Taking a sheep shot

The Last Straw: God knows we're used to being misrepresented in the British media. Even so, I can't let the Financial Times away with a claim it made last weekend - in the course of an otherwise glowing travel feature about Ireland - that this country "boasts more sheep than people".

This is an old smear, of course, and the writer probably just repeated it unthinkingly; but that's no excuse.

Firstly, nobody I know has ever boasted about us having more sheep than people. To the best of my knowledge, they don't even boast about it on the Cooley Peninsula, where they have been known to exaggerate the extent of the local sheep population. If anything, the whole issue has been a source of embarrassment for Irish people, and a feeling that we had not achieved our potential as a nation. It's true that you can still buy postcards here with pictures of sheep blocking a road, accompanied by the caption "rush-hour in Ireland". But a sense of shame never held back the postcard industry.

Secondly, the claimed imbalance may not even exist any more. The most reliable indicator of sheep density in Ireland is the ewe premium scheme, which showed that last year, the Republic's ewe numbers fell to 3.89 million, part of a long-term downward trend (there were 5.3 million in 1993). By contrast, in 2002, the number of people rose to 3.92 million (up from 3.5 million in 1991). So within the past two years, Ireland's human population has outstripped ewe numbers for the first time in recent history - and without the encouragement of EU subsidies! You didn't read about that in the British media.

No doubt the FT's number-crunchers will argue that I'm ignoring the question of lambs which, calculated at the average of 1.5 per ewe, pushes the ovine population much higher. While they're at it, they could also point to a prediction by Teagasc, in its dense but gripping paper "The Situation and Outlook for Sheep 2003-2004", of a small increase in ewe numbers this year.

But as to the first point, I would say that the life of a lamb is so transient - gambolling on a field in Wicklow one month, dinner in Paris the next - that it has no place in this debate. As to the second point, I suggest that the imminent "decoupling" of direct payments under CAP reform will bring a further dramatic drop in ewe numbers. As you probably know, decoupling is part of the EU's campaign to crack down on food production by farmers, and means that in future sheep subsidies will not be conditional on the possession of actual sheep. In the meantime, the example provided by Cooley in 2001 suggests that even existing ewe numbers must be treated with scepticism. You may recall that, during the foot-and-mouth cull, farmers there were discovered to have claimed for a total of 6,625 fictional ewes (which then had to be fictionally killed, and buried in the "Tomb of the Unknown Sheep"). Anecdotal evidence suggests that, in border areas generally, ewe numbers have been swelled by ovine tourism, arising either from (a) organised fraud or (b) an enlightened animal welfare scheme offering short-term respite for sheep from strife-torn Northern communities.

All I'm saying is that the sheep/people ratio is a complex issue. The least the Financial Times might do is acknowledge the excellent work that has been done here to redress the historic imbalance, instead of just reinforcing stereotypes about poor Paddy. It's a wonder they didn't mention pigs in the parlour while they were at it. But maybe I'm too sensitive.

Incidentally, the same article described Ireland as - wait for it - "The Land of a Thousand Welcomes"! Now, here is a subject that we certainly do boast about. And although you'd expect the FT to adopt a hard-headed attitude to the claims of marketing bodies, the fact that its estimate of Irish welcomes comes in at a whopping 99,000 fewer than the number traditionally promised by Bord Fáilte and Tourism Ireland is worrying.

We can only hope they were being sarcastic. But I know the hospitality sector has been stretched for staff in recent times, and the population at large is too pressurised (especially now that it's no longer outnumbered by sheep) to help with the welcome effort. Just as our "40 shades of green" have been reduced to about 15 by urban sprawl, farm consolidation, and increased use of fertilizer, the forces of globalisation may have caught up with the old Céad Míle Fáilte too. So even if the FT is exaggerating the shortfall, perhaps we should consider downsizing the slogan to something more realistic - say "Caoga Míle" - before the whole notion of Ireland of the Welcomes falls into disrepute.