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Any funds brought forward for the farming sector in the upcoming budget must be made available for farmers to draw down ASAP through schemes which are “administered in a timely fashion” by the Department of Agriculture, Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) president Francie Gorman has said.
Gorman stated that the timing of Budget 2025 schemes opening to farmers and the timeframe of getting these schemes’ payments flowing to farmers’ accounts will be a crucial budget issue.
This would see any new schemes avoiding the issues still ongoing with the CAP's Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme, he said.
The IFA president was speaking to the Irish Farmers Journal at Virginia Show after the Nutrient Importation Storage Scheme, initially announced last October, was only opened to farmers last week.
The scheme will grant-aid slurry storage facilities for eligible farmers importing slurry at a rate of 70%.
The IFA president’s comments also come as Taoiseach Simon Harris reiterated his pledge to ensure no active farmers are hit with the residential zoned land tax (RZLT) targeted at land speculators.
A permanent solution to the issue of active farmers being hit with RZLT bills has yet to emerge from Government, despite the tax being in the works since 2022.
“It would have been preferable if it had been done in last year’s budget. It wasn’t, we were almost there and the announcement yesterday is a step in the right direction,” Gorman said on the RZLT.
“But we do now need to see it through and see active farmers excluded from it full stop.”
Reliefs and investors
Gorman added that farm transfer reliefs must be kept for genuine farmers, but limited for non-famer investors whose activity is “driving the price of land”.
“We need to see those reliefs are protected. Without those reliefs, you wouldn’t have the transfer of farmland, succession would become an even bigger issue,” he continued.
“We have proposals in around the length of time people need to stay farming to avail of those reliefs and I think that it something that badly needs to be looked at.”
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