merrion street

As part of his effort to encourage dairy farmers to work towards ensuring that Ireland avoids a milk quota superlevy, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Simon Coveney TD, has issued a further reminder of the critical importance of ensuring that milk production remains within quota this year.

With over 99% of the returns received from the Co-ops, in respect of milk deliveries received in the current Milk Quota year up to end January 2012, the current level of milk received (with appropriate butter-fat adjustment) is 0.30% under quota. The corresponding figure for this time last year was 1.41% under quota. The Minister, while acknowledging the continued efforts by dairy farmers and their co-operatives to avoid exceeding the national quota, says that “the threat of incurring a super levy penalty is still great given that in the final two months of last year (February and March 2011) Ireland produced over 1% above quota. If a similar production patters in followed for the remaining two months of this year a super levy is inevitable”.

Minister Coveney again emphasised that the current quota system would continue to operate until 2015 and called on farmers to continue to manage their enterprises within quota in the intervening period.