The suckler herd has gone form 1m cows down to 800,000 cows and nobody has “batted an eye”, suckler and sheep farmer Flor McCarthy from Kenmare, Co Kerry, said at Tuesday’s IFA MEP hustings in Fermoy.

“That’s 200,000 suckler cows gone out of the west of Ireland. A lot of these farmers feel unfortunately that it’s they who failed, but it’s actually policy that has failed them and that’s the unfortunate thing. They think that it’s because they’ve failed as farmers,” he said.

MEPs, he argued, are in a very important position to stand up for suckler farmers, adding that governments may not always stand up for the weaker sections of the farming community.

“I’m disappointed to see my neighbours one after the other being forced out. The reality is, policy has failed them,” he said.

The land where suckler farmers were once farming is now, he argued, being left idle. He said it is a “fallacy” to say that these suckler cows have been replaced by dairy cows.

Independent MEP candidate Eddie Punch said in response that in order to support suckler farmers, he would support top slicing other farmers’ payments to provide a coupled suckler cow payment of €300/head.