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Protesters have said that they’ll remain in Dublin until Minister Michael Creed apologises for comments he made in the Dáil yesterday.
The minister appeared to defend the remaining meat factory injunctions against farmers by explaining that death threats had been made against senior staff at C&D Foods.
He told the Dáil that the matter was not as simple as it appeared.
So this isn’t simply an issue of the Government not dealing with it
“What has compounded the difficulty in having those injunctions dealt with – and this is a matter that senior gardaí are aware of – is that senior staff in that company have had death threats against them and their partners and families have been intimidated in that local community,” the minister said.
“So this isn’t simply an issue of the Government not dealing with it.”
The minister also appeared to make reference to what had happened in the Kevin Lunney incident.
“We’ve seen what happened in other companies when senior staff were threatened,” he said.
This sparked outrage among a number of rural TDs but the minister was staunch in repeating that he and gardaí took the matter of death threats extremely seriously.
Although a number of farmers have said that they’ll remain until the minister issues an apology the Irish Farmers Journal understands that some farmers have already left the protest.
Additional reporting by Barry Cassidy.
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