Candidates look to secure Cork votes on night one of IFA presidential election hustings
Francie Gorman is a suckler beef and sheep farmer on 130 acres in Ballinakill and is married to Kay, with whom he has a son, Tom.
He is the current South Leinster regional chairman.
Mr Gorman told the meeting that his first IFA meeting “left a lasting impact” on him.
“I listened to people talking about the efforts farmers made in 1966 when they marched to Dublin,” he said.
Those people “fought for the representation and the right to advocate on the behalf of farmers that we have today”.
“They went to war and they won because they were determined and they believed in the motto of unity, strength, and delivery,” Mr Gorman told the crowd at the Castle Hotel in Macroom.
He has had 25 years of involvement in the IFA, as country secretary, farm business rep, county chair, and his current position with South Leinster.
“I know IFA inside out and I’m acutely aware of all the issues that affect farmers in all sectors,” Mr Gorman said.
“It’s my ambition as president of IFA to ensure that we deliver on farm incomes for not just our own families but for our neighbours and friends in all sectors.”
Mr Gorman said that if elected, he is aiming to “rebuild and strengthen the reputation of IFA as an organisation that influences policymaking, respects and responds to the concerns of all members, and most importantly, delivers for farmers’ income”.
“Working together, I believe we will establish IFA as a powerful voice for farmers who want something more. As an organisation, we do need to change, and we do need to do things differently,” he said.
“It has come across my desk time and time again: our ability to communicate both within our organisation and outside is a key issue.
“This is essential in order to have clarity, and agreement on issues of the day, and it’s also essential for us to effectively communicate our message to the powers that be at the highest level and drive a hard bargain on behalf of farmers.”
He said if elected, he would bring forward a new communications plan to the association.
As president, Mr Gorman said he would fight to “not allow policies that negatively impact on farm income to be bulldozed down on top of farmers”.
“Farm income is the key challenge, too many farmers are struggling financially,” he said.
“Recent policy changes that have a devastating effect on farm income – the nitrates derogation – have to be challenged and no policy should be put in place that negatively impacts on farm income.”
He said farmers “must rally against the persistent and sometimes unfair criticism” they face, and that they “have to be rewarded for the environmental ambition that they’re expected to deliver”.
“I’m proposing that we have a new environmental scheme with a payment of €15,000 open to all farmers, including organic farmers,” Mr Gorman said.
Along with supports for the beef sector needed, Mr Gorman said that if sheep farmers are not supported, “we will no longer have a national flock”.
Mr Gorman said that there needs to be more involvement of young people in the IFA, and particularly women, with action needed to increase their participation.
Martin Stapleton is farming around 160 dairy cows on his enterprise in Oola, Co Limerick.
He is married to Siobhan and the couple has three teenage children.
He is the current national treasurer and returning officer of the IFA, and previously held the role of farm business committee chairman.
Mr Stapleton told the meeting that he is “building my campaign on four pillars that will guide me and influence every decision I make”.
These are “respect for farmers, unity, freedom to farm, and protecting incomes and supports”.
“Across the board, I have heard farmers have lost their sense that they’re respected for all that they do. That’s a pity and it’s because I think primarily of the constant negativity we get because of the environmental issue,” he said.
“My first commitment is to change that.”
On unity, “all too often I hear people talking about what divides us, divisions between the sectors, divisions between the different areas in the country or the different scales”.
He said farmers must be united, as in unity “we’re strong, and when we’re strong, we deliver”.
On the freedom to farm, “we as farmers are entitled to choose how we want to farm, whatever sector we want to get involved in or the level of intensity”.
The IFA must “make sure we always get a fair return from the market”, according to Mr Stapleton.
And if farmers are “going to deliver all that we’re going to be asked to do in the coming years, clearly we’re going to need more supports from the EU”.
“We’re also going to have to look at rebalancing some of the supports we already have to focus those supports away from a flat rate payment, towards the vulnerable areas, the vulnerable sectors, producing quality food with environmental ambition,” he said.
