In early February, a young man, dressed all in navy, pushed a trolley stacked with cardboard boxes through the crowd of protesting farmers and towards the glass doors of Bord Bia’s headquarters on Pembroke Road in Dublin.
Armed with a delivery docket, he looked like one of the many couriers that the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) members had observed coming and going since they first started their demonstration against Larry Murrin continuing as the chair of the State agency’s board.
Once the young man was buzzed through both the first and second glass doors by the innocent reception staff, the farmers lunged forward and an estimated 50 people rushed in behind him. They used bales of straw to keep the automatic doors open.
What Bord Bia staff believed to be a delivery driver was in fact an IFA staffer who had dressed up as part of a plot to get demonstrators inside for a “sit in” demonstration.
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The initial group of 50 depleted to what became known as “the Bord Bia Five” – a small group of IFA demonstrators who occupied the building for 28 days.
It effectively shut down the agri-food investment hub for weeks; multiple meetings with international investors were either cancelled or held off-site.
This week, the five were hailed as heroes by farming colleagues when the demonstration was finally suspended – not ended, the IFA points out – after Bord Bia agreed to an independent review of its operations.
The IFA still wants Murrin’s resignation, and barnstorming, packed out, highly emotional meetings across the country have heard capillary-bursting roars for the same from their members. The IFA’s deputy president, Alice Doyle, told a rally: “We are at war; we are soldiers.”
But the IFA may be using the rhetoric of the victors in a war it has long ago lost. This saga has little hope of ending Larry Murrin’s tenure at Bord Bia, and every chance of demolishing what had been one of the most powerful political reigns of any lobby group in the history of the State.
In a heated controversy that started over minuscule volumes of Brazilian imports, the only beef of any significance is that between the Government and the IFA.
“They wouldn’t want to be asking for anything anytime soon,” one Minister said.
The IFA always enjoyed special treatment and special access: private meetings with successive taoisigh and tánaistí, and with the finance minister in advance of the Budget. Governments will always engage with the IFA and everyone wants the relationship to be repaired. But serious damage has been done.
“There’s a long way back for them to get to the level of access they had,” the same Minister continued.
Since the 1950s, the IFA has been the vox populi for rural Ireland and one of the most mighty lobby groups in the country. Politicians are very candid about a fear of getting on the wrong side of their local IFA. Its influence was particularly keenly felt on Simon Harris’s side of the Coalition – the IFA has traditionally been far more aligned with his party, described by some as “Fine Gael in wellies”.
Government TDs who looked up in the Dáil chamber on the night of a failed Sinn Féin motion to depose Murrin, and saw IFA members clambering into the visitor’s gallery to cheer on Mary Lou McDonald’s party, won’t forget that vivid image anytime soon (The IFA says it would have been strange if it wasn’t there).
Some of those same TDs had suffered an intensive campaign to defy their own Government on the same vote, prompting fears of wobbles at senior levels of the Coalition. One TD described how he would definitely remember the abuse he received online the next time he is dealing with the organisation.
After the protest was suspended this week, IFA president Francie Gorman was preparing to appear on RTÉ Radio 1’s Today with David McCullagh to respond live to a pre-recorded interview with Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon.
Gorman had been prepped for a forward-looking interview, expecting the Minister to be focused on the independent review of Bord Bia. Both he and his colleagues in the Irish Farm Centre in Bluebell were “gobsmacked” by what they heard.
[ MEPs allowed themselves to be sidestepped by von der Leyen on MercosurOpens in new window ]
To casual political observers, Heydon’s interview might have sounded like the mundane friction between a minister and the representative group that marks him. But to those with an ear to the ground, it was the first time in decades that anyone could remember a serving Minister being so cold to the IFA.
Heydon compared it unfavourably to other, smaller farming organisations including the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association and the Irish Natura and Hill Farmers Association who had not been as fervent in their position on Bord Bia.
This was immediately perceived by the IFA as “an obvious swipe against us” and sent a wave of scandalised gasps through the farming lobby groups.
The IFA is well known for having a strong view that it ispretty much above other farming groups, and should not have to share a table with them. One industry expert explained that they think Heydon was telling the IFA that they might not be first among equals any more.
Heydon accused the IFA of not understanding the basics of business deals. When it first emerged that less than 1 per cent of meat processed by Murrin’s Dawn Farm Foods was imported Brazilian beef, the Government’s hackles were raised.
For 25 years, “Brazilian beef” has been an incendiary term to Irish farmers and the Government was genuinely concerned that Murrin was undercutting the domestic market. But in a private, commercially sensitive briefing, Murrin made a compelling case.
Dawn Farm Foods had won a €1 billion contract from international sandwich giant Subway to supply meat across more than 40 countries, most of which was Irish meat. As is normal for a deal of that size, Subway had insisted that Murrin’s firm demonstrate it had a contingency chain available in case a rare, adverse event shut down the Irish market.
This same briefing was offered three times to the all powerful IFA council, but Gorman declined the offer. Gorman said publicly that it would only “inflame” matters. The IFA insists it handled things properly, approaching Murrin in private first.
The IFA, in its defence, points to opinion polls which showed the public wanted Murrin gone. Murrin’s account of the deal is easily, but not quickly, explained and the Government believes the IFA was deliberately whipping farmers into a frenzy that is entirely based on a perception of wrong rather than a reality.
Industry colleagues also question the wisdom of the IFA going up against Murrin, the unflappable captain of industry who has been in the agri-food business for over 40 years. As one put it, Murrin has been around “since we were boxing up offal for Gaddafi”.
Why would the IFA go out on a ledge like this?
“Hubris,” the same person said, “though some of them might think that’s a sheep drench.”
The view in Government is that the IFA was afraid of being outflanked by the smaller but more extreme Beef Plan Movement, and was bruised that it was not given top billing at a huge anti-Mercusor rally organised by Independent Ireland in Athlone earlier this year.
“[MEP] Ciaran Mullooly was living rent-free in Francie’s head,” a Government source said.
Days before that significant RTÉ interview, signage was ripped off Heydon’s constituency office in an IFA protest that targeted his base in Kildare. The IFA offered to pay for the damage, and was then annoyed when the incident was reported to An Garda Síochána by Heydon’s office.
It was around this point that the initial astonishment of Cabinet colleagues at the IFA started to calcify into something closer to anger. The Government had spent a year damaging its relations with Europe by siding with farmers on both the nitrates directive and Mercusor trade deal. They were stunned by the IFA’s ingratitude.
Gorman told a rally this week that political capital “is there to be spent”.
“Maybe we spent a good bit of it this time around, but we’ll go gathering it up again. We’ll be back in negotiating on behalf of farmers, stronger than ever.”
Capital can be spent for sure, but should it be exhausted?
