As expected, Ireland was among a ‘dirty dozen’ of twelve Member States  including Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria and Poland that exceeded their national milk quotas for deliveries in the 2014/2015 quota year.

The total overshoot was in the region of 3 billion litres (about half the national production of Ireland).

The combined fine of this overshoot is €818 million. This figure is still provisional but is the first official figure released by EU officials since the end of quotas.

This is twice what was paid over in 2014 (€409m) and 18 times the 2013 figure (€45m).

Ireland itself was on the upper end of the league with an overshoot of 4.4% landing us a provisional fine of €71,188,000.

While ICOS welcomes that much of this money was put into a substantial aid package for farmers by the EU and also the attainment of the superlevy stagger to spread this payment out over 3 years, we still very much believe that the retention of these monies at Irish farm level would have been far more preferable than the collection of fines.

A breakdown of production figures and fines for all 28 countries can be accessed here:

http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/newsroom/232-annex-1_en.pdf

By Conor Mulvihill

European Affairs Executive