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.