Warm praise for Dillon and IFA

IFA and its leader John Dillon received fulsome tributes from Department of Agriculture Secretary General John Malone, when he addressed the Limerick AGM of the Association. Mr Dillon was attending one of his first public IFA functions in his home county since being involved in a serious farm accident last August.

“I admire his determination, his commitment, his total commitment to the cause of farming and also his honesty and his integrity. John calls it and tells it as it is. When he has a problem, he makes it clear, and he wants to get a solution to it.”

The structure of IFA, taking its direction from the “grass roots up”, was how any successful organisation should be run. “What I can say from first hand experience is that IFA is at least as strong, if not stronger than any equivalent organisation in Europe, and pound for pound it is the best organisation in Ireland. I have said that privately and I have said it publicly. It is professional, it is well organised, and sometimes I have been at the receiving end, but the important point to retain in mind always is that we serve a common cause, the cause of Irish agriculture.”