Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Martin Heydon has been called on to declare Ireland's support for an EU-wide milk supply reduction scheme.

The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association (ICMSA) has asked the minister to indicate whether he will voice support for such a scheme at a meeting of EU agriculture ministers on Monday (April 27).

According to ICMSA president Denis Drennan, "at least" seven EU member states have expressed support for a scheme that will provide milk producers with a price per litre to voluntarily not produce milk for a defined period.

Supporters of a supply reduction scheme say it will signal the reduction in supply volumes that will restore "supply-demand equilibrium" and entice buyers back into the market.

"Dairy farmers all over the state are now being wiped out by a fatal combination of below-costs-of-production milk price and surging inputs, principally, fuel and fertiliser," Drennan said.

"We are no longer in temporary loss-making territory. It is a question of whether farmers will or can carry on when they are seeing their incomes wiped out, and are now working for nothing for months on end and with no upturn in sight, unless action is taken to step in and rebalance dairy markets," Drennan added.

According to the ICMSA, increases in milk price offered this month for March supplies are "still well short" of breakeven.

Drennan said that a voluntary supply reduction scheme is "the only tried and trusted" way to deal with oversupply that did not involve storage and the creation of an "overhang" on the market.

"The voluntary supply scheme [was] introduced in 2016 and [was] a spectacular success on that occasion, by signalling a measurable reduction in supply that meant buyers had to ‘buy forward’ immediately and instantly begin a recovery in milk price that stabilised primary production and critically, it provided dairy farmers with a viable choice for the first time," the ICMSA president said.

"At a time when farming and the agri-sector seems beset by really intractable problems – many of which are beyond our control – ICMSA urges Minister Heydon to start addressing and solving those that are demonstrably within [our] control and for which [we] have a remedy to hand," Drennan said.

"A collapsed milk price is a ruinous situation for Irish dairy farmers that will very quickly destabilise our dairy export earnings, and we are telling both Minister Heydon and his department that the remedy is at right there to be deployed at short notice and should be ‘on the table’ at the...council of ministers," Drennan added.