Criticism of the Irish Farmers' Association's (IFA) communications strategy was a recurring theme at the latest presidential hustings in Fermoy on Tuesday night.

John Kingston from Carrigaline IFA said there has been “a serious problem with communication, a serious problem with unity and a serious problem with being proactive".

“We don’t have a good dialogue with the Department of Agriculture, that has been very obvious in recent months, and that is going to cost us a lot of money.”

Flor O’Gorman from Tallow and Knockanore, Waterford, said: “The only time we seem to be in the media is when there’s something wrong or we’re fighting something, there’s no positive promotion of [the] IFA or Irish farming.”

Responding, Francie Gorman said the IFA had not been proud enough in how it represents farmers “because we’re afraid of being pigeonholed as climate deniers” and added that farmers “should elect someone who can communicate good positive messages on their behalf”.

Division

On division among farmers, Gorman said Government had “used policy to divide us and when you’re divided, you’re weakened”, referring to seven organisations representing farmers.

He said the IFA should work better with other organisations, referring to a lack of communication between the IFA and ICMSA in September when the dairy organisation refused to join the IFA in boycotting a charter meeting with the Department of Agriculture.

Gorman added that the IFA was not making enough of social media and he would bring that in, for “short, snappy videos instead of long press releases that people don’t look at”.

Martin Stapleton also said the IFA needed to improved its communications.

Assumption

“All of the conversations, especially on radio and television, are negative. All of the assumption is that farmers are the bad guys. While farmers are painted as the bad guys, we’re losing,” he said, adding that "every conversation [IFA is involved in], part of it has to be how good we are”.

On being proactive, he said the IFA had not gotten to grips with nitrates derogation issue in time. Measures which could have been put in place 10 years ago and measures which should have been taken more seriously were not, he said.

With fewer farmers elected to the Dáil and the European Parliament, Stapleton said the “really important thing now is that we win by the force of our argument, with well communicated ideas, and convince the public at large that we are really good at what we do and we do it in a very sustainable way”.

Both men said they would use other elected officers and staff to help the president with communicating IFA messages.