The Department of Agriculture building at the top of Kildare Street is one of Dublin's ugliest. But the ministerial offices on the fifth floor are splendid - a broad, quiet corridor with offices overlooking much of the city. Joe Walsh's expansive office overlooks the National Museum and the Dail. Former ministers of agriculture are listed in the foyer: Patrick Hogan, the first minister in the new independent State; Dr Jim Ryan, who held the position for most of the time during Fianna Fail's long reign from 1932 to 1948; then James Dillon, Patrick Smith, and the celebrated trio - Charles Haughey, Neil Blaney and James Gibbons - whose lives intertwined in interesting ways.
After them Mark Clinton, Brian Lenihan, Michael O'Kennedy, Alan Dukes, Austin Deasy and Ivan Yates.
It is an impressive list and Joe Walsh's inclusion does not diminish its distinction. Relatively anonymous until recently, he is possibly the most articulate Fianna Fail minister (faint praise perhaps) and he is perceived to have handled the foot-and-mouth crisis effectively and assuredly.
He is aged 58 and is a former creamery manager. Married with five children, he lives in Clonakilty, Co Cork, more than five hours' drive from Dublin. He is one of the class of 77, the Fianna Fail TDs elected in the landslide of that year, and has been through all the great wars in the party since. He had his own private war for several years with fellow Fianna Fail candidate in Cork South West, Flor Crowley (father of MEP Brian). He was a vigorous opponent of Haughey and did not get ministerial office until 1987, becoming a cabinet minister in 1992 when Albert Reynolds became Taoiseach. He has never served as a minister outside the Department of Agriculture.
A huge man with massive hands, he speaks quietly and fluently. His natural modesty has been tempered with an appreciation that he has given leadership on the foot-and-mouth issue. A hand-out (perhaps written by himself?) speaks glowingly of his negotiating skills and of himself as an "outstanding role model for politicians around the world".
In spite of that blather, he is a nice man. The interview took place at his offices last Thursday morning.
VB: When was the first time that you realised that there was a crisis with foot-and-mouth? JW: Well, the first time I realised it was on the evening of February 20th when the secretary general, John Malone, called into my office and said: "Minister, I have to tell you that there has been an outbreak of foot-and-mouth confirmed in Britain." Anyhow, I had some recollection of the foot-and-mouth scare in 1967 and the devastation caused by that, so I said: "Look, we have to take immediate action here".
So, from the following morning we did ban the importation of all animal products and susceptible animals from the UK - that's including Northern Ireland - and put a series of measures into effect straight away.
VB: There was criticism early on over delays in taking the initial preventive action. In retrospect, were these justified? JW: My response to those criticisms was to welcome them and to say that I wanted very much for people to let me know, even anecdotally, what might be weaknesses in the system. Because, here we were addressing a problem that we didn't have in the country for six decades so we took the initial decision to stop animals and animal products, which is the highest-risk way of spreading the disease.
The other ancillary type of measures then were disinfectant and control measures. I had no problem about people saying: "Look, there should be more disinfectant mats at airports or ports or wherever it was". I went around and visited all of those and it was true that they were cranked up very considerably in the initial days.
I have to say in relation to Alan Dukes and Willie Penrose, the Labour Party spokesman, that they have been totally constructive from those first criticisms right up to date.
VB: What were the circumstances in which you first heard of the outbreak of foot-and-mouth in Louth? JW: We sent samples to Pirbright [the testing lab in Britain] and we were to get [results of] the samples on a Monday evening at maybe around 8 or 10 o'clock and we were told by Pirbright, because of the pressures of work they were under, they (the results) wouldn't be available until the following morning. Anyhow, I had a meeting every morning, including this morning, at 8.30 of a taskforce of a whole lot of different Departments and other ministers and agencies and so on, and when I returned here from that meeting - it was about 9.30 - the secretary called into this office here and said: "We're in trouble, we've got back the samples and one of them is positive and another is inconclusive or weakly positive".
So I said what does that mean, because there were a lot of samples taken and so on and just because there was one positive, sometimes you can have these false positives. "Well," he said, "from our interpretation of it and from Pirbright's interpretation, we have foot-and-mouth."
I rang the Taoiseach, it was a Thursday morning. The Taoiseach announced to the Dail at 10.30 that, following analysis of a sample from Proleek in Co Louth, we have confirmation of foot-and-mouth. The Dail was immediately adjourned for half an hour or an hour and I was to make a full statement to the House then. And Alan Dukes and Willie Penrose, they made their statements as well. In fairness to them again, they said: "We have many things to create a fuss about politically, we're not going to do that in relation to foot-and-mouth".
On top of that they said: "If the Minister for Agriculture wants to make a statement and leave the House to take some operational decisions, we've no problem with that."
So that's the way the scene has gone from the very start to the end. We put through legislation by consensus as well.
