In the right tent, at the right time
I found myself drawn this week to these lines written by William Shakespeare, while many in the political world rejoiced at the death of former Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
Go back 28 years to 1983 and you find a very different world — where every Irish cattle farmer waited on news from the meeting in Tripoli of then Taoiseach Charles Haughey with Gaddafi.
The legend is that Haughey sat in a tent for three days in the desert, and kept negotiations going so that agreement was reached, and the country that had kept us supplied with oil during the 1974 oil crisis once again became a valued trading partner. For cattle farmers. Haughey was the right man in the right place at the right time, apparently able to play hardball even with Gaddafi.
From then until the BSE crisis of 1996, upwards of £70 million worth of Irish beef made its way to Libya.
It showed again how heavily Irish farming life has depended on the men and women who play their part on our behalf on the political stage.
Another case in point came to mind, as I read Stephen Cadogan’s editorial in this paper last week.
He pointed out that EU Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos is Romanian, and — surprise, surprise — Ciolos’s proposals for reform of the CAP could see Romanian farmers doing rather well. The point of note here is that prior to the appointment of Ciolos, Ireland was asked to put forward their nominee for a commissionership, and our former Agriculture Minister Mary Coughlan (no relation!) was overlooked — for very short-sighted domestic political reasons, in my opinion. This happened at a time when the commission had floated the idea that more women at commission level might be a good thing. Granted, we did eventually send a woman, Marie Geoghegan Quinn, and she was awarded the position of commissioner for research, innovation and science. However, I believe her nomination ahead of Coughlan was an opportunity lost for the Irish farming and food industry.
It’s a bit like asking Garrett FitzGerald to go to meet Gaddafi in 1983. Of course he’d have gone, but would Gaddafi have sat in a tent for three days with him?
Coming right up to date and those much publicised proposals and negotiations on the CAP, it is very important that we get the right people to pitch our case in the coming year and a half. Minister Coveney is probably right, there will be many twists and turns before a deal is hammered out. However, I would feel better if I had an idea of exactly what our Government will be looking for. So far, all we really have are some speculative papers from Brussels on what they are looking at, and the Food Harvest 2020 report commissioned by our Department of Agriculture, which seeks to increase production across the board.
How do you marry CAP reform and Food Harvest 2020? Reintroduction of some form of production-based subsides seems the obvious answer. However, that is very much limited by world trade agreements, and there are the matters of the environment and sustainability.
In 1983, Haughey knew what he was bringing to the tent; the question is, will Minister Coveney know by 2013?
