The Irish Farmers Association (IFA) has pulled out of partnership talks with the Government over a dispute about the implementation of the EU's Nitrates Directive.
IFA President Padraig Walshe
IFA president Padraig Walshe today accused the Department of Agriculture and the Department for the Environment of undermining the negotiations for farmers' involvement in a new National Partnership by announcing the imposition of the Nitrates Directive while the first partnership meeting was actually in progress.
"It was bad faith and completely at variance with the positive statements inside the talks and I have suspended IFA's involvement in Partnership," Mr Walshe said.
"I will not lead farmers into a charade. The Nitrates Directive will hit all farmers hard and undermine the competitiveness of agriculture in the future," he concluded.
Farmer are opposed to the rules governing the amount of fertilisers they may use on their land which they claim are unworkable in their present form.
The EU has granted Ireland a deferral of that section of the directive which covers fertilisers to allow the matter be resolved.
The EU directive is designed to limit the amount of pollutants, particularly nitrates and phosphates, from entering groundwater and inland waterways.
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 20 per cent of groundwater has nitrate concentrations above EU directive levels, while 27 per cent of rivers are affected by eutrophication (excessive richness of nutrients).
Denis Naughten, Fine Gael agriculture spokesman, backed the IFA and said neither Minister for Agriculture Mary Coughlan or Minister for Environment Minister Dick Roche were taking the implications of the directive seriously. He claimed the Government had bungled the implementation of the directive. "Now that the IFA has felt compelled to pull out of social partnership talks because of that, it must finally be painfully clear to the Minister for Agriculture that she has to take the lead on this issue and stop skulking behind the scenes," the Fine Gael TD said.