INTERVIEW: The State's first woman as Minister for Agriculture is putting her stamp on teh job, writes Seán MacConnell.
The first woman in the history of the State to become Minister for Agriculture, Mary Coughlan, is determined to ensure that the true input of women in the sector is recognised by the State.
Since taking over as Minister for Agriculture and Food in September last, the Donegal-born mother-of-two has been looking at ways to right what she sees as in imbalance in the recognition of women's role.
Her first public action along that road was the appointment of Angela Kennedy as chairwoman of the Irish Food Board, one of the most prestigious posts in the sector.
"She is a very able lady and when I appointed her to the job it was a reflection on where I see where we are going in this industry," she says.
While Ms Kennedy may be a high-profile appointment, the Minister is aware of the huge input women have on farms and in farm families.
"They hold the whole thing together. They do the administration and in many cases they do a lot of physical work as well. Without them, agriculture would be a much sorrier industry," she says.
She recalls her own youth on her family's small farm in Donegal, where she used to be called on with her six siblings to make the hay and feed calves and do farm work, especially for her mother.
"You'd be bone tired after a day making hay or in the bog and all you'd want to do would be to lie down and watch television. You would not have the energy for mischief," she says.
Perhaps that hard-won knowledge of the hayfields in Donegal is why the new Minister is so supportive of small farmers, a stance which is not always to the liking of the biggest farmer organisation, the IFA.
She is already on record as saying it is her intention to have as many people as possible on the land by supporting the smaller farmer, while the IFA has said that funding must be directed toward the farms that will be able to survive into the future.
"There has to be a balance here. You are talking about a way of life and you are talking about a culture and its future. I want to preserve that but I am not foolish enough to think that people with, say, three cows can survive into the future as farmers," she says.
"I am personally supportive of small farmers and this is an important economic issue, but I think that I have struck a fair balance in, for instance, the way I dealt with the milk distribution which went to those who could expand and did not penalise those who could continue in production," she says.
The Minister is not unaware of the shockwaves her appointment sent through the oldest and mostly male-orientated Department in Government and through the farm organisations which are bastions of all that is male.
However, she dismisses any suggestion that she has met hindrance of any kind, particularly in the Department of Agriculture in Kildare Street, where she made it her business to visit every nook and cranny and meet every member of staff within days of her appointment.
That walkabout and the fact that she ate in the canteen with staff has created a new relaxed atmosphere in the Department and has won her many admirers, especially among the female members of staff.
Her informality, natural good humour and lack of fuss conceals, however, a sharp brain which has seen her, now aged 40, a full Minister for a second time in her political career, after a spell as a minister of state.
Previously she was Minister for Social and Family Affairs and Minister of State at the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, where she developed her love of the Irish language, which was not her first tongue.
She was very surprised at the difference between the two jobs in terms of the amount of energy needed to manage the Agriculture brief.
"I am endlessly travelling, not just inside the country but abroad as well, and unlike Social and Family Affairs, Agriculture seems to be evolving all the time and there are changes on a weekly and sometimes daily basis," she says.
This, she says, makes it difficult to have a normal family life with her husband, David Charlton, and their two children. "I have great support and without it, I could not do the job. The family have a photograph of me and that is all they have sometimes," she laughed.
Just back from a week-long promotion in China, the Minister is aware that her travelling days are just beginning, with World Trade Talks looming and negotiations to be held in Brussels on the nitrates issue and on our sugar production as the implementation of CAP reforms continue.
Asked if she thinks the farm organisations were wrong to opt for a single payment detached from production under EU decoupling, the Minister says there was very little option open to them.
"It appears that we are being pushed toward farming at world prices in 15 years or more and there needed to be these kind of supports paid to the industry to help farmers prepare for what is coming," she says.
The most immediate threat facing the industry, she says, relates to costs and how to keep them in line with the competition we face from outside the country and the EU.
"We need to concentrate on new technologies to help, and we need to be involved in a lot more research and development because consumers will drive the markets from here on and they will be looking for good quality and good value," she says.
In the Dáil since 1987, she says her mentor was former EU agriculture commissioner, Ray MacSharry, who had "never forgotten the small farmer".
"When you come from a constituency like mine, with small holdings on the west and big commercial farmers to the east, you have to get to know your agriculture. I have been meeting farming groups since the first time I entered politics," she says.
She has a good relationship with the Irish Farmers Association and the ICMSA and close links with the Irish Cattle and Sheepfarmers Association, which has many Donegal members.
"The farm organisations are very important and very efficient. They have their fingers on the pulse and I have worked with them for years on many issues. I welcome their input."
She says she felt there was a great opening for organic farming but an even larger one for afforestation which was moving from being a commercial venture into a farming activity.
"I think forestry is going to be very big when we get the payments agreed with Brussels. I am glad it is back here in Agriculture [from another Department] because this is its proper home," she says.
She feels that in politics she has found her home, despite the fact that she wanted to be a school teacher like her father. She ended up taking her Social Science degree at University College Dublin but before she could become a social worker like her mother, she was a full-time politician sitting in her late father's Dáil seat.
"Politics is exciting and challenging but it is never boring and I would hate to be bored. I just can't envisage doing anything else now," she says.
She has brought other changes too with her into the Department, where her Ministers of State are given important roles to play. "I was treated very well by Síle de Valera when I was a Minister of State and frankly I could not do this job properly if I did not have the full support of John Browne and Brendan Smith," she says. "There is enough work for all of us and there is an endless round of meetings and issues to see to, it never stops."
Her idea of luxury, she says, is to have an uninterrupted day walking in Donegal with her husband and the "wains" (children) and, when the weather improves, swimming in the sea.
She may be the first women to run the Department of Agriculture and Food but she is clearly not at sea there and is very much focused on the future. And perhaps even on the top job in politics?
"Go away, I never even thought of it. I'm too busy surviving in the job I have."