Minister Heydon asked to declare Ireland’s support for Voluntary Supply Reduction Scheme that can rescue milk suppliers facing ruin

The President of ICMSA, Denis Drennan, has called on Minister Heydon to indicate whether or not, Ireland will be supporting moves towards the introduction of an EU-wide Voluntary Supply Reduction Scheme at the Council of Ministers meeting scheduled for Monday 27 April in Brussels.  Mr. Drennan said that ICMSA understood through its European Milk Board (EMB) ‘sister’ organisations that Ministers from at least seven Member States have expressed support for the scheme that will provide milk producers with a price per litre to voluntarily not produce milk for a defined period and so signal the reduction in supply volumes that will restore supply-demand equilibrium and entice buyers back into the market.

Mr. Drennan warned against what he termed the “usual Irish expedient of ignoring a problem in the hope that it will go away”.

He said that dairy farmers all over the State were now being wiped out by a fatal combination of below-costs-of-production milk price and surging inputs, principally, fuel and fertiliser.   We were no longer in temporary loss-making territory, the ICMSA President warned, it was a question of whether farmers would or could carry on when they were seeing their incomes wiped out and were now working “for nothing “ for months on end and with no upturn in sight unless action was taken to step in and rebalance dairy markets.   While there was some increase in milk price this month, it is still well short of breakeven and even more so from a price a farmer could expect to make a decent living from.

The ICMSA President said that the Voluntary Supply Reduction Scheme was the only ‘Tried and Trusted’ instrument that dealt with a market oversupply in a way that did not involve storage and the creation of an ‘overhang’ that would threaten a recovery in dairy markets.   He said that the Voluntary Supply Scheme had been introduced in 2016 and had been a spectacular success on that occasion, by signalling a measurable reduction in supply that meant buyers had to ‘buy forward’ immediately and instantly begin a recovery in milk price that stabilised primary production and critically, it provided dairy farmers with a viable choice for the first time.

Mr. Drennan said that farmers would struggle to understand any perceived reluctance on the part of the Irish Government to support a measure that was modest in costs and decisive in effect. He noted as well, that the Irish dairy sector was proportionately the most important in the EU and this policy instrument had already been implemented in 2016 in a manner that could easily be replicated.

“At a time when farming and the agri-sector seems beset by really intractable problems – many of which are beyond our control – ICMSA urged Minister Heydon to start addressing and solving those that are demonstrably within their control and for which they have a remedy to hand.   A collapsed milk price is a ruinous situation for Irish dairy farmers that will very quickly destabilise our dairy export earnings and we are telling both Minister Heydon and his Department that the remedy is at right there to be deployed at short notice and should be ‘on the table’ at the Farm Council of Ministers on Friday next, April 27th.   

The Minister needs to state to the dairy farmers facing ruin that he sees them and will support the solution that all the evidence shows is available and will work.  Put as bluntly as the situation demands: will the Minister support dairy farmers or not”, concluded Mr. Drennan.

Ends    23 April 2026

Denis Drennan, 086-8389401

President, ICMSA.

Or

Cathal MacCarthy, 087-6168758

ICMSA Press Office