GALWAY IFA are calling on the Minister for Agriculture, Charlie McConalogue, to make modifications to the new Sheep Improvement Scheme as a matter or urgency.

Stephen Canavan, Galway IFA Chair, said that IFA had met with Department officials last week in an effort to secure changes to the scheme – most of them straightforward enough in relation to dates and deadlines.

One of the difficulties with the scheme is that the first year of the five-year project will run from February 1, 2023, to December 31, 2023 – the remaining four years of the project run from January 1 to December 31 annually.

However, Stephen Canavan has pointed out that if scanning takes place on farms in the coming January, 2023, this action will only be eligible for payment through the current scheme. “Applicants who choose the action as part of the new scheme will be penalised on their first-year payments because the action did not take place within the new scheme year.

“The scheme year period should run like the SWS (Sheep Welfare Scheme), which would avoid penalising farmers for this action in year one,” said Stephen Canavan.

He added that the requirement to nominate the years to have the genotyped/parentage verified in the scheme – on the first year of application – must not be a compliance requirement.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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