MORE THAN 7,000 people from the farming community marched on the constituency offices of Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith in Cavan on Saturday in protest at recent farm sector cuts.
A small number of the protesters, who at one stage were strung out for over a mile through Cavan town, carried unofficial banners warning the Minister that failure to reverse the cuts would mean a No vote in the forthcoming Lisbon Treaty, and an effigy of the Minister hanging from a gallows was displayed.
However, Irish Farmers’ Association president Pádraig Walshe reiterated his view that farmers should vote for the treaty and he would be recommending that to the national executive of the organisation which would make the final decision. “The decisions we are protesting about today were made by the Irish Government and not by the EU and it is my belief Irish agriculture would be best served by being at the heart of Europe,” he said.
Other sources in the organisation said the banners had been handed out by a well-known Midland supporter of Libertas and had not been sanctioned by organisers.
Despite torrential rainfall, the march, led by 30 tractors, made its way from the Bailieborough Road mart site to the unoccupied Minister’s office, which was protected by a line of gardaí.
Mr Walshe told the protesters they had come to the home of the Minister to protest over his failure to stand up for farmers and defend the industry which was coping with low product prices and reduced incomes.
He said even before the “anti-rural Ireland” assault in the McCarthy report, the Minister had cut the income of 30,000 farmers by closing the Rural Environment Protection Scheme to new applicants. “The Minister knows well this country needs agriculture and agriculture needs the Rural Environment Protection Scheme (Reps) on which so many family farms depend,” he said.
Mr Walshe reserved his harshest criticism for cuts proposed in the McCarthy Bord Snip Nua report, which he said were anti-farming and anti-rural Ireland. “What Colm McCarthy has done is Dublin 4 economics. All of the people on that board are living in Dublin and there is not one of them knows how the rural economy works, how the engine of this economy keeps them all in their jobs in Dublin,” he said.
The report, he said, was barefaced in its attack on rural Ireland, closing small schools, cutting school transport and abolishing the rural transport scheme, as well as cutting services to farmers in Teagasc and An Bord Bia.
In a statement, Mr Smith said he had no option but to close the Reps scheme to new entrants as it was oversubscribed. He said a new scheme would be introduced next year which would impose fewer obligations and lower compliance costs on farmers and would aim to produce tangible environmental benefits.