Farmer fury puts Cowen road trip off course
Angry agricultural workers had a different kind of duel in mind as the Taoiseach turned up in Co Galway to open a new stretch of highway between Athlone and Ballinasloe.
About 400 farmers loudly let the Taoiseach know they hold him responsible for putting them on the road to nowhere, as Mr Cowen looked like he was stranded on the road to hell as the noisy protest at times drowned out the official ceremony.
The Irish Farmers’ Association was venting fury over cutbacks in the Rural Environmental Protection Scheme (Reps) and the Disadvantaged Area Scheme.
Rage had been building since the Cabinet moved to exclude new applicants to the fourth round of the Reps with virtually no warning. Farmers say closing entry to the scheme will devastate livelihoods in the west of Ireland and are also fuming about more cutbacks signalled in the McCarthy Bord Snip report which would see hundreds of schools, Garda stations and post offices close in rural areas.
Farmers used megaphones, booing and the banging of sticks to disrupt the Taoiseach’s address.
“It was an opportunity to give him the sense of the cuts that he is imposing on farmers in the west of Ireland,” Michael Silke, Connacht vice-president of the IFA, said.
Mr Cowen and his handlers were clearly taken by surprise by the scale and anger of the protest, but the Taoiseach did speak to some of the farmers before leaving the scene.
“People have an entitlement to protest if they so wish in a civilised and peaceful fashion. We live in a democracy,” Mr Cowen said.
He said farmers in the existing scheme will get paid and there will be an opportunity to look at a new agri-environmental scheme in the future.
Farmers have vowed to step up protests in the coming months leading to the re-running of the Lisbon treaty referendum on October 2.
The Government will be especially concerned over their hardline actions as disgruntled agricultural workers proved a key voting bloc in the defeat of the Lisbon treaty last year.
