One of the State's leading cereal farmers has expressed concern at the failure of Met Eireann forecasters to predict the weekend storms which are expected to cost farmers about £14 million. Mr John O'Mahony, a Cork-based cereal farmer who is chairman of the Irish Farmers' Association national tillage committee, said the met office had predicted a fine weekend.
"Instead, there were unexpected monsoon conditions over the three days. If farmers had been warned about these conditions, they would have worked extra-long hours to maximise harvesting and straw-baleing and thereby eased losses," he said.
The torrential rain of the weekend, which is expected to continue until later in the week, has caused severe damage to cereal crops, which are currently being harvested.
The rain and strong winds have flattened many crops, especially in the south-east, where a large proportion of Irish grain is grown.
Farmers in the Barrow, Nore, Slaney and Suir valleys are reporting hay crops destroyed. Silage, the alternative to hay, cannot be harvested because of the weather.
Potato-growers are also counting their losses. Already hit by blight levels which are at a 10-year high, they are unable to remove crops from fields because of the rainfall.
Mr O'Mahony said the grain losses which will follow the storms come on top of earlier predicted losses caused by low sunshine levels in June which have cut the expected cereal yields to under two million tonnes.
Mr John Donnelly, the Irish Farmers' Association president, described the weekend damage to cereals and grassland as very significant.
"The net effect of the weather damage will be increased crop losses and additional costs involved in the harvesting of severely lodged and broken-down crops," he said.
"Rain-sodden soils in certain areas will make it extremely difficult to operate harvest machinery, while livestock farmers are having to move stock off flooded farmland."
He said his organisation has estimated current losses at £14 million.
The deputy president of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association, Mr Pat O'Rourke, has called for a national rivers and waterways authority to tackle flooding. He called on the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, to deliver on his promise to set up such an authority and to provide proper funding and resources to tackle flooding, which costs farmers millions of pounds every year.