"Ireland is moving to landlordism"

CASE STUDY

Packie Burns is a suckler farmer from Carrickmacross. He has worked a second job doing groundwork on various building sites since 2000. In 2009, Packie had to resort to claiming Jobseeker’s benefit after the economic crash of the year previous.

After he received a farm support payment of €5,000 in 2009, Packie was told he no longer qualified for jobseeker’s benefit.

At 64, Packie is two years away from state pension age. He is registered for VAT for his 70-acre farm and when he works on building sites he does so as a self-employed contractor.

When he was hospitalised recently, he found he could neither claim sickness benefit nor when he was recovering, register for unemployment benefits.

He is a single man and says he doesn’t know how farmers with families manage.

“The bulk of farmers, apart from large dairy farmers, in this area have work outside farming,” Packie said. “There will be some farmers that need or have needed jobseeker’s benefits for sure.”

Afloat

He reiterated some of the points raised by Senator O’Reilly. “Farmers work weekends and holidays just to keep things afloat,” Packie continued. “They haven’t got the time for short notice inspections, days off for two-day TB testing and other red tape.

“That is why when an offer comes in from a larger farmer, they take it and get out of the sector altogether.

“Ireland is moving to landlordism,” the local farmer asserted “and one of the effects of that is when farmers, who are an ageing breed, look to their neighbour for help at certain times of the year, he isn’t there. The neighbour farmer has left farming, and his sons before him.”

Priced out

Packie Burns blames the distribution of farm payments from the EU for much of the Irish farmer’s financial woes.

“It’s the failure of farm organisations and politicians to represent the interests of all farmers,” Packie says.

A proposal by the European Commission to end payments under the CAP for farmers who are of pensionable age and also receiving a state pension, “is just another in a list if successive policies over the past 20 years intended to price farmers out of the sector,” Mr Burns said.