VB: Do you think you have it beaten? JW: It's extremely difficult to say. We feel that we have gone an awful long way in relation to keeping it out but we're gone about 36 days since our outbreak. Nonetheless, in the North, they got their fresh outbreaks 43 days after the initial outbreak in Meigh in South Armagh.
All the experts and all the textbooks say that the foot-and-mouth virus incubates for seven days and you can have a rollover of seven days, 14 and you might have 28 days, but that's the absolute maximum. They were gone 43 days, so the only rational explanation is that this particular virus doesn't show very pronounced symptoms and, with animals up on the hills, farmers don't see them every day. It's a fairly silent operator. In the North it would look as if it maybe had gone through a sheep flock once or twice before it actually showed up in some cattle in Co Tyrone and then up in the Glens of Antrim after that.
VB: There's a greater national effort and cohesion in the campaign to contain or prevent foot-and-mouth disease than there has been in relation to anything else in this country over a long period of time. There was nothing like this determination in relation to the prevention of violence in Northern Ireland or in relation to the slaughter on the roads. Do you have a sense of the incongruity of being able to do things in relation to animal diseases that we don't do in relation to human life? JW: Well, in my time, more than a quarter of a century now, in public life, I have never experienced the national effort there has been in relation to animal diseases. If I was to say to the average person in the street three months ago, well, what do you think would galvanise the Irish people in relation to some things, then you might say, the national question, whatever it would be.
But foot-and-mouth, a bloody virus, an invisible thing that goes through animals by stealth, that would hardly be the number one item you'd say would galvanise people, but that has been the case.
I have seen people with disinfectant mats and facilities and controls from every place, from funeral homes to pubs to whole graveyards and churches, everything. Unprecedently, the Hierarchy got in and said: "There's no need to go to Mass anymore". It was incredible but, anyhow, it worked very well and I see people got a great sense of satisfaction out of it.
But you're right, take along the Border. I have been assured as late as this morning - because I had my strategy meeting this morning by the gardai - that they could safely say that no consignment of these animals has come through the Border since the 21st. I doubt if they could say the same thing about the consignments of nearly any other materials and, as you know, that has been going on for the last 30 years.
VB: Why? JW: The explanation, I think, is that an awful lot of people are quite close to the land and maybe we are fairly selfish when it came down to it. Here we had the Celtic Tiger going great guns, and suddenly it was going to implode. Certainly, if half the effort was put into, say, reducing the carnage on the roads, then we would deal with that in a manner very effectively and very efficiently and that is true. And you can take the whole lot of other diseases, AIDS or whatever else it might be, and the same thing hasn't been done. I don't know other than the explanation that I have given you what the explanation for it is but I cannot myself remember any issue which evoked the same response as this.
VB: There seems to be some disagreement between yourself and Bertie Ahern about the effectiveness of the British response to the foot-and-mouth disease. You've been quietly supportive of what Nick Brown [the UK Secretary of State for Agriculture] has been doing in Britain and certainly uncritical of him, whereas Bertie Ahern has been very critical of the British. JW: I am not an adversarial person by nature, maybe that's something to do with it, but I believe that the Brits, and Nick Brown as Minister for Agriculture and Blair as Prime Minister, have been doing what they can to address this problem in Britain. Similarly, Brid Rodgers and executives in Northern Ireland have been doing as much as they can. I took the view that we had a job to do here and that we should put our major effort into doing that and I resisted any prodding of me to be critical of those administrations.
VB: Do you think that Bertie Ahern was wrong to be critical? JW: I don't, I won't be critical of Bertie either. He has a job to do as well; he's Taoiseach and has overall responsibility for the national economy and felt that maybe some additional effort should be made in Britain. Well, then, he was entitled to say that. I suppose it was unusual, to say the very least, that the Irish taxpayer has had to fork out £75,000 to put in some spraying machines in different ports in Britain. That strikes me as very strange, all right.
VB: Did you express that view to Nick Brown? JW: I didn't, no, because I discussed it with the Department of the Marine and I said: "Are you serious that we're paying £75,000 to British ports to put in spraying machines for disinfectants?" Yes, they said, we are. I said, surely to God Her Majesty's Government should be able to afford £75,000 and, anyway, they would have a duty as a member-state [of the European Union] to seek to prevent this virus from going into areas of other member-states.
The Department of the Marine said this was a deal done between them and the port authorities that are private port authorities in Britain - Holyhead, Fishguard - and it didn't have anything to do directly with the British government.
VB: Did you find that response satisfactory? JW: I still didn't, no. It was amazing in many ways that they would accept £75,000, which is a relatively small amount of money.
VB: To move on to other matters. Is it the case that the benefits Ireland has enjoyed from the Common Agricultural Policy are now going to be ended or at least substantially reduced with the reforms to CAP and the enlargement of the EU? JW: It is. There are a number of concerns. We have been net beneficiaries to a major degree - in excess of £20 billion over the lifetime of the membership of the EU - and, generally, an awful lot of the things that have been done to build up the economy here, we couldn't have done on our own. I think the gravy train tap is about to be squeezed considerably in relation to that. A ceiling has been put on CAP expenditure and, on top of that, we now have the enlargement negotiations.
