Irish dairy farmers warn that unstable incomes are causing a succession crisis

The ICMSA raised the issue this week in meetings with Tánaiste and Finance Minister Simon Harris and Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers. With only weeks remaining before Budget 2027, the association called for measures that would give farmers greater certainty and improve their ability to plan.

Denis Drennan, the ICMSA president, said the pattern of farm earnings was “causing a looming succession crisis”. He said the organisation had spent a decade arguing that farmers should be allowed to place money in accounts supervised by the Revenue authorities.

Under the proposal, farmers could reserve funds in stronger years and access them when earnings deteriorated. Drennan said such accounts could reduce the impact of the boom-and-bust cycles experienced in recent years. He described access to the deposits during the most difficult periods as potentially the only measure capable of ensuring that households could meet basic expenses and necessities.

Drennan said income averaging had not provided an effective solution, particularly for people entering farming. Surveys conducted by the ICMSA found that young farmers repeatedly identified unpredictable earnings as the largest barrier to returning to, or taking over, their family farms.

He said the children of farming families were often unwilling to leave paid employment and move their households back to a farm. According to Drennan, they could work twice as long without employment-related benefits and, after a full year, earn less than the minimum wage or lose money. He said dairy farmers represented by the association had experienced that outcome between September 2025 and the present.

The ICMSA has submitted several versions of a farm-deposit scheme to government departments, which Drennan said demonstrated that the approach was both workable and necessary. He added that a number of countries had already introduced similar arrangements. At the meeting, he told ministers that the problem could be addressed “with a bit of imagination and energy”. Drennan said that without action to resolve the issue, Ireland would not have the next generation of farmers and the family-farm model underpinning rural Ireland would end.