A Co Westmeath farmer and his neighbours are being put out of business by rabbits which are eating all their grass and leaving none for their farm animals.
The rabbit population has reached crisis level at the townland of Culleen, Horseleap, Moate, Co Westmeath, where Tom Darcy is attempting to make a living.
"It has been so bad over the last few years that I have been driven out of tillage altogether because I could not grow anything green or the rabbits would destroy it. In fact all the farmers around here have been driven out of tillage because of the rabbits: they could no longer afford to compete with the rabbit population. It is also impossible to have a vegetable garden around here either because they would clean that out too," he said.
Mr Darcy said that his main problem is that most people think it's funny: they don't understand the implications.
"For instance, on the best two acres I have for grass production, the rabbits have taken over and there is no grass, only nettles and thistles. Where I should have been taking 20 wrapped bales of silage this year, there was only literally a bag full of grass."
He said experts from the Department and Teagasc had advised him that myxomatosis, which wiped out most of the Irish rabbit population in the 1950s would recur and deal with the problem.
"They get it every year but they get it in the autumn when they have already eaten all the grass and a lot of them survive it and seem to be immune. Chicken wire fencing is very expensive and so is putting up the electric fencing. They have myself and my neighbours driven mad," said Mr Darcy.
He said he had visited one field on his 57-acre farm at the weekend to find total infestation.
"The field looked as if there had been a hailstone shower there were so many white scuts in it. They are doing awful damage." It would take an army of hunters, he said, to kill all the rabbits in the area and they would never fully succeed. Poisoning had proved to be equally unsuccessful.
"I just hope there is someone out there who will be able to help and come up with a new solution to a very difficult and a very serious problem," he said.