Support for the European Commission's general approach to enlargement negotiations on outstanding agricultural issues, including direct payments and rural development, has come from the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh.
However, the president of the IFA, Mr John Dillon, expressed concern at the adequacy of the EU budget to meet the demands of the applicant nations.
In a statement last night, Mr Walsh said that while he had not fully examined the detail of the Commission proposals, he believed it had got "the broad thrust right".
"The proposal to extend direct payments to the new memberstates could not in equity be questioned; there should be no discrimination in the support instruments applied as between member-states of an enlarged EU," he said.
"At the same time, it was prudent to phase the extension of direct payments to the new member-states because their immediate introduction in full would hinder essential restructuring and would create income distortions as between the recipients and others in rural areas."
Following his first meeting with the EU Agriculture Commissioner, Mr Franz Fischler, the IFA president said events were now moving rapidly and he was concerned that the EU budget was insufficient to meet the demands of new members.
He said enlargement was a political and economic strategy and it was grossly unfair that the farming sector could be asked to pay the total bill. The problem was not payments to east European farmers joining the Community, but the inadequacy of the EU budget.
