When thousands of farmers take to the streets as they did last Wednesday, clearly there is a crisis in farming. Farm leaders harangued the crowd and openly threatened the Government if they did not get more aid. Political blackmail for more money is a standard tactic of the farming lobby, and it works.
Time and time again successive governments have crumbled in the face of the biggest lobby group anywhere in Europe and I expect they will do so again. The farmers demand our understanding at this time, but would it not be more beneficial if we all understood how they arrived at this particular point?
Since we joined the EU in 1973, about £20 billion in European funds have been pumped into Irish agriculture. That accounts for at least £2 out of every £3 given to Ireland.
With such vast amounts of money given, clearly money is not the problem. So where did this money go? Eighty per cent of all that money went to the top 20 per cent of farmers, leaving the rest to the ordinary family farmer. So last Wednesday we witnessed the greatest con-job in Irish political history, with the ranchers - those who have creamed off the billions - leading the ordinary farmers by the nose through our capital city and demanding more of the same.
I say: Shame on you.
The principles of fairness and equality - concepts obviously alien to the big farmer and indeed not mentioned at the rally - are now well past the day to be put into practice. They will no longer suffice. Time has moved on and the harsh reality is that, with increased mechanisation and modern farming methods, fewer farmers will produce all the food we can eat or export.
The present method of producing food nobody wants, storing it until it rots, then quietly dumping it, cannot continue.
Then of course, there is Plan B: regionalisation. Regions like Dublin, Cork and Limerick, which have large unemployment black spots and real levels of poverty, are to be cut adrift from European funding, with the PAYE sector picking up the shortfall.
This is totally unacceptable. It is time to face reality. Ireland is evolving into an industrialised society. The Common Agriculture Policy must be abandoned and all of the funds should be directed to creating the infrastructure in rural areas to absorb the flight from the land and keep people in the countryside.
Farmers should recognise that you may bully and blackmail Irish politicians but the EU will some day pull the plug on you. There is an alternative to throwing large sums of money at big, rich and greedy farmers, but that means that the ordinary, family farmer plans for change now and is not buried by it later. - Yours, etc., Ald John Gilligan,
City Hall, Limerick.