Farmers who took over a meeting of the Cereals Association of Ireland at the Green Isle Hotel yesterday were accused of intimidating some of those taking part in the gathering, writes Sean MacConnell, Agriculture Correspondent
The charge came from Mr Seamus Funge, secretary of the Cereals Association of Ