Unions react with mixed views to protest

By Mary Dundon, Political Reporter FARMERS would have received more public support for their campaign if they confined their protest to just one day in Dublin, according to a leading union official.

The gradual build-up of protest over the past week has elicited a whole gamut of reactions from the public, said IMPACT general secretary Peter McLoone: “It started with sympathy and then developed into indifference and now there is a lot of hostility towards the big protest in Dublin on Friday.”

The IMPACT general secretary said that he had mixed views about the effectiveness of the farmers’ campaign.

However, from an industrial relations point of view, the farmers should have tried to minimise disruption to the public.

“It would have been better if the farmers said they would all meet in the Garden of Remembrance and march to the Dáil and get the protest over in one swoop,” the IMPACT general secretary said.

However, the gradual build-up on the radio every day to today’s demonstration in Dublin and warnings of major disruption has done nothing to help the farmers' case, Mr McLoone believes.

“The campaign that was designed to win the hearts and minds of the people of Ireland for the farmers’ case has had the opposite effect,” the IMPACT general secretary added.

Another top union leader, SIPTU general president Des Geraghty, said that he had mixed views about the effectiveness of the farmers’ campaign.

Mr Geraghty said that the campaign made us aware of how highly subsidised the farming sector is.

“Now they want to be subsidised even more by the Irish taxpayer who is already paying a very high price for food,” the SIPTU general president added. “I have a sympathy for the food producing farmers whose income has dropped but the taxpayer should not be asked to pick up the tab.”

The misuse of statistics has not helped the farmers’ case either. Instead of stating the average farming income was 15,000 they would have been better advised to state the truth and say that a lot of these farmers enjoyed other sources of income, Mr Geraghty added.

“If farmers are looking for more taxpayers' money they will get very little support from the average industrial workers who have seen many of their colleagues lose their jobs in the past year,” the SIPTU general president said.

Asked if he thought that the farmers should have confined their protest to a one-day demonstration in Dublin, Mr Geraghty said: “This is a democracy and farmers are entitled to protest in any way they want.”