Vincent O’Halloran, suckler farmer, Maghera, Tulla, Co Clare

“I’d be asking them for grants, especially for younger farmers coming up. My son is 25. He’s very interested in the farm and I’m very lucky he’s interested in the farm.

“However, I’d like to see that there would be something available for him in the line of grants to help him with the different environmental projects that are coming up, especially nowadays.

“Our land is marginal, but we do enjoy it. It can be hard to make a living out of it.

“The fact that you have an off-farm income helps a lot. I find that you’re subsidising the farm with the other work.”

Peter Meere, dairy and beef farmer, Kildysart, Co Clare

“I really don’t think much about it, because it’s all promises before the election and after the election that’s the end of it. It’s gone, there’s no more done after that.

“I don’t think there’s much of a difference from one party to another. Nothing whatsoever.

“Any of them aren’t going to put anything on our pocket, as far as I can see.”

Mike Barry, beef farmer and contractor, Cappawhite, Co Tipperary

“We can’t get help, there’s not going to even be contractors there in a few years’ time because if you look at the age profile of agri-contractors in the country, no young person wants to take that up and farming is the very same way.

“The Department need to rethink all of the bureaucracy that’s within farming and halve it. Only the armchair farmer knows the schemes that they’re in, the man that’s working doesn’t.

“They have to make it an awful lot easier for young farmers to take over from their fathers. Take this inheritance [tax] and the way they are taxing young people, why would you be bother with it? They’d be better off if they sold it and let the big landlords own it.”

Noel McMahon, suckler farmer, Upperchurch, Co Tipperary

“There’s not enough of a rural voice within Government. Once you go outside the M50 you’re forgotten about. I’ll give it to them when they [politicians] come knocking on the door, and they can head off with themselves if they’re not going to do something.

“I got no ACRES payment yet this year. I got nothing and that’s the same with all the Department schemes, I haven’t a penny got from anything. I had a satellite inspection with nothing wrong, they came out from the Department and told me everything was OK.

“As late as a fortnight ago, I got a text saying that my payments were being held up that it hadn’t gone through the system. They have a disaster of an IT system – it doesn’t work but it’s working in their favour.

“If I owed them €10,000, they’d charge me interest on it, whereas if they owed me something they’d leave me hanging.

“Christmas is coming and we could all do with a few pound. I worked in a job for long enough and in unions and if you were owed money there’d be a strike, but we can’t do that.”

Bernard Donoghue, suckler farmer, Kilmore, Co Roscommon

“There is a lot of talk about sustainability but the issue that is most concerning for me is the sustainability of the farmer.

“I want politicians to look at the cost structure, the interest rates, the price of fuel, fertiliser, costs outside the farm gate.

“We can do the best we can as farmers but the Government needs to do more to make farming viable.

“A lot of farmers in this part of the world, the west of Ireland, are retiring and the younger generation aren’t taking up that role.

“If we continue the way we are going, we will have no farmers left and that would be a huge failure on the part of the Government.”

Padraig Flanagan, suckler farmer, Elphin, Co Roscommon

“Probably the biggest issue on the farm at the moment is farming to dates and so much paperwork. It is all about dates and even if the weather is good, you can’t spread slurry after a certain date.

“You should farm to the weather that suits you, especially on heavy ground like around Elphin here.

“I will be asking politicians when they come to my door to do something to bring back suckler cow numbers and to increase them again.

“They have fallen too much and the suckler cows are nearly gone out of the west of Ireland.

“All the good Charolais cattle around the area are disappearing because people are cutting down and cutting down.”