Farmers criticised the slow and “impossible” task of receiving farm loans from banks at an IFA farm finance meeting at Corrin Mart, Fermoy last Thursday night.

A main cause of concern among farmers at the meeting was the long and often fruitless process of looking for a loan. Speaking at the meeting, Cork dairy farmer Noel Hurley said with local branches closing, it’s hard to find someone to speak to if he needs urgent help.

“It’s impossible to talk to anyone, it takes months for anything to get across the line,” he said.

“Speaking about a fodder crisis and cash flow problems. The way things are looking, if I ran short of money to buy silage next September, the cattle will be dead by the time I get the money,” Hurley added.

‘Slow acting farmers’

However, Bank of Ireland agriculture manager John Fitzgerald told the meeting that a large portion of application delays come from slow acting farmers.

“If we get the information we’re looking for, you’ll get a quicker decision,” he said.

“Quite often, we get information in and it’s incomplete or we’re waiting on something and weeks can drag on. That delays the process.”

Fitzgerald added that on average farmers will only use 20% of the overdraft facilities available to them at banks such as Bank of Ireland.

Head of dairy knowledge transfer at Teagasc, Joe Patton, agreed that it can be hard to get figures from apprehensive farmers.