IN farming circles they are calling the invasion of the EU Farm Ministers' meeting last Tuesday "Killarney's Drumcree". The two events are comparable in one sense only farmers are almost as unpopular in urban areas in this State now as the Orangemen were back in July.
But it would also be fair to say that Irish farmers are, in their own way, as misunderstood as the Orangemen. It is also true that both farmers and Orangemen feel threatened by the future.
The ragged charge of the farmers towards the entrance of the Europe Hotel at Fossa served only to reinforce the view of many urban PAYE taxpayers that farmers are merely a crowd of ignorant grant aided spongers.
But there are certain realities in what is happening to the farming community, especially those involved in the beef industry, which cannot be ignored.
For instance, the latest independent figures from Teagasc show that the national average farm income last year was £9,644 and, while that represented a 6.4 per cent increase on the previous year, only 52 per cent of farms benefitted from it.
Less than £200 per week for a farming family, or any family, is very poor money by Irish standards. Yet, when the figures are broken down further, the reason for the cattlemens' charge at Killarney becomes even clearer.
The Teagasc report shows that the average income of the majority of the beef farmers - who led the protest outside the Europe Hotel is £4,800, which is less than £100 per week.
Those figures refer to last year and do not cover the impact on incomes caused by the most recent phase of the BSE crisis, which dates back to March 20th. BSE has done to beef farming something similar to what the Anglo Irish Agreement did to Orangeism.
Since March 20th, when the British government announced that there might be a possible link between Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and a new form of its human equivalent, CJD, beef prices have plummeted.
The beef farmers were then receiving up to 102 pence per lb for their beef. This week, that had fallen to 82p, a 20 per cent reduction. And there are indications that it could fall further.
No wonder then that the beef farmers were saying unpleasant things at the top of their voices about the British Minister of Agriculture, Mr Douglas Hogg, who was inside the Europe Hotel when the protest began.
Come to think of it, the Orangemen in Drumcree were using the same kind of language, because they, too, blame the British government for their misfortune.
For the vast majority of the Killarney protesters the reality is that they could not survive on the land at all were it not for EU grants and subsidies and other off farm income.
For instance, almost half of all farms last year had an income off the land of less than £5,000 a year, with direct payments from the EU and the State responsible for holding up the averages.
Of these low income farms, 82 per cent were cattle or sheep producers, while on 83 per cent of them the holder and/or spouse had some other source of off farm income.
The stark truth is that the vast majority of Irish farmers are poor. Without EU money which this year will come close to £800 million and off farm income, they would have to leave the land.
OF course, there are the rich gentleman farmers, but they were not on the lawns of the Europe Hotel. The richest farmers are in dairying and tillage. The same Teagasc report shows that the average income for dairy farmers was £19,400, while tillage farmers came in just behind with an average income of £17,000.
In all, there are fewer than 50,000 of these holdings among the 150,000 farms in the State. And even inside dairying and tillage there are huge variables in income.
For instance, Teagasc estimates that dairy farmers with over 240 acres of land made £65,000 last year, while farmers with similar holdings combining dairy and other systems made £55,400. On the other hand, dairy farms of under 50 acres returned an income of just over £10,000.
The tillage farmers with large holdings are estimated to have earned £50,800 last year. The poorest of the tillage farmers made less than £6,000.
During the visit of the EU Ministers to Ireland the joke doing the rounds was that Irish farmers did not fear bad weather, but a postal strike.
The Teagasc survey confirms the dark side of this joke because, overall, direct payments - what is termed "envelope farming" accounted for 48 per cent of average farm income in 1995. Direct payments made up 41 per cent of average farm income in 1994 and the estimate for 1996 is that it will exceed 50 per cent.
The beef producers who protested outside the Europe Hotel are relying on the EU to provide 82 per cent of their income, while tillage farmers receive 65 per cent of their income by post.
However, even with such massive transfers of money, many farmers are unable to continue to work the land. Government figures show a steady decline in numbers over recent years. There were 159,000 farmers working the land in 1988. The numbers dropped to 137,000 in 1993 and to 134,000 in 1994. Last year, the total had dropped again by 1,000 to 133,000.
The number of farms has declined also. In 1980, there were 223,400 holdings, but by 1991 the number had dropped to 170,600. The current estimate is about 150,000.