'Price pressure from beef factories must be resisted'
There is no valid reason for the processors to make utterances about slow trade or to engage in any other effort to force down prices to suppliers as the reality is that prime cattle are in very short supply, the President of the IFA Joe Healy has said.
In particular, the principal market for Irish product, the UK, is continuing to see prices on the up and the factories there are finding it “very difficult” to acquire adequate numbers to meet strong demand.
New moves on mortgages must also consider loans to farmers
The recommendation of the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission that additional effort must be put into introducing new lending institutions into the Irish mortgage market to create competition in the market need to go a bit farther than just referring to property loans, the Chairman of the Kerry ICMSA Mike Teahan suggests.
Certainly it is clear that the absence of proper competition has resulted in a ‘dysfunctional’ market, as the Commission called it, but it is also necessary that the Irish lenders are obliged to face competition in the agricultural sector which are, in Mike’s words, “at least” as exorbitant and dysfunctional as that of domestic mortgages”.
Much as those who have mortgages on their homes do, farmers in Ireland pay substantially higher rates of interest than do their colleagues on mainland Europe. “But they also paid a notably higher interest rate than - for instance, Irish builders - despite having a much lower rate of default on their loans and having to offer much higher security than other borrowers - usually in the form of a lien or charge on their farms,” the Kilcummin farmer said.