Ministers must end uncertainty over rules

FOR Irish agriculture and the men and women who work the land, European Community membership, when it arrived in 1973, was a Godsend.

For a long time it looked as if agriculture could go only one way and that was up. But the golden period for Irish agriculture has been drawing to an end for some time.

Even as we basked in it, thousands of farmers were forced to turn their backs on their heritage while the luckier ones were able to move up the scale. In reality agriculture, no more than any other sector, has been going through massive change driven by growing global competition.