IFA and ICMSA leadership elections
Counting of votes to elect the next IFA president will take place in the Citywest Hotel in Dublin and a result is expected tonight.
Voting in the election finished last Friday, when all 946 branches in the 29 IFA county executives had cast their ballots.
A new voting system operated in this election with weighted branch voting giving extra votes to those branches with high turnouts.
IFA national Returning Officer Séumas O’Brien said IFA members responded to the new voting system with enthusiasm and there are reports of high turnouts all over the country. There are three candidates seeking to succeed John Dillon as president: deputy president
Ruaidhri Deasy, Ulster/Nth Leinster vice-president Raymond O’Malley and national treasurer Padraig Walshe.
Regular updates of the results will appear on the IFA website www.ifa.ie. The next president, who will be the 12th in the IFA’s history, will take office at the annual general meeting on January 17.
Voting by the 87 member national council to elect the successor to Pat O’Rourke as ICMSA president will take place at Kilmurry Lodge Hotel in Limerick around midday. A result is expected in the early afternoon.
The candidates for president are the current deputy president, Jackie Cahill, dairy committee chairman Dominic Cronin and the Association’s Teagasc representative, Joe Fitzgerald.
Both the IFA and ICMSA leaders will be taking up their leadership roles at a period of unprecedented change in farming with daunting challenges facing the industry in the years ahead.
