Week-long tractor trek to capital

The Irish Farmers Association today embarks on one of the biggest farmer protests in decades, when tractors from all over the country set out on a week-long trek which will culminate with 300 of them converging in Dublin next Friday.

Their protest is over falling prices and incomes and the survival of the family farm.

Despite assurances to the contrary, the motorcade will inevitably cause disruption on the country's roads and in the towns and cities it moves through. When it eventually arrives in the capital, chaos would appear to be impossible to avoid, no matter what guarantees the IFA have given.