FMD Walsh's finest hour
Political skills kept the west Cork man at the seat of power in the farming and food industries for 17 years, including his 1987 to 1992 stint as Minister for Food.
But a good political show cuts little ice with adversaries such as Aphthovirus, which causes foot and mouth, or the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy prion.
Nevertheless, keeping the dreaded FMD at bay in Ireland is seen by many as Walsh's major achievement.
And the success of his anti-BSE policy has been internationally recognised.
While foot and mouth hit the UK economy for up to €15 billion, the impact in Ireland may have been as little as €200 million.
If Ireland's efforts, led by Walsh, to halt the disease in 2001 had not been successful, it could have cost the economy €5.6 billion, including job losses of up to 12,000.
Although seen as a somewhat laid-back politician, Walsh revealed ruthlessness against Foot and Mouth and BSE, particularly with his whole-herd slaughter policies which have hit hundreds of farms in Ireland.
But it worked against foot and mouth, and it has minimised the impact of BSE, which is described by Professor Patrick Cunningham of TCD as the single biggest peacetime crisis to hit European farming.
He estimated that BSE has devalued beef carcases in Europe by about 10%, due to the loss of profits from offal, increased slaughter costs, and meat and bone meal costs.
It hit hardest in the UK, where cattle farmers now get only half the price they got in the 1980s. In Ireland, where beef is the biggest part of the agri-food sector, it has knocked only 25% off the price, according to Cunningham's assessment.
In his retirement announcement statement of the weekend, Walsh didn't even mention the two major livestock disease threats in Ireland during his Ministry.
Instead, he laid the emphasis on the recent WTO Framework Agreement, the CAP Mid Term Review and his decision to introduce full decoupling of support payments to farmers in Ireland.
Farmers and food processors will probably agree that the World Trade Organisation has been the biggest influence in the Walsh era.
Europe's huge surplus production of milk, grain and beef, which emerged around 1980, led to world trading partners demanding controls to protect world markets.
The milk quota was the first response, but it was 1992, Walsh's first year as Minister for Agriculture, before Europe really knuckled down to introducing quotas and reducing EU price support, and compensating farmers with the cheque-in-the-post.
A ceiling was imposed in farm production, but quotas and the accompanying deluge of form filling left a sour taste in the mouths of Irish farmers, used to operating independently and aiming for maximum production.
Up to €1.6 billion per year from Brussels helped the medicine to go down, disseminated by Walsh's modernised Department, rated one of the most efficient in the EU at getting payments to farmers.
But it is world trade agreements, starting with the GATT Uruguay round in 1993, that will have a longer term impact in the Irish farming and food sector.
And with 147 countries involved in the World Trade Organisation, one Irish Minister is relatively powerless to stop the free trade trend.
More and more food exports find their way into Europe; in the three years to 2002, there was a 35% rise in imports of beef, mostly produced at one third of EU costs. During the Walsh era, Irish and other European farmers have moved from the protected EU market of the 1980s into ever rising exposure to the world market.
That is the major cloud on the horizon for people in the agri-food sector, as they reflect on Joe Walsh's ministerial performance and on the challenge facing his successor.
For farmers, they will wonder if they should have done better than the 4% increase in income they achieved since 1995 (all the more impressive because Irish cattle prices peaked that year). Of the EU 10, there were big income cuts for the Danes (20%), Dutch (19%) and British (16%). But the Belgians, Spaniards, French and Italians achieved gains of 8 to 15%.
As for the food industry here, they presented an upbeat picture to Enterprise Ireland recently of an internationally recognised leading food producing country, a source of high-quality base ingredients from a 'green', unspoiled countryside, where the best food companies have out-performed other native Irish industry sectors, with a number of them becoming global leaders in niche or specialist markets.
Minister Walsh will be pleased with that legacy, but perhaps not with the food industry's "more to be done" list, which calls for a single food industry development agency with clear objectives and aggressive national targets - a step beyond Bord Bia, which Walsh established in 1994, marketing Irish food and drink throughout the world under the "Ireland-the Food Island" banner.
The industry also wants competition law to enable scaling up of our processors; Walsh had rationalisation of the beef industry ready to roll, but reckoned without the Competition Authority initiating High Court proceedings against the Beef Industry Development Society's restructuring plans.
Food industry leaders also said long-term leasing and partnership arrangements are needed to help farmers catch up with the larger acreages and milk quotas of their counterparts in competing EU countries.
Progress in these areas has been painfully slow in Ireland; like milk quotas, they have been left largely up to farmers themselves, when greater Government intervention at an early stage could have left the most progressive farmers better placed by now.
Nevertheless, Walsh oversaw the strongest ever growth in Irish farming productivity, as the agricultural workforce declined by 17.5% in nine years, from 1991 to 2000.
And too much tinkering with farming livelihoods was inadvisable during the 1990s economic boom, when jobs in industry increased by 53.4% and in service employment by 78%, pulling people out of farming.
Maybe Walsh has gambled on his final throw of the dice, decoupling, to free up the farming sector and allow greater efficiency.
Now, he can sit back and watch the progress of decoupling, the biggest and most unpredictable experiment ever in EU farming, which ensures that Walsh's mark is left on the sector for decades.
