IFA Sheep Chairman Sean Dennehy said the option for the sheep factories to use Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT) must be provided to farmers who prefer to be paid this way.
IFA has met MII on this issue and set out farmers’ demands to have this facility provided, but to date no lamb processing factories are offering this option to farmers.
“We are seeing more and more rural services taken away. The closure of local bank branches in towns throughout the country is making it more difficult for farmers to lodge cheques,” he said.
Members of the IFA Sheep Committee contacted all of the sheep factories in the past few days. While some are more positively disposed to providing the service, none is offering the facility despite IFA raising this issue with their representative body earlier this year.
Sean Dennehy said it’s not acceptable that across the sheep processing industry, this payment option is not available. He has called on all sheep processing factories to put the option in place.
He said he will be formally writing to all of the sheep processing factories setting out the need to provide EFT and seeking a realistic timeframe to have this service for farmers.
“Farmers are annoyed this basic service is not being provided to date and are calling on factories to come forward with commitments on implementation within reasonable timeframes,” he said.