Background: Drip feed of bad news digs IFA deeper

It’s a basic tenet of corporate communications that if you’ve got bad news you get it all out in one go.

The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) has chosen instead to do it in stages, drip-feeding details of plum salaries, large pension pots and mouth-watering severance deals. Predictably, the reaction has been savage.

The president and the general secretary have departed in a hail of recrimination, the association’s reputation lies in tatters and members are threatening to cancel their subscriptions.

Right up until Wednesday’s marathon meeting of its executive council, the IFA was still labouring under the misapprehension that it had control of the situation.

It issued a press release that afternoon, announcing that its former chief economist Con Lucey would be conducting a full review of pay and pensions. Deputy president Tim O’Leary said Lucey would be supplied with “all financial information available” and promised a new era of transparency.

For the third or fourth time in a week, the IFA’s leadership was attempting to draw a line under the controversy.

However, this was merely the quiet period before things got much worse.

Severance package

First came the news that former general secretary Pat Smith had departed with a €2 million severance package, involving €1 million upfront and €100,000 annually for 10 years. It then emerged that president Eddie Downey had signed off on this deal without the consent of the deputy president and the treasurer. The IFA executive council voted to resist it and to take legal action if necessary.

This left Downey in no man’s land and his resignation came shortly afterwards. The roof in the IFA’s headquarters in Dublin had fallen in completely.

On Thursday night there came the first public statement from Smith, containing an offer to hand over half his severance pay to charity.

IFA headquarters responded by accusing him of “spin” and “cover up”. It also claimed Smith had not resigned but had been pushed, or in the IFA’s extraordinarily non-corporate speak, “fired”.

This meant the organisation had, in effect, sacked its boss for taking the salary it granted him in the first place.

The tactic was to isolate Smith. In a counteroffensive, he has dragged his predecessor, Michael Berkery, now chairman of the FBD insurance company, into the fray by claiming Berkery had been paid even more. The IFA is refusing to disclose details of Berkery’s pay.

But claims the organisation was one big gravy train stretching back decades are getting harder to dispute.

Stockholm syndrome

Why Downey put his signature to the severance deal, knowing he was signing his own death warrant, remains puzzling. One insider put it down to “Stockholm syndrome”. Downey, after all, was Smith’s man. The latter had facilitated Downey’s rise through the association for two decades, culminating in his landslide election as president in late 2013. They rose together and fell together.

While the attitude of colleagues to Downey remains sympathetic, there is no such empathy for Smith.

Perhaps this reflects the two personalities. Smith is seen as a driver, but controlling and egotistical, while Downey is painted as more amenable and relatively popular with colleagues.

In a letter read out to shell- shocked members at Wednesday’s meeting, Smith attempted to vindicate his leadership, claiming he had been instrumental in securing a better deal for Irish farmers in Europe and establishing its profitable subsidiary, IFA Telecom.

Smith, a native of Tierworker/Kilmainhamwood, near Kells in Co Meath, joined the IFA in 1989 as executive secretary of its farm business and environment committees.

Within a year the UCD graduate was promoted to director of organisation, one of the most senior roles in the IFA, responsible for running its regional network of offices and driving membership. He held that position for 19 years, during which time membership grew significantly, until he assumed the top job in 2009.

The IFA’s promised review of pay and benefits conveniently goes back only to 2009, avoiding any return to Berkery’s reign. But judging from the evidence of the past week the association will struggle to set the parameters of this controversy.

Perhaps the true measure of the damage the IFA has inflicted on itself will be the fallout at grassroots level. One county chairman said he had received 11 calls from disgruntled members cancelling their subscriptions on his drive back home from Wednesday’s meeting.

If a week is long time in politics, it’s proving an age in farming circles.