The Minister for Agriculture , Mr Walsh, said yesterday he took issue with the Central Statistics Office (CSO) farm income figures, which predicted a 13.3 per cent decline this year, 3 per cent more than the forecast made on Monday by the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA).
Mr Walsh had criticised the IFA when it said farm incomes would drop by 10 per cent this year and said he could not take seriously farm income figures that did not include off-farm income. Yesterday, he repeated that the data would have to be treated with caution because he was far from happy with the picture they presented.
The CSO estimates put total income from farms this year at £1.61 billion (€2.1 billion), a 13.3 per cent drop over last year. It predicted a 4.6 per cent fall in gross outputs and a decline of 11.3 per cent in subsidies.
In the livestock sector, the CSO predicted a decline of 8.2 per cent in the value of cattle output, 10.4 per cent in pig output and 6 per cent in the value of sheep output, 4.3 per cent in milk and 4 per cent in cereals.
However, Mr Walsh said the figures included both the cash income of farmers and the impact of stock changes, including the "paper losses" on livestock enterprises.
He said direct payments from the EU and the State were down on the record figures last year but still amounted to £912 million or 56.4 per cent of farm income, the highest percentage ever.
Mr Tom Parlon, IFA president, called on Mr Walsh "to come out of denial and face facts". He said the attempt to massage the figures had not worked and farmers faced a fall in income of 20 per cent in the past two years, if inflation was taken into account.
