Sir, – While one can understand the frustration that is being expressed by county executives, branches and members of the Irish Farmers’ Association, it is surprising that practically all of the anger is being directed at the current members of the association’s executive board, who, as far as one can judge from the outside, inherited a situation which had evolved under previous leadership going back many years before 2009, including a culture of secrecy whereby top-level remuneration was known only to an inner group of two or three.
In the light of hindsight, the other board members could have been less trusting and more insistent on openness and transparency. Instead, they evidently concentrated on their organisational roles as regional chairmen, and so on, on the reasonable assumption that higher-level corporate responsibilities were being duly fulfilled. In the current blame game, little recognition is being given to the fact that the two members of the incoming 2014 executive board who had a role in remuneration levels did actually move to deal with the issue but were frustrated in their efforts.
Calls for further immediate resignations are misplaced and ill-advised. Perhaps the easiest course for current executive board members, from their personal perspective, would be to forego the long hours and many miles spent on IFA work and give more time to their farms and families. However, this would leave the association rudderless, pending election of new officers, at a time when IFA needs to maintain its normal services to farmers, including the pursuit of key policy issues in the context of the upcoming general election. An alternative approach would be to revert to the pre-2005 election rules whereby national officers were elected for a two-year term, with provision for one further two-year term, if duly renominated and elected. Such elections, which would normally have taken place in November 2015 under the former rules, could now be scheduled for late spring or early summer 2016, including deferral of the election of president until that time.
In the meantime, the action already taken by the national chairman (acting president) to reinstate the National Executive Committee (involving national committee chairmen and national officers), effectively bridges the disconnect that had emerged on the policy development and advocacy side of IFA’s operations. The National Executive Committee, which had been a casualty of the 2004 Dowling review, is a more effective forum in many ways than the Executive Board that emerged from the 2004 restructuring process.
May I appeal to those IFA county executives that are training their sights on their current leadership to consider allowing a period of calm and considered discussion within the association, leading up to an orderly round of elections in a few months.
This process should include an opportunity for current office-holders to answer for their stewardship at a series of IFA regional conventions – and to present their case for their re-election to office if they decide to seek a further two-year term. – Yours, etc,
JOHN MURPHY,
(Retired IFA staff member),
Kilcolgan,
Co Galway.