FARMERS INTENSIFIED their campaign against the closing of the Reps (Rural Environment Protection Scheme) yesterday with a three-hour protest at Government Buildings to coincide with a Cabinet meeting.
More than 250 members of the Irish Farmers’ Association bore placards denouncing the Government for cutting their income and failing to protect the environment.
Under Reps, farmers have been paid an average of just over €6,000 a year for environmentally sensitive farming. The scheme was closed last week to new applicants as a cost-saving measure.
The protesters, who travelled from all parts of the State, had no direct contact during the protest with Government Ministers, who used other entrances to attend the Cabinet meeting.
IFA president Padraig Walshe harshly criticised Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith and his Cabinet colleagues for closing the scheme, which would cut the income of 30,000 farm families.
He accused the Government of taking the soft option of cutting the agriculture budget, which amounted to only 2 per cent of total Government spending.
“They are not prepared to take the hard decisions. They take the soft option by hitting us on four different occasions since the first budget,” he said. “It is not good enough and we are not going to take this lying down. The Cabinet has got to know they cannot keep coming back at the rural community, time after time,” he said.
“How do they expect this economy to get out of the hole it is in? They brought us into this hole and we can be part of the solution to get us out. We are not part of the problem,” he said.
He said agriculture was vital to the economy’s recovery, but not if its budgets were being cut repeatedly. He accused the Government of not taking on workers who could hold the country to ransom, which farmers could not do.
He said he did not know how the Green Party could stay in Government, having cut the most important environmental scheme in the country. He offered to sit and find a solution to the Reps cut if the Government had the decency to discuss the issue, but it seemed to him the partnership programme was a mere sham.
Asked whether the Government actions would lead him to oppose accepting the Lisbon Treaty, he said he personally would be recommending a Yes vote to his national executive council, but the final decision was up to it. He accepted it would be difficult for some farmers to untangle the cuts from Lisbon. “On the last occasion our problems were with the EU over world trade. This time our problem is with our own Government,” he said.
The IFA plans a mass rally in Cavan at Mr Smith’s constituency office on Saturday next.