With Budget 2024 next week, Mr Stapleton said that in order for there to be delivery for farmers, there must be prioritisation of issues.
“I could ask for 20 different things but I know to prioritise four things tonight,” he said.
His four priorities are: relief for the people affected by the residential zoned land tax; relief for the people affected by ash dieback; and support for both grain farmers and sheep farmers.
Mr Stapleton also outlined late farm payments; the nitrates derogation cut; and the need for diversity of people in the IFA as being key issues for him.
“It’s hugely important that IFA plays its part in being part of the community and assisting the development of our communities. As IFA, we need to participate not just in the farming life but in the community life as well,” he said.
“My motto in this campaign is going to be ‘no false promises’, just hard work and honesty to get us through.”
The presidential candidates took a number of questions from the floor, with farmers raising concerns around the future of the suckler sector and hill sheep farming, declining milk prices, high input prices, the live export of calves, and supports needed for farmers living in very remote areas such as peninsulas facing higher costs to access markets, and to combat population decline.
The deputy presidential election hustings also began in Macroom on Monday night.
There are two candidates contesting the deputy presidency - Alice Doyle from Co Wexford and Pat Murphy from Co Galway.
Ms Doyle is the current IFA farm family committee chairwoman.
She works on the family beef and tillage farm with her husband Tom, in Gorey. They have three grown-up children who now work off-farm.
She “worked off-farm for a good part of my life”, before farming full-time in recent years.
“I come with a lot of different skills and different background to any other candidate that has ever stood for this position,” according to Ms Doyle.
“I am a farmer’s wife, I understand the many challenges that face farms.”
Ms Doyle spoke of the “excessive regulation” family farms operate under, which “is holding us all back”.
While increased regulation will be there into the future, Ms Doyle said the IFA must elect representatives that will “make sure that if we’re going to have regulation, that regulation is befitting the job and that we have an input into the formation of that regulation”.
Ms Doyle worked as a principal teacher for most of her career, she was one of the youngest principals in the country when she was appointed at the age of 22.
She has worked in four different schools in counties Carlow and Wexford, where she gained skills that she “can use now in a new setting if I was elected deputy president of IFA”.
“If elected, I would ask for two things of the president and the national council: to be given responsibility to look at the rejuvenation of branches in IFA, and to be allowed to work on communication,” she said.
Ms Doyle added: “As a wife, a mother, and a female partner on the farm, I am aware of the immense contribution women have made to farming, and I know that if I am elected, I will bring to the table the same strength and value every woman has brought to the family farm.”
A suckler and dairy farmer in Ardrahan, Pat Murphy is the current Connacht IFA chairman.
Mr Murphy told the meeting of farmers in Macroom that “the most important thing to me is family”.
He is married to Anna, and they have three children.
He is seeking farmers’ votes “to be a voice for the family farm unit, and the food that we produce”.
“The food that we produce keeps our rural communities in business, it keeps them in existence,” he told the meeting.
“I am fed up of the way that retailers are destroying our food by using it as loss-leaders, and I’m fed up of Government dismissing our food.
“I am proud of the food we produce, I do believe we can do a better job at it, selling ourselves and our food to our customers.”
Ireland’s produce is “environmentally sustainable, it’s traceable, it’s nutritious”, Mr Murphy highlighted.
Pointing to the worth of Irish food exports to the economy, Mr Murphy said that "somebody has to stand up for that, and that is my intention if I become deputy president".
He spoke of the need to “rebuild the trust that has broken down” for farmers with the Department of Agriculture, and called on the Government to bring forward “meaningful supports” for farmers.
He added that Government must support dairy farmers affected by the nitrates derogation cut to 220kg.
“As a derogation farmer myself, I was disgusted at the recent announcement to cut the derogation. That decision will have devastating effects right across the country,” he said.
