The Irish Farmers' Association last night pulled out of the national partnership talks over the introduction of an EU nitrates directive which will limit the amount of fertiliser they can put on their lands, write Seán Mac Connell and Chris Dooley.
They were joined last night by the youth farmer organisation, Macra na Feirme, which is also opposed to the restrictions on the nitrate and phosphate limits and the regulations implementing the directive.
A short statement from the Government last night said it had noted the statements of the farm leaders.
Employer and union representatives, meanwhile, had a robust exchange at the talks yesterday over the unions' call for a range of new regulatory measures to underpin employment standards.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) says it wants a new legal guarantee that workers will be paid, not just the minimum wage, but the "going rate" for a job. The call is likely to be rejected by employers' body Ibec, which told Ictu yesterday it would not accept any measures that introduced inflexibility into the labour market.
Tripartite discussions between the Government, employers and unions on labour market issues will resume tomorrow. They are being held as a separate strand within the overall partnership negotiations.
The IFA and Macra na Feirme, however, have suspended their involvement in the process. IFA president Pádraig Walshe has accused the Departments of Agriculture and Environment of undermining the negotiations by announcing the imposition of the nitrates directive while the first partnership meeting was in progress.
"It was bad faith and completely at variance with the positive statements inside the talks and I have suspended IFA's involvement in partnership," he said in a statement late yesterday.
"I will not lead farmers into a charade. The nitrates directive will hit all farmers hard and undermine the competitiveness of agriculture in the future," Mr Walshe said.
Macra na Feirme national president Colm Markey has said the decision by the Department of the Environment to proceed with the imposition of the statutory instrument to give expression to the nitrates directive while simultaneously telling the farming social partners that the issue would be dealt with in partnership, was beyond belief.
Fine Gael agriculture spokesman Denis Naughten said the IFA withdrawal indicated that neither the Minister for Agriculture nor the Minister for the Environment were taking the implications of the nitrates directive seriously.