The IFA elections fired into life in Carrick-on-Shannon on Wednesday night, with anger injecting real energy into the room. Presidential candidates Tim Cullinan, John Coughlan and Angus Woods were challenged across a range of issues.

'Lack of ambition'

Leitrim farmer Maureen Murray, a well-known IFA activist of long standing, castigated the candidates for their "lack of ambition".

"60% of Aughavas is owned by vulture funds and foreign companies," she said. She was one of many to trace the problems in both farming and IFA in the region to "the CAP that was got in 2014" - the Ciolos reforms.

Kevin Comiskey suggested that the BEAM scheme should be adjusted so that any farmer stocked below 85kg/ha be exempt from the requirement to reduce stock numbers by 5%.

Tim Cullinan had described the BEAM cut as "a sneaky trick". John Coughlan suggested the unused €23m from BEAM could be used as a double-up payment for smaller suckler farmers. Angus Woods said the battle to use the full €100m BEAM allocation was still ongoing.

Exclusion

Comiskey also described the exclusion of farmers with off-farm income from the TB hardship grant as discrimination. "Farmers here can't afford to be full-time; this is discrimination against small farmers," he said.

JP Cowley, the recent Sligo chair, added: "You'd better keep the photos you like to use of the fine suckler herds up here, because unless something changes, they soon won't be here."

Louis Martin called for the next CAP to contain three things - listen to the podcast to find out what they were.

Listen to "Three things the next CAP should have" on Spreaker.

The three presidential candidates showed plenty of bite themselves. When asked if they had attended the pickets, Tim Cullinan said that he had.

"I went as an individual to support my neighbours, my friends. I question the IFA's stance during the protests, there was no leadership at the gates."

Angus Woods took issue with that stance. "I'm the livestock chair, and I'm that seven days a week. I can't just stop being livestock chair and go to the protests, it doesn't work that way."

Splitting committees

Woods also took issue with a Tim Cullinan proposal to have two committees for cattle farmers, one for sucklers and one for finishers.

"You talk about uniting farmers on the one hand and then about dividing committees. The livestock committee is 100% united, suckler farmers and finishers."

Cullinan also stated that Irish cattle prices have fallen way behind. "There's €165/head between Irish and European bull prices. Irish steers are now €160/head behind the UK price."

While Woods accepted those figures, he pointed out the lack of differential back in the summer when the protests started. "Now we have a backlog of cattle, and weanling prices have suffered," he said.

John Coughlan didn't shy away from taking on those in the room most critical of IFA.

Accused of being disconnected from farmers in the west, Coughlan, from Buttevant, said: "I've been dealing with farmers from the west my whole life, buying weanlings and sheep from them."

Coughlan believes that there's no use in looking to introduce new schemes from existing funds. "We need a new environmental fund for European farming, that's the only way we can have a meaningful environmental scheme without cutting existing payments and schemes."

Forestry

Forestry, inevitably, featured strongly. It's a major issue in Leitrim in particular.

Sean McLoughlin, of Save Leitrim, praised James Gallagher, the recent Letirim IFA chair, for championing the cause in Dublin.

It led to a survey being carried out by the Department, but this fell short for McLoughlin.