In the past six months there has been a pronounced change in the composition of the Council of Agriculture Ministers and it's more likely to be an eco-minister now than a farm minister. A number of the ministers, including the new German Minister, supports very strongly eco-farming, wants to go to first-rate organic farming and is completely opposed, for example, to animal transport. Being an island here, we need animal transport here very badly. Last year, for example, we would have exported around 350,000 head of live cattle and that's going to be under immense pressure.
Similarly, the Italian Minister for Agriculture is Green as well, as are the ministers from Denmark and Sweden. Ministries that in the past were male, middle-aged, farmer-orientated; now you have these eco-ministers and they want to pull back the agri-industry from one of a large-scale processing type of industry, with large-scale operations, to one where we go back to nature and have it green. We can take advantage of that in that we have a fairly extensive type of agriculture here but there isn't any doubt that the developments within the EU, both from a compositional point of view at the Council of Ministers and because of the ceiling on expenditure and enlargement, mean that we will be very much on our own and operating on our own resources from 2006 onwards.
VB: Will it make much difference to agriculture here? JW: It will. We reckon that by 2010 the numbers of farms will be down by around 20,000. At present we have about 140,000 farms, nominally anyway. Some of them would be smallish farmers and they'd do other jobs. You could argue that with tightening of the tap on the largesse from Europe, that might be even accelerated.
VB: You were anti-Charlie Haughey right from the time you were first elected to the Dail in 1977. You voted against him in the leadership election in '79. Why were you against him right from the start? JW: I think it was his style. He had an operational style that I didn't fancy or I didn't like. And yes, I voted for George Colley in 1979. During the long parliamentary party meetings in the 1980s when his leadership was at stake I was in the minority [against him]. I was very unhappy during the 1980s about the way the economy was being run. When he became Taoiseach he made a speech about tightening our belts but he then did the opposite.
VB: What about his style didn't you like? JW: He would have been minister for health and social welfare in those early days, and what I objected to very much was that, at those times, he obviously was determined to become leader one way or another. He garnered a lot of support from backbenchers and members of the party, you know, in a very active way, because he would have, some backbenchers would have, identified maybe six or 10 and you take those and you go and do whatever is necessary to get them to vote for me.
I remember at the time as well there used to be some receptions - I think they were probably in the Burlington - I think they were under the aegis of some oul' health promotional agency of some kind at that particular time. In my view, and I was only an ordinary backbencher, they were nothing short of a part of CJ's campaign to become Taoiseach. It was that kind of style of things that I didn't fancy at all.
VB: Were you influenced by the fact that your rival in the constituency, Flor Crowley, was very much a Charlie supporter? JW: I don't know about that. Flor was a rival in the constituency. In fact, as it happened, I actually lost my seat again in 1981 and then we had to go over the same old dogfight again on a number of occasions. It was bare knuckle stuff, you know, fairly earthy but, at the same time, I don't know if that influenced me very much. I just didn't fancy Charlie's style and that would have been the main motivating factor.
VB: You did come under a lot of pressure to vote for him in the leadership election? JW: I didn't come under any direct pressure but I certainly would have come under a fair amount of indirect pressure. The campaign started straight away after the election in 1977. CJ had come back out of the cold at that stage because he had been out from early 1970s. I remember well, and I found it a bit sickening anyhow, towards the end of 1979, we actually had the Presidency of the European Council and we didn't even wait to get through the Presidency and the Presidency was a big thing for Ireland at the time because we had been new members of the European Union, we were centre-stage internationally and a lot of international media attention and so, and here's, I can't remember the actual month that we had the leadership contest. It didn't do our international standing any good, in my view.
VB: Ironically, the most serious controversy you've got into as a politician was over Haughey as well in regard to the Beef Tribunal, where you said that he had nothing to do with arranging the IDA plans for the Goodman organisation and there was evidence that there had been several meetings in which he was directly involved and you must have known about it. Why did you support him so much at that time? JW: Well, CJ was Taoiseach, I was Minister of State. The IDA had a plan for the development of the food industry and we got into office in 1987. As it happens, as you know, nothing came of that, it was completely aborted, and there wasn't a penny of taxpayers' money spent on it. I mean, that's the reality of that. Any involvement which either Charlie Haughey as Taoiseach or I had as a minister of state, you know, it's on the record and I have no problem with that at all.
VB: The issue was that at the Beef Tribunal you said he had nothing to do with this, nothing to do with the negotiations of Goodman's plans, whereas he was up to his neck in it and, obviously, you must have known about it? JW: Well, I don't think that that is precisely true. As I said, I stand by what I said and the report is available in the GIS and if people want to go through it I stand over what I said in relation to it.
