ICMSA want monitoring role of Farmers’ Charter to ‘kick in’ and get going.

After more than 10 rounds of meetings negotiating the Farmers Charter of Rights Committee for 2023-2027, ICMSA’s Deputy President, Eamon Carroll, has called on the Minister to establish the Charter Monitoring Committee so the checking and measuring phase can begin. Mr Carroll noted that the substantive issues such as payment dates and targets have been ‘ironed-out’ and he was satisfied that farmers can be reassured that their rights will be protected under this round of CAP. But the ICMSA Deputy President said that as we approach the end of the negotiations around timelines and action dates it became more obvious that the monitoring dimension must be addressed and set up.

“It is now 16 months since there was a Monitoring Committee meeting and this means that issues that should been raised and dealt with have still not been addressed by DAFM staff. The major case in point is the fiasco that is TAMS 3, where ICMSA flagged really obvious problems ‘early and often’ but were ignored by DAFM. Those problems are now widely acknowledged and have really undermined the effectiveness of TAMS 3, but they would have been raised by us at the Monitoring Committee and we’d have had some way of measuring a response.  Last year we had delays in payments and schemes running slower than any of the previous years.  We have new target dates that have been pencilled into the new provisional Charter and if it doesn’t get approved soon, the Department will again be able to avoid formal scrutiny on the targets.   That might mean losing another Summer and Autumn without the ability of their representatives – like ourselves – to formally question with an independent chairperson the Department on the processes and ‘glitches’ of the many schemes at the Monitoring Committee. We don’t want to exaggerate the importance of the Monitoring Committee or the role it plays, but it does work well in most cases and anything we can all do to smooth out the working and interactions should surely be acted on.  That’s why the Monitoring Committee needs to get going and begin to ‘kick in’ with suggestions and responses”, he concluded.

Ends       5 April 2024

Eamon Carroll. 087-6312945

Deputy President, ICMSA.

Or

Cathal MacCarthy, 087-6168758

ICMSA Press Office