Irish dairy farmers are hoping that the Government will permit them to offer work to refugees from Kosovo, as it is becoming increasingly difficult to find Irish people to work on the land, a conference was told yesterday.
The National Dairy Conference at Moorepark, Fermoy, Co Cork heard that farmers in the Munster area had approached some of the refugees, offering them employment on their farms.
The Government was urged to amend the regulations on refugees to enable farmers to offer work to the Kosovars.
The president of the Irish Farmers' Association, Mr Tom Parlon, said that the national council of the IFA had discussed the Kosovo issue and was looking at how Irish farmers might be able to assist the refugees.
"Most of the people who have come here have come off farms, and the hope is that they will be going back home as soon as a peace settlement is found," Mr Parlon said. "There is a drastic shortage of labour on Irish farms and it would make sense to offer the men or women the opportunity to either work as guests on farms or as paid workers.
"This would be therapeutic, if nothing else, and it would show some support for the people who have been taken out of their own environment because of the war."
Mr Frank Allen, president of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association, said that he also would favour offering work to the refugees. "They are all farmers and it might settle them down for the time they will be here. It could well be of mutual benefit all round," he said.
Mr Denis Cronin, the chairman of Dairygold Co-Operative, said that the refugee centres were ideally placed in the milk-producing regions of the State.
"The refugee centres are in Killarney, Millstreet, Kildare and Wicklow, and I imagine that they would like to do something with which they are familiar, like working on the land," Mr Cronin said. "The labour situation is so bad on farms that it is impossible to find people to work on the land."