But if – as we suspect – this is more of a vague aspiration and some kind of general hunch about possible remedies ‘down the road’, then DII will understand that dairy farmers won’t really be in the humour to entertain that. They are milking cows twice a day and losing money twice a day and we are talking about thousands of euros per month.  Against that current reality, maybe we’ll leave the grand chat about ‘whole of sector’ movements towards risk management to another time when the farmers are not focussed completely on trying to stay going from day to day”, said Mr. Drennan.

Mr. Drennan said that farmers would be astonished and “open-mouthed” to read that DII considered the fundamentals of the dairy sector as remaining strong.

“It’s hard to get more fundamental in the dairy sector than the men and women actually milking the cows to provide the platform on which everyone else – including DII – make a much more comfortable living.  I’m very sure that all the executives involved in processing and everyone else very comfortably insulated from the collapsed milk price are doing just fine: their fundamentals are just fine.  It’s a bit different for our member-farmers who have been receiving a price less than the costs of production since September 2025 and who are now probably receiving a price six to seven cents per litre less than it costs to produce. DII’s idea of the fundamentals of the dairy sector and ICMSA’s idea are obviously two very different things; we look at it from the milking parlour, and they are looking at it from the executive suite”, concluded Mr. Drennan.

Ends        5 May 2026

Denis Drennan, 086-8389401

President, ICMSA

Or

Cathal MacCarthy, 087-6168758

ICMSA Press Office