Scandals that rocked farming: 2009 emergency budget, horsemeat and fodder crisis

In the autumn of 2008, the country’s banking system was in deep trouble, the economy was lurching, and previously buoyant public finances were spiralling perilously downwards.

The Government’s budget for 2009 wasn’t due until December, but it brought it forward to 14 October, in an attempt to stem the bloodflow.

Farmers, like everyone else, were bracing themselves for some cuts, but no-one could have foreseen the severity of those cuts.

It was hard to say what came as the biggest shock. Perhaps it was the scrapping of the Farm Retirement Scheme and Installation Aid for new entrants to farming.

Forgotten farmers

For those of you who wonder where the term ‘forgotten farmers’ comes from, it’s the cohort of young people who were locked out of this significant payment in 2008, and who were too old to avail of its successor when the CAP reform of six years later addressed the void left behind.

As for the highly successful Farm Retirement Scheme, it has never been replaced, although the new Programme for Government about to be announced may address that deficit.

Or perhaps the biggest shock was the cuts in Disadvantaged Areas Scheme. There was furious anger at the idea that the most socially and economically disadvantaged farmers would have a cut to this relatively low payment.

The maximum area farmers could apply for fell from 45 to 34ha. A farmer on mountain land (the most severely disadvantaged of this land) saw their payment fall from a maximum €4,400 to €3,400.

Then there was the Farm Waste Management Scheme. Farmers had been approved for payment, had spent the money on new facilities, which were primarily to comply with post-Nitrates Directive environmental requirements, but now would have to wait for their money.

In the event, a system of interim payments was introduced to cover the interest payments farmers would have to make while waiting for the supports they signed up to.

It was quite an elegant solution, but many farmers experienced huge stress, financial and personal, over the delays.

The suckler cow payment, introduced in the previous year’s budget, promised €80/cow for five years. That was now slashed to €40/cow.

The Farm Improvement Scheme, which had a waiting list of 5,000 applicants, was not to receive any further funding for the foreseeable future.

Fallen animal supports were halved from €28m to €14m, which saw collection costs nearly double in the subsequent months.

Like all other taxpayers, farmers also suffered the introduction of the Universal Social Charge. A short-term measure, we were told, but it’s still in place today.

It wasn’t the end of the pain. The following April, a second, supplementary budget was announced.

And then in July, a further blow, as the Rural Environmental Protection Scheme (REPS) was scrapped too. Nothing, AEOS, GLAS or ACRES, has replaced REPS in farmers’ affections.

It’s fair to say that the impact of the 2009 budgets are still being felt on Irish farms.

On 17 January 2013, the Irish Farmers Journal front page contained the shocking news that both horse and pig DNA had been found in samples of burgers tested by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI). Ten million burgers had been recalled as a result.

This was a hammer blow to a country that was exporting 90% of our beef output.

Worse still, two of the plants involved, Silvercrest Foods and Dalepak Hambleton in the UK, were owned by Larry Goodman’s ABP Group, Ireland’s largest beef processor, the other processor involved being Liffey Meats.

The FSAI stressed that there was no public health threat from the contamination. However, Jewish people are prohibited from eating horsemeat, and both Jews and Muslims are precluded from eating pork products of any kind, so the prospect of severe reputational damage caused by such a consequential breach of standards was real.

Within a week, Silvercrest had lost it’s Burger King contract, which reportedly accounted for half the plant’s output.

Tesco also severed its connections with Silvercrest, although it continued to maintain a trading relationship with other, non-implicated parts of the Goodman processing empire.

It was highlighted that Ireland was practically unique in routinely DNA testing beef products to ensure purity.

Other EU countries, where horsmeat is quite common, seemed to be quite sanguine, while Ireland’s FSAI reported only 89 calls to the hotline it ran for the public.

As testing occurred of product from other countries, recalls of product that were not labeled as containing horsemeat widened.

Frozen hamburger sales halved, as shoppers gave their verdict on the whole affair.

Weather is never far from farmers’ minds. In the two-dozen years of the 21st century, we have had the big freeze-out of 2009-10, when temperatures reached lows of -17°C, not seen since Victorian times.

There was the prolonged snow of the following winter. We had the ‘beast from the east’ in February 2018, followed by a hot summer and a drought.

There were the awful springs of the last two years, with equally challenging harvests.

There were the intense rains and flooding of November 2009, which washed roads away. Storm Ali saw the Wednesday at the Ploughing Championships cancelled in 2018.

But perhaps the most challenging weather event of all was the bleak winter and spring of 2013. Farmers began the winter with little by way of buffer feed, after a very ordinary summer in 2012, and early housing.

An early spring was needed, but it never came. Farmers were being advised to ration forage, supplementing with concentrates by February.

Imports of feed began by St Patricks Day, with lorryloads from the UK, France and Spain.

Distribution

Co-ops, marts and the IFA were handed the role of co-ordinating distribution of feed.

Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney put a helpline in place for distressed farmers who had little or nothing to feed their animals with, and created a €1m fund to assist fodder transportation.

That fund was doubled, with over 40,000t of hay and silage distributed by June. It was almost midsummer’s day before stock finally were let out in Leitrim, the worst affected area.

Our weather continues to be challenging for farmers, with 2023 both the wettest and the warmest on record.

On Wednesday 18 November 2015, former IFA deputy-president Derek Deane went on RTE’s Drivetime programme to repeat an allegation he had made in a letter a couple of weeks’ earlier.

He claimed that the IFA’s top executive Pat Smith was on over €400,000 a year in total remuneration – a word every farmer was about to become very familiar with.

This was twice what Taoiseach Enda Kenny was earning, Deane said. Deane had been one of four county chairmen who had brought a vote of no-confidence against Pat Smith at the previous January’s IFA annual general meeting.

Future IFA president Tim Cullinan was another, as was Francie Gorman’s 2023 presidential campaign manager Pat Hennessy. Kildare’s Pat Farrell was the fourth. That failed to gain traction, but Deane was coming for Pat Smith from a different angle now.

It worked. The following day, Pat Smith resigned. On the Friday, at an emergency executive council meeting, Deane’s assertion was confirmed.

Pat Smith had received €295,000 in pay for 2013, with a pension contribution of €150,000, and two separate bonus payments of €60,000 and €30,000. This brought his overall package to €535,000.

The IFA circled the wagons, with a unanimous vote of confidence in president Eddie Downey, but events continued to overtake the association’s leadership.

The weekend brought fractious meetings around the country and blanket news coverage way beyond the agri-press.

On Monday evening, Eddie Downey stepped back from his role to allow an external investigation be conducted by Con Lucey. Downey’s remuneration was revealed by RTÉ to have been €147,000 a year. The IFA held a further council meeting on Wednesday, 25 November.

During a marathon 19-hour meeting, it emerged that a €2m exit package had been agreed with Pat Smith. Downey resigned.

Tim O’Leary, acting-president, said the IFA would contest Smith’s redundancy. Pat Smith countered,offering to donate half the €2m (his lump sum) to charity.

The IFA responded with a statement which was irreconcilable with the previous statement which said that Pat Smith had resigned.

The four regional chairs stood down, and with deputy president Tim O’Leary seeking the presidency, Jer Bergin, ironically the national treasurer, stepped in as an interim chairman.

In the event, both Tim O’Leary and Derek Deane fell a single nomination short of the six needed to contest the presidency. Joe Healy was elected as the new president in April 2016, following a marathon and very turbulent campaign.

Pat Smith took two separate legal proceedings against the IFA; one for breach of contract and one for defamation. In February 2018, the IFA agreed to pay Pat Smith €1.9m in an out of court settlement.