The Irish economy stands to lose €460 million if the Fischler proposals to reform the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) are pushed through without amendment, the Department of Agriculture has said.
Tomorrow, the EU farm ministers will meet again in Brussels to try and agree on the most radical reform package in the history of the CAP.
The Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, who has already voiced Ireland's opposition to the "decoupling" proposal aimed at breaking the link between direct payments and farm production, will this week target the "degression and modulation" proposals.
The EU Agriculture Commissioner, Dr Franz Fischler, has proposed reducing direct payments to farmers from 2006 and redirecting this money into rural development schemes and cutting marketing supports for the dairy sector.
These proposals have been severely criticised by the dairy industry here, which has said it would cut the market value of Irish milk output by 28 per cent.
The main farm organisations said that the compensation being offered for the cuts in intervention prices, a dairy premium, will only cover 55 per cent of the losses they expect to suffer.
Mr Walsh will be focusing on these elements of the deal when a further compromise paper will be presented tomorrow evening to try and break the logjam in the negotiations.
Following two days of discussions last week in Luxembourg, no real progress was made and the French led the opposition to the package as a whole.
Most of the Ministers, including Mr Walsh, rejected a compromise document prepared by the Greek Presidency for the Ministers. Mr Walsh said that while it was a useful discussion document, it did nothing to address the real problems facing Irish agriculture.
The French President, Mr Jacques Chirac, told French farmers last Friday that he was not ready to capitulate on the CAP policy. "The CAP is a good policy. It is the trunk around which Europe has grown. I will continue to defend the CAP," he said.
However, Dr Fischler, has been equally adamant that root-and-branch reform of the Common Agricultural Policy was necessary.
He said that a half-hearted reform, one which would continue to attract criticism in Europe and internationally and see the CAP further picked to pieces, would help neither the farmers, nor the taxpayers, nor the consumers. "The only outcome of a mini-reform would be to trigger another round of discussions a few more years down the road. This is why I am throwing all my weight behind a comprehensive reform now, one which repairs the defects of the CAP and thereby strengthens it", Dr Fischler said.
The talks resume on Tuesday at 3 p.m.