The Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) is calling on factories to stop what it describes as the "relentless cuts" to lamb prices.

Adrian Gallagher, the chair of the association's national sheep committee, said that factories are "undermining sheep markets and destroying confidence in the sector" due to "their relentless race to the bottom on lamb prices".

He said that the price cuts are coming at a critical time of year for sheep farmers.

“It has been an extremely difficult year lambing ewes, with enormous weather challenges contributing to increased costs and losses encountered,” he said.

Gallagher added that the processing sector "can and must do more on lamb price" in order to reflect the actual costs of production on sheep farms, along with being "a lot stronger with retailers".

The IFA Sheep chair said that retailers are "very quick to talk about their green credentials" when it comes to marketing themselves to their customers.

However, he said that they are undermining local farmers by "sourcing cheap imports from outside the EU to maintain their own margins".

"Sheep farmers have seen prices cut by over 20% in the past few weeks, but product on shelves hasn’t changed to this extent, if at all,” Gallagher said.

He added that the severity and speed of the recent price cuts serves as a reminder to Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue on the importance of direct supports for the sheep sector.

"The sheep sector is a low-income vulnerable sector that does not have the capacity to absorb the type of price volatility we are experiencing at the hands of the factories and retailers.

"The minister must extend the Sheep Welfare Scheme (SWS) into 2025 and commit to additional funding in the scheme to bring total payments per ewe to €30, when combined with the Sheep Improvement Scheme (SIS)," Gallagher said.