Farming
New leadership is required if IFA want to regain a sense of credibility
COMMENT BY FRANCIS FARRAGHER
IT has been an awful week for the Irish Farmers’ Association – make no mistake about it – not for the ordinary members who pays his subs and levies, but for the ‘top dogs’ who allowed their chief executive to be paid an obscene salary amount.
No farmer needs any reminding of the hardships endured during 2013 when fodder had to be imported from the UK and the Continent and most of us struggled to pay the bills at the end of the year.
That same year, 2013, the now former General Secretary of the IFA, Pat Smith, drew a gross salary of €535,000 from the Association, paid for by subscriptions and factory levies of ordinary farmers across the length and breadth of the country.
Pat Smith, without any doubt earned himself a reputation a tough, strong-willed negotiator and strategist on behalf of the IFA. Of that there is no doubt and neither is there any issue over his integrity or honesty.
But should he, as head of the country’s largest farmers’ organisation, be allowed to move to a salary scale of €535,000 in 2013 and €445,000 in 2014, by those in charge of the IFA. The answer to that is a quite emphatic no.
Let’s for a moment break down €535,000 into more manageable amounts. Every month this equates €44,583, roughly €12,000 more than the average annual industrial wage in Ireland.
On a weekly basis, this salary stands at €10,288, more than the annual job. If you work it out on the basis of 260 working days in the year, it is the equivalent of a daily payment of over €2,000. Break down that even further into a normal working day and it’s a payment of €250 an hour.
Another little comparison is worth a look at too. President Barack Obama of the USA earns €356,000 a year; German Chancellor, Angela Merkel takes in €216,000; UK Prime Minister David Cameron is on c. €142,000 and Taoiseach Enda Kenny has an annual salary of €185,000.
So here we have the chief executive of the Irish Farmers’ Association – whose salary is funded by farmers of incomes paltry, small, medium and a small percentage large – earning almost as much as the combined total of the leaders of Germany, the UK and Ireland. How could this have been allowed to happen?
There were even some more eyebrows raised this week when it emerged that IFA President, Eddie Downey, was being paid €147,000 a year for his work (€12,250 per month or over €2,800 per week) for his role as leader of the Association.
While no one would argue for one minute that anyone in this position deserves compensation for paying someone to run his farm, while doing what is essentially a 24/7 job, many of us – possibly rather naively thought – that this figure might be the equivalent of two industrial wages, maybe around the €65,000 to €70,000 mark.
For the moment, President Eddie Downey has ‘stepped back’ from his role, to allow for a full examination of the top salaries in the IFA. It seems hardly credible that he will be able to step back again as President, as this payment outrage happened under his watch. There is no getting away from that simple fact.
In sporting parlance, Eddie Downey has ‘lost the dressingroom’. Over the coming months, he would find it very hard to walk into a meeting of ordinary farmers, look them in the eye, and ‘talk the talk’ of the everyday issues of farming. He really has to do the honourable thing and step down. Others may have to follow suit.
Since I started to write about farming many years back and to get down and dirty at the job of farming itself, I have never witnessed such raw anger, over the revelations of the past week. Farmers are livid and all the more so because this is being done by ‘their own’.
Deputy President Tim O’Leary is now the de facto leader of the IFA and he has made a decent enough start with his apology on Morning Ireland this week for what was allowed to happen over recent years in relation to pay levels. The bringing back into the fold of former Chief Economist Con Lucey, to examine the whole salary set-up, also has to be welcomed.
Within the coming days, and at most weeks, the IFA must publish ‘cent for cent’ the salaries, bonuses and expenses that are paid out. No one at the lower end of that scale has anything to fear. Everyone who works full-time for the organisation is entitled to earn a decent wage for their endeavours: people who drive to meetings all over the country are entitled to their motoring and subsistence expenses and whoever takes over as the new General Secretary needs a salary scale in line with Departmental General Secretaries, just under the €200,000 mark.
Ordinary farmers and IFA members have no problem with that. To get a suitably qualified and highly competent person for an absolute critical role in Irish farming, this has to be the salary scale we’re talking about.
But €535,000 for a year’s work, paid by ‘ordinary Pakes’ who milk their cows, lamb their ewes, pull the calves, make their silage, cut their crops and drive their Masseys, is in a word obscene. A new leaf must be turned over and new heads put in place as a first step in trying to start undoing the horrendous damage caused by the revelations of the past week. There is no other way.
