Budget 2026 a 'disappointing non-event' for Longford farmers

Commenting on the Budget 2026 announcements and expressing his disappointment, the President of ICMSA, Denis Drennan, said that the unanimous position of all involved in the farm and agri sector was that the Government had to begin addressing the looming crisis around succession and generational renewal on the family farms that were the foundation for Ireland’s €16 billion agri-food sector.

The ICMSA President said while welcoming the extension of the tax reliefs on Slurry Storage, Stamp Duty and Capital Gains Tax reliefs, they represented an extension of very important existing reliefs. There were, he pointed out, no new initiatives.
In relation to expenditure, Mr Drennan noted the retention of dairy beef initiatives and the additional funding for the TB Action Plan that, he stressed, must work while being fair to farmers.

Read more: Longford & Westmeath ETB addressed by Minister for Education and psychotherapist

Mr. Drennan said that the overwhelming feeling of farmers would be disappointment and that disappointment would focus on the failure to deal with income volatility.

“Every reputable survey shows that the single biggest obstacle to getting young people interested in farming is income volatility.

If we want to get the next generation farming then we are going to have to deal with that and what’s so frustrating for certainly ICMSA is that we have already put forward the means of dealing with that problem”, said Mr. Drennan.

Noting that the Programme for Government contained a commitment to deal with this unmanageable volatility in farm incomes and that last year’s Budget committed to considering a solution, the ICMSA President said that the Government had decided that it couldn’t be bothered “yet again” and seemed quite content to wait for the crisis in attracting the next generation of farmers to become a blaring klaxon and flashing red light.

“They (the Government) have been given a very workable and highly regulated measure that will deal with this volatility problem in a much more effective and fundamental way than the present ‘averaging’ system.

But, frankly, there just isn’t the energy to deal with a problem that left unaddressed is inevitably going to detach Irish farming from its ‘family’ foundation and move the whole system to the factory setting that you see elsewhere in Europe - and not to their advantage either”, said Mr. Drennan.

“The Government has to address income volatility in a structured manner, and they have to begin making farming more attractive to the next generation - Budget 2026 didn’t even try”, said Mr. Drennan. “ICMSA has repeatedly put forward workable and supervised solution that would address this obvious problem and give both current farmers and the next generation the degree of predictability that they want. We put forward the solution again and hoped – on the basis of the commitment given in last year’s Budget – that we’d see action this year.

Read more: Dead of Night Halloween Festival returns to Longford for 2025

That commitment has not been delivered in Budget 2026 and on this basis farmers and everyone concerned with just preserving our invaluable farming sector will adjudge Budget 2026 a disappointing non-event” he concluded.