INCOME from dairy farming in County Limerick is now worth well over half a billion euro to the local economy.
That’s according to Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) President Pat McCormack who said that Limerick dairy farmers are on course to earn €339 million this year.
Multiplied by a standard 1.6, this means that more than €500 million will accrue to the local economy.
Mr McCormack said that the latest figures show what everyone should have realised by now- that milk is the fuel of Limerick’s biggest indigenous economic activity.
“Farmers’ milk incomes go straight into their local economies through fertiliser, feed, various contractors, fuel, and services and retail of every type,” he explained.
The ICMSA President said that it was already obvious that inflationary inputs costs have already nearly overtaken the prices that dairy farmers receive, but the overall economic importance of milk production had to be grasped by policymakers.
He added that politicians had to realise that the kind of slow strangulation of the dairy sector that’s being presented as a ‘transition to lower emissions’ is going to have the most profound negative consequences for regions like Limerick and its hinterland.
“The kind of cuts that the Government is forcing through will have the same negative multiplier on Limerick’s economy as rising milk production and prices have had in positive terms.
“Limerick’s milk sector is the fundamental economic basis for the local rural economy; it’s the platform that everything else is constructed on”, the ICMSA President declared.
