Furious farmers give away discount veg

Hundreds of farmers swarmed into supermarkets around the country, bought up the all the heavily discounted vegetables on sale and then gave them away for free to the public outside.

The farmers were protesting at the sale of vegetables such as potatoes and carrots for as low as 5-6 cent each in a number of large supermarket chains including SuperValu, Lidl, Aldi and Dunnes Stores.

The biggest gathering, involving more than 200 farmers, took place at the Dunnes Stores supermarket in St Stephen’s Green in Dublin. A spokesman for the Irish Farmers Association said the farmers loaded up all the vegetables that were on sale “at ludicrous prices”, paid for them and then went outside and distributed them to passersby. At one point gardaí were called but the event passed off peacefully.