Minister Heydon Has to Address GAEC 2 Issue

The need for a solution on GAEC 2 for potentially thousands of impacted farmers was among the key priorities raised with the new EU Commissioner for Agriculture Christophe Hansen at last week’s IFA AGM.
“Minister Heydon must now take up the issue with the EU Commission which is threatening Ireland with fines if we don’t implement GAEC 2 in 2025,” IFA President Francie Gorman said.
IFA has been in regular discussions with the EU Commission and the former Minister for Agriculture in relation to GAEC 2 since it first appeared in the draft EU CAP proposals.
The IFA President Francie Gorman has raised it with present and past Taoisigh and with the relevant EU Commissioner, with its implementation deferred initially for 2023 in the CAP Strategic Plan, and again later in 2024, as IFA advocated for.
We wrote to the Commission and our MEPS in early 2024 seeking to have GAEC 2 amended or removed as part of the Commission’s simplification agenda under which they amended other GAECs.
This issue was highlighted in each of our recent submission around proposed amends to the CAP Strategic Plan, and in our EU election manifesto as part of our CORE asks, and in the General Election manifesto as part of our CENTRAL asks.
The farm organisations were originally presented with a set of possible measures to implement GAEC 2 at the end of September 2023.
We wrote to the Dept outlining our concerns immediately post that September stakeholder meeting and followed up with a detailed submission in early October 2023 setting out our issues with the proposals and seeking a deferral of the implementation of GAEC 2.
The Department recently presented the farm organisations with a new set of proposals for the implementation of the EU requirement, and these are currently being considered by IFA.
“There is no doubt but that the provisions of GAEC 2 are problematic for Irish farmers given the amount of peat soil we have here. The option of removing it or deferring it at EU level would be the best outcome, but we have little support from the Commission which wants to impose fines on Ireland if we don’t comply,” he said.
“Ultimately, preserving agricultural activity is paramount. Any GAEC 2 measure that is introduced cannot economically damage the farm operation. We need our new Minister for Agriculture to find a solution,” he said.