The Dealer was astonished as he listened to Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin’s televised address to the party last week, as there was not a single mention of food, agri business, agriculture or farming.

Is this a question, the Dealer wondered, of the Fianna Fáil’s leader being embarrassed by the antics of his agricultural spokesman Éamon Ó Cuív?

Eamon has been on a one-man campaign to get the CAP reform deal scuttled.

However, the Dealer gets the impression that the general run of Fianna Fáil politicians are getting feedback from their farmer constituents that the CAP reform deal in Brussels and the Pillar II allocations from Dublin are much more favourable to the sector, to Irish agriculture and agri business than most people expected.

The Dealer can understand Micheál Martin and all his woes not taking on Eamon De Valera’s grandson in a public squabble, so perhaps his Ard Fheis silence was understandable.