Up to 100 horticultural producers could go out of business as a result of losing crops in the bad weather, the Irish Farmers' Association said yesterday.
Mr Kieran Leddy, secretary of the IFA's horticultural committee, called for an aid package to compensate farmers who are in serious difficulty.
"There are 350 horticultural producers in the country and there are varying degrees of difficulty but we estimate that up to 100 producers could go out of business," he said.
Vegetable and soft-fruit producers, along with apple-growers, had been badly affected, he said.
The horticultural producers had absolutely no subsidies from the Government or the EU and those in trouble should receive aid to compensate them for the loss of their livelihood, Mr Leddy said.
What the committee wanted now was for Teagasc to do a complete valuation of the numbers of farmers who were going to go out of business.
Mr Leddy said that even if the weather cleared up now, for many farmers it would be too late. For example, the strawberry season was over, and it was also too late for many vegetable crops, like broccoli and cauliflower.
"In an awful lot of cases their cash-flow has dried up already," Mr Leddy said.
Yesterday IFA president Mr John Dillon called for an urgent meeting with the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, to discuss compensation for farmers whose incomes were down. He said he had written to the Minister seeking the meeting this week.
However, a Department of Agriculture spokesman said there were no plans this week to meet the IFA president. He said the Minister had already responded last Friday.
He said the Minister had taken certain measures. He had looked at changing the Farm Assist Scheme to take account of this year's prices and had changed the set-aside scheme so that farmers could save fodder from August 9th. He had also asked Teagasc to take action to help farmers in whatever way possible.
"There is no specific monetary package available for this but the Minister is doing everything he can to help and is monitoring the situation daily," the spokesman said.
Mr Dillon, speaking on RTÉ radio yesterday, said he was unhappy that the Minister had ruled out setting up a fund to help farmers in financial difficulties.
Meanwhile, farmers in Galway and Mayo yesterday returned documentation relating to the compulsory sheep registration scheme, which the IFA is opposing. The scheme, introduced last year after the foot-and-mouth outbreak to assist in tracing animals, involves ear-tagging and individual sheep registers.
The IFA said 40,000 flock owners believed the system was unreasonable and unworkable. It called on the Minister to replace it with a more workable and simpler system.