ICSA president Dermot Kelleher has said the Department of Agriculture must show a bit of realism when it comes to deadlines set at 31 December. “Two examples are the deadline for accepting slurry imports and the deadline for getting genomic samples to the lab. We have had quite a lot of calls from members distressed about this and we are calling for the deadlines to be extended up to the end of January,” he said.

“The reality is that the 31December deadline is beset with practical problems, and this is particularly true of 2023. Farmers got texts just before Christmas urging them to get things done at a time when this just isn’t easy. For example, texts went out on the evening of 22 December telling farmers that they must have their genomic samples in the lab in December. But December 22 was a Friday evening, and the following Monday and Tuesday were Christmas and Stephens Day. This left them just two working days to get samples sent off and again December 30 and 31 were weekend days with no post. There was no practical appreciation of how challenging this was given that farmers also are snowed under with normal feeding and other farming work. It is also important to note that the deadline specified was that samples would be in the laboratory by December 31, which the farmer clearly had no control over due to postal limitations etc.”

“In relation to the deadline to accept slurry imports, a lot of farmers have not met that target. In some cases, farmers rely on their planners to do this, but planners were simply not available at Christmas to deal with all of this. We now have a lot of stressed farmers who are worried about the slurry exports/imports and it is unnecessary. I am calling on the Minister to ensure that there are extensions to these deadlines to alleviate totally unfair stress on farmers.”

ENDS