Pressure will be exerted by the State's two largest farming organisations on the Minister for Agriculture Mr Walsh to convert his concern about Commissioner Fischler's proposals into a firm commitment to argue against the reforms.
Commenting after Mr Fischler's formal announcement of the plan today, Mr Walsh said the proposals "raise very serious issues for the future direction" of Irish and European agriculture.
But the Irish Farmers Association (IFA) and the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) have called for outright rejection claiming already strained farm incomes will be decimated.
ICMSA president, Mr Pat O'Rourke, said: "There is no question but there would be substantial job losses in the sector and the consequences for rural areas and towns would be far reaching."
He said €250 million would be wiped off incomes in the dairy sector and the Irish economy as a whole would lose €400 million.
He called on the Taoiseach to "give full Government mandate to Minister Walsh to reject totally these proposals", adding that the Commission offer farmers" full and permanent compensation" in exchange for the reduction in market supports.
Speaking in Brussels after Commissioner Fischler's presentation, IFA president Mr John Dillon said the "full resources" of Government must be "mobilised to resist the Fischler plan".
He said the proposals would "seriously undermine the future of Irish farming" and were "a particularly severe attack on the Irish beef industry".
Mr Dillon said €300 million in beef exports would lost to the Irish economy if the Fischler plan was incepted. There would be further substantial losses in the sheep and grain sectors, he added.
But not all farm organisations agree the proposals, particularly decoupling, will be detrimental to farmers incomes. The Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers' Association (ICSA) president Mr Charlie Reilly believes his members will benefit.
"Decoupling is good for income as far as cattle and sheep farmers are concerned. That has always been the ICSA analysis and now 6 EU-wide impact studies and a specific study for Ireland show that the proposal to de-couple farm support from production will result in increased incomes for farmers," he said.
He referred to yesterday's analysis carried out by the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute which predicted an 11 per cent increase in real incomes if decoupling proposals are accepted.
The Department of Agriculture has already started analysing the proposals in and an examination of the draft legal texts is also under way. Minister Walsh will meet farming organisations tomorrow.