Sir, - The speech made by Mr Donnelly at the annual meeting of the Irish Farmers' Association (Farmers attack Government, unions on jobs, January 17th) was puzzling. Mr Donnelly demonstrated a rapier sharp grasp of economics by blaming high taxation on high public spending, and from here made the leap to a condemnation of high taxation as a cause of unemployment. Possibly whatever research Mr Donnelly and his organisation have carried out in this area has omitted high tax, low unemployment countries such as Sweden and Germany. Obviously the IFA are pioneering new methods of economic research and in a similar vein I look forward to the forthcoming papers from the ESRI on boll weevils in sugarbeet and the effects of regular potato spraying.
Further, the condemnation by a farming organisation of high taxation and high spending is brazen to the point of hypocrisy: almost in the same breath, Mr Donnelly condemned the drop in export refunds to farmers and the decline in intervention stocks of certain agricultural products. One might point out to the TEA and Mr Donnelly that farmers are responsible for absorbing huge, amounts of European taxpayers money in exchange for not growing crops, not producing milk and not producing beef. Farmers receive more money for keeping sheep in unsuitable areas, such as Connemara, where they cause extensive environmental damage and serve absolutely no purpose. When the IFA are so keen to condemn governmental spending under the guise of concern for the unemployed on the one hand, and demand more governmental and European money on the other, it is clear that their real agenda is the maintenance of the stranglehold that their anachronistic rural agenda has on the Irish political agenda. - Yours, etc.,
Editor, TCD Miscellany, Trinity College,
Dublin 2.