GARDAÍ and the IFA have issued a joint appeal to all road users to take extra care as the silage season gets under way across the country.
Silage harvesting started in many parts of Galway last week – and over the coming month, the sight of tractors and trailers on rural roads will be getting far more frequent.
Inspector Conor Madden, who is in charge of Galway Roads Policing, told the Farming Tribune that a bit of extra care and common-sense from all road users would go a long way towards preventing serious collisions on roads this summer.
“One thing I would ask farmers and contractors to consider is to try and get more experienced drivers working for them.
“Tractors have got faster and bigger – and they are also towing heavy loads of silage – so care and experience are a great help in terms of accident prevention,” Inspector Madden told the Farming Tribune.
He said that tractor drivers should always be aware of traffic building up behind them and to pull in and let these vehicles pass, where it was safe to do so.
“By the same token, other road users should always exercise extra care; drive that bit slower; and ‘pull in’ that bit more, when meeting tractors and heavy machinery.
“We all want to see everyone enjoying a safe summer on our roads – that extra bit of care, and consideration for other roads users can make a huge difference,” said Conor Madden.
He also advised motorists and tractor drivers to be acutely aware of pedestrians and cyclists on the roads during the summer season when more people would be out walking and cycling on the roads.
The IFA has also joined in on the road safety appeal with Galway IFA Farm Family and Social Affairs Chair Teresa Roche asking all road users to exercise that extra bit of care and caution.
“We are renewing our annual appeal for motorists to be on the look out for tractors, trailers and other agricultural machinery exiting from fields and farmyards,” she said.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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MINISTER for Agriculture, Charlie McConalogue, has been asked to review a decision taken over recent weeks to exclude the sheep farming sector from the Brexit Adjustment Reserve (BAR).
East Galway Independent TD, Seán Canney, has called on the Agriculture Minister and Government to ‘revisit’ the issue of sheep farmers and the BAR fund.
Galway IFA Chair, Stephen Canavan, also said that a mistake had been made in terms of excluding the sheep sector from the BAR funding.
“I think that there is no doubt whatsoever that Brexit had a major impact in terms of New Zealand lamb exports flooding the UK market.
“The knock-on affect of that on Irish sheep farmers was a serious fall-back on lamb and hogget prices through the early months of this year.
“There are now serious concerns that the farmers who buy in store lambs through the early autumn period will just pull out of this market after getting such a scalding over the past six months or so,” said Stephen Canavan.
According to Deputy Seán Canney, all of the Regional Group of TDs are backing the move to get the Government to have another look at the use of the BAR fund for the sheep sector.
“The evidence that sheep farming was affected by Brexit is strong and the decision not to support people in this sector needs to be reversed immediately.
“Brexit negotiations began in June 2016 and caused turmoil in the sheep trade as it weakened the currency making UK lamb far more competitive.
“The notion or threat of ‘a no deal ‘ in Brexit caused the price of sheep to fluctuate repeatedly in the trade and resulted in lambs selling for an estimated €30-€50 lower per head each year during the entire Brexit process,” said Deputy Canney.
WITH the exception of Leitrim, Galway was marginally the cheapest county in the west and north-west to buy non-residential farmland during the course of 2022, according to the latest national survey of prices.
The survey showed that the average price of an acre of ‘good land’ in Galway last year, for holdings under 50-acres, was €9,500 – the dearest was Donegal at €12,143 while the cheapest was Leitrim at €6,140 an acre.
Jointly researched by Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland (SCCI) and Teagasc, the survey also indicated that only 0.5% of land in Ireland goes up for sale each year, a major factor in terms of demand for leased land.
‘Good land’ in Mayo [under 50-acres] averaged out at €10,092; the figure for Roscommon was €9,938; with Sligo coming in at €9,550.
When it came to a comparison of poorer quality land in Connacht [under 50-acres], Mayo was the cheapest at €2,886 followed by Leitrim on €3,300 while Galway topped ‘poor land price league’ at €5,375 per acre.
Auctioneer Martin O’Connor of DNG O’Connor, Oughterard, said that the market was being driven by dairy farmers ‘who are continually ranked throughout the survey as the most likely purchasers of land across the country’.
He said that changes in the European Nitrates Directive in relation to improving water quality meant that many dairy farmers needed more land to comply with this directive.
“In order to maintain current levels of milk production – and to comply with the directive – many dairy farms will need to either increase their land area or reduce milk production.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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