10 minute read
ONCE A DAY KEEPS THE FARMER AWAY
WITHOUT FEARoR FAVOUR
Joe Healy addresses the 800-strong crowd and EU Commissioner Phil Hogan at a CAP 2020 citizens dialogue.
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.
Joe Healy PHOTO: FINBARR O’ROURKE
It 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 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 directorgeneral’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
ally and lobby to improve their futures. In fairness, Healy’s IFA has been a busy organisation over the past two years, lobbying successfully on a wide variety of issues to advance the cause of Irish farmers both at home and abroad – the Earned Income Allowance that provides the self-employed (including farmers) with a tax credit of €1,150; the €150 million low-interest loan which provided cashflow support (albeit not without its criticism); a reduction in the levy on exported calves, extra places on the Rural Social Scheme and an increase in Farm Assist payments. And, alongside campaigning hard for an extra €25m in ANC payments, IFA led the charge at European level in relation to the extension of the glyphosate licence and the campaign on the minimum reduction in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).“You don’t get 100 per cent of what you want, but we’ve got positive movement on all of those issues,” Healy says. “What we’re about – it’s increasing farmers’ incomes.”
Part of that success, Healy believes, is down to a strong if at times opposing relationship with the Department of Agriculture and its Minister Michael Creed – he describes that working relationship as ‘strong’. “I [would] refer to the likes of the grain scheme, the crisis fund for the grain farmers, where we first of all got them to recognise there was a crisis; secondly we got them to put a fund in place; and thirdly when they placed a limit of €5,000 per farmer we had the sit-in and we had meetings with them and we got that up to a maximum payment of €10,500,” says Healy. “Then we had the fodder scheme as well that we highlighted last year. We had many debates and disagreements with the Department and with the Minister. But, in fairness, a fodder scheme [was put] in place and no animals died of hunger. Now, IFA might have led the way on that because we twinned counties with each other last December... and through our branch network we organised an awful lot of transport and paid for a lot of it ourselves as well up and down the country. But eventually the Department did come on board and we got a transport subsidy put in place. So I would say there’s a good working relationship there with the Minister and the Department. We’ve been through a lot over the two years together.”
Work has also been done on boosting the organisation’s branch network. That was another election promise from 2016 when Healy outlined plans to strengthen that facet of the organisation, ensuring that branch officers have the proper skills to call and run meetings and encourage their members to speak freely and openly about the issues affecting their lives – a seamless process feeding information from the ground through to the county executive and the national council. Healy explains that they have continued to roll out the Skillnet training, which provides upskilling to the IFA volunteer structure – increasing confidence in their abilities and providing information as to what exactly those roles entail and require. Correspondence has also been streamlined and made more userfriendly – for example, distilling an eight or ten-page newsletter into a one to two-page document that is more easily consumed.
Joe Healy and Livestock Chair Angus Woods lead a Mercosur protest in Dublin.
“For the people in the position, it’s important that they know what it requires,” Healy notes. “For many of our members, maybe the only one, two or three meetings they attend in the year would be the branch meeting. So it’s important that they get a good impression of the organisation and they’ll get that impression by the ability of the chairperson and the secretary – or other officers – to deliver the message across [about what] IFA is doing at regional and at national level.”
several speed bumps in the road ahead, challenges that Healy believes must be overcome to keep Irish farming on the front foot and to ensure generational renewal – young farmers coming into agriculture. As well as the everyday issues such as tractor testing or the price of livestock, milk or grain, Brexit is a constant part of the IFA’s work; Healy explains that hardly any meeting passes without some mention of Britain’s impending departure from the EU. CAP could also represent a stumbling block, with the UK set to leave a big hole in the budget for farmers’ payments and reform on the cards. CAP has its critics, with some arguing that the payments ultimately do more harm than good, but Healy is not one of them.
“I would say that CAP has been a benefit to every one of the half a billion EU consumers since its conception. If you go back to the 1960s, there was 30 per cent of the average household income being spent on food. Today, for top-quality food that’s traceable from farm to fork, produced to the highest quality standards, less than 15 per cent of your average household income [is] being spent on it. And that’s what CAP has allowed your average EU consumer to have – an adequate amount of top-quality food at affordable prices,” he argues.
Alongside climate change, Mercosur, too, is of great concern, with trade talks resuming between the two blocs in early June and some talk of a deal being reached before the end of the year. Final details have yet to be hammered out but the result
Joe Healy with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar PHOTO: FINBARR O’ROURKE could include an increase of beef imports from Mercosur countries by around 70,000 tonnes. Ireland’s beef farmers, understandably, aren’t happy.
And there are other issues that are bubbling away behind the scenes. Take the division of the consumer euro and the farmer’s share of the food chain. Healy wears another hat as Chair of the COPA Working Group on the food chain and he explains how they have worked closely with the EU Commission and MEPs to progress the EU’s Agricultural Markets Task Force report in a bid to introduce more equality into the food chain. “When you look at the consumer euro at the moment across Europe, on average the farmer gets 21c of it. The processor gets 28c and the retailers gets 51c,” says Healy. “So we want more fairness there and a more even breakdown of the final consumer’s euro. And we want more transparency in the food chain.”
Clearly there is a belief that Healy knows what he is doing – demonstrated in part at least by his re-election late last year. And there are several positive signs, including an increase in membership figures this year and strong turnout at recent events in Goffs in Co Kildare (Brexit) and Kilkenny (CAP). So what could be accomplished in another two years?
“I think my vision for two years’ time is like anyone that takes up a position – they want to leave that position and the organisation in a better place and a strong place two years later,” says Healy. “We’re at the coalface, we have meetings in Brussels all of the time, but at all times... there’s a farmer at every meeting we go to, there’s a voluntary member that represents the farmers on the ground, backed up by a staff member. That’s what I want for the organisation, that we’ll continue to be at the coalface, that we’ll continue to have a very strong influence whether it’s in Brexit, whether it’s in CAP, and that we’ll continue to fight the cause without fear or favour on behalf of farmers.”
CRUCIAL COMMITTEES
While the IFA’s branch network is important, so too are the various national committees that identify important issues within their sector and formulate policies and strategy. Their wealth of experience often proves useful. “Take our grain committee,” says Healy. “What you have on that are 29 grain farmers that are depending on tillage for a living. So when they speak about it they’re speaking from experience, they’re speaking from the enjoyment, the heartache, the challenges they get from it, but they’re speaking from the heart – because they’re speaking about a sector that they’re depending on to pay the bills and educate their kids and keep food on the table.”
