Book recalls struggle to get market value for livestock
That was the breakthrough achieved when Ireland’s first marts were established, according to John Roche of Castleisland, Co Kerry, who played his own unique role in Irish agribusiness by chairing the meeting at which Kerry Co-op was set up.
Mr Roche was launching Recollections of the Co-op Years, a personal 240-page account by Maurice Colbert, former executive secretary of the Irish Co-operative Organisations Society (ICOS) National Marts Committee.
The book records farmers’ difficult step-by-step progress towards today’s livestock industry, through the clashes over licensing of the marts in the Neil Blaney era, political differences in the farmer committees guiding the growth of the marts, the formation of the Cork Marts-IMP group and the eventual collapse of IMP.
It also records the intricacies of securing the substantial EU grant aid which enabled modernisation of the marts, and the many splits in mart history, particularly the one which resulted in the formation of the Associated Livestock Marts Group.
The book is available in bookshops countrywide, or from the author, who can be contacted at 087 8219584 (after 7pm).
Proceeds from the book go to ALMAS and AIDS relief in Africa. At the launch by Matthew Dempsey, editor, Irish Farmer’s Journal, were John Tyrell, director general ICOS; Sean O’Sullivan, chief executive, Cork Marts Group; Dessie Boylan, former president ICOS; and 87-year-old Tom Cahill, Clare, one of the Farmers Rights campaign protestors at the Department of Agriculture in 1966. Mart managers and committee members from throughout Ireland were also present.
