The Commission is to trigger a cut in direct payments to farmers for the 2014 claim year of around 1.30% to establish the agricultural crisis reserve for next year.

This reserve is to be set at €433m.

There will be a threshold to exempt the first €2,000 of farmers’ direct aid payments from the cut.

The final amount could be reduced after the commission take in final dairy superlevy fines carried forward into the 2015 budget.  This is something that ICOS very much opposes as we cannot see why co-operative dairy farmers should cross subsidise other agri sectors to reduce the cut.

The final rate change will have to be formally adopted by Council before Dec 1.

While ICOS supports the creation of a crisis reserve fund to defend against disasters in our agriculture systems such as agri sector health scares and ‘acts of god’ etc., we want to ensure unspent monies are speedily reimbursed to farmers.