Farmers ‘increasingly more frustrated’
“Do you know how much a pound of branded butter is?” Aontú Senator Sarah O'Reilly asked during a recent speech at the Ard Fheis 2025.
“It’s €5.49,” she informed, adding that this is just “marginally less” than the average hourly rate of pay for a dairy farmer today; a “shocking” €5.76 she claimed.
“The price of butter shows just how much prices in this country for the ordinary basics have jumped skywards with the sellers, not the producers creaming off, and the paltry pay for farmers shows just how low agricultural incomes have fallen,” she asserted.
Senator O'Reilly added that there is something “seriously wrong” when a “basic item of food costs the same as what a dairy farmer makes per hour” describing it as “very sad.”
“For a country with such a visceral link to the land and a strong and vibrant legacy of farming and agriculture this is very sad.”
As the granddaughter of a cattle dealer and having her own agricultural contracting business with her partner for eighteen year, Senator O'Reilly informed those gathered that her “entire family’s income has been supported by farmers in some way or another all our lives.”
“While I’m not a farmer myself, I truly understand the importance of a strong farming industry, producing good quality food and providing a strong rural economy. I have three sons working the land in Canada as its in their bones, they love it too.”
She said farmers across the country are becoming “increasingly more frustrated” with the “lack of respect and priority” given to the agriculture sector, coupled with the “ongoing and crippling costs.”
Farm costs have risen by an average of 73% in the last 7 years, she told those gathered.
Meanwhile she said some farmers in Cavan have “still not received payments” from as far back as 2023.
“I was promised in December that payments would be issued in January 2025 and just this week the Minster for Agriculture Martin Heydon has expressed his dismay that farmers have still not received payments,” she fumed.
“The tragedy here is that these farmers are out of pocket, because they spent a lot of money-making improvements so they could comply and qualify for the scheme and now they’re left in the dark. There needs to be immediate payment and back payments to all the farmers in question. The stress and the strain on famers is almost incalculable.”