TWO YEARS ON FROM JOE HEALY’S SUCCESSFUL ELECTION BID, CONOR FORREST CAUGHT UP WITH THE IFA PRESIDENT TO DISCOVER WHAT HE’S ACHIEVED IN THAT TIME.
14 EAR TO THE GROUND
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Joe Healy
t has been more than two years now since Joe Healy was elected as President of the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA). The Galway man was swept into office in April 2016 on a wave of anger at the establishment and what its members saw as its failings over pay scales. Healy promised an organisation that would be much more open and transparent to its members in the coming years and the then 49-year-old farmer, who had never held a senior position within the organisation before, managed to win just over 50 per cent of the votes from 947 IFA branches. “Busy is the first word – busy, enjoyable, challenging [and] great meeting the members,” he says when I ask how the past two years have been. When we last spoke, the newly-elected President was brimming with confidence
PHOTO: FINBARR O’ROURKE
INTERVIEW
for the road ahead, identifying steps to strengthen the organisation that included bolstering engagement with members on the ground and delivering an organisation that places transparency at the heart of its operations. So, how much progress has been made on that front? “I knew from going around to farmers during the campaign that there was a problem around transparency. The Lucey Committee under the chairmanship of Teddy Cashman was set up, we brought in outside expertise, professional advice and also involved ordinary members on the ground that didn’t hold office or position to get their views. I was elected in May [2016], that worked throughout the summer and in the autumn time we put out – we went beyond what was required legally in relation to salaries, my salary, the director-general’s salary, the key management personnel’s salary, the average salary of the next 20 executives in the organisation, and the costs of the governing body which would be the National Council. All [of] that was put out into the open,” he replies. “If the members are funding the organisation they deserved to know, and I had no problem with them knowing. We put out all that information – members felt they had an awful lot more information about the organisation. Information that they were entitled to, information that they got, and that they were happy to get and appreciate it.” For Healy, that issue of an independent member-funded organisation is key to the IFA’s success, something that was made even clearer to him at a recent COPA (European farmers’ association) meeting in Europe on the topic of fertilisers, when a farmers’ representative group from another country spoke out against his position. “They said it would cost jobs in their country, but that farmer organisation is being funded by the government in that country. And the government has a stake in the fertiliser companies in that country,” he notes. “So that definitely brought home to me the importance of farmers funding their organisation because then, without fear or favour – whether it’s the Minister, whether it’s the government, whether it’s against a co-op or a meat group – we can stand up and we’re not afraid to stand up against any of them.”
REVITALISATION
Two years ago, Healy also spoke about what farmers want from the IFA – a strong, powerful and reinvigorated organisation that would act as a clear
