The president of the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) Francie Gorman has said he is “hopeful” of more “workable” Bord Bia Quality Assurance (QA) scheme audits for farmers being introduced.

Speaking to a group of farmers at an IFA event in Cavan last week, the IFA president said that the IFA is “engaging” with Bord Bia to see if a new assurance scheme could be introduced.

“We’re engaging with them [Bord Bia] at the moment to try see can we get a new Quality Assurance scheme in place that will work for farmers.”

“There’s no point in us having a Bord Bia scheme in place in the morning if farmers are not happy with it because without farmers, you have no scheme so there’s a huge amount of work being done at the moment.

“I’d be hopeful we will have a QA scheme in place that will be workable for farmers, that will reduce the time that people spend doing the audits and the preparation work and the number of audits that you’d have.”

The IFA president argued that it is a scheme “that nobody is happy with at the moment and every meeting I go to, I get it”.

Gorman also said that the IFA “pulled out of the technical groups about a month or six weeks ago until we got clarity on five or six points that we wanted clear by Bord Bia“.

Commenting on the requirement for farmers in the Suckler Carbon Efficiency Programme (SCEP) to be a member of the Bord Bia Sustainable Beef and Lamb Assurance Scheme (SBLAS), the IFA president said: “I was never, ever in favour of forcing suckler farmers that weren’t slaughtering stock into a Bord Bia scheme.

“That should never have happened and it’s not going to change now because the scheme is embedded now and it’s a requirement but it’s something were going to have to look at down the road.”

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