This article is from page 30 of the 2005-11-08 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 30 JPG
LAST Thursday was a busy day for the ICMSA in Clare as two separate elections were held in the Falls Hotel in Ennistymon.
In the North Clare area Richard Devereaux of Ennistymon was elected as chairman while Mau- rice Harvey, also of Ennistymon, was elected as secretary and as a National Council member.
Martin McMahon of Broadford was also re- elected as the County Executive Chairman with Padraig Haugh of Moyasta securing the position of secretary. Interestingly, the Vice-Chair of the County Executive will be held jointly by Thomas Shannon of Lissycasey, Richard Devereaux, and Mark Clune of Feakle.
The President of ICMSA, Pat O’Rourke, ad- dressed the meeting and covered three main top- ics in his presentation. He began by criticising
the readiness of some co-ops to cut milk price for short-term considerations.
In this regard, he singled out for his particular criticism, the position adopted by Glanbia who had cut the price paid to their suppliers by 4 cents and had planned to cut it by 10 or 11 cents. Mr O’Rourke also pointed out that this decision com- pletely ignored the underlying strength of dairy markets, with returns from SMP and Casein re- NeNDNem OM asnbU Tee
‘Farmers are very tired of being the first to feel the heat whenever a co-op was faced with even the most transient of commercial challenges,” said Mr O’Rourke.
The issue of animal medication was also open for discussion and Mr O’Rourke said that the IC- MSA had met representatives of the dairy co-ops in Abbeyleix just over a week ago and all were agreed that the new rules on animal medicines,
insofar as they related to dairy farming, should be tied into the Dairy Herd Certificate.
The dairy co-ops also agreed that prescrip- tions for intramammaries should last for one year rather than the six months that the Minister for Agriculture, Mary Coughlan, has proposed. This would link the operation on mastitis control programmes at co-op level directly to the Dairy Herd Certificate.
‘At present all dairy farmers must submit dairy herd certificates annually and the linking of new rules on prescription and the Dairy Herd Certifi- cate would have many benefits and would consid- erably reduce the amount of paper work and costs involved,’ continued Mr O’ Rourke.
Mr O’Rourke concluded by calling for the Irish Government to exercise a veto on any attempt by Commissioner Mandelson to coddle British ex- porters at the expense of Europe’s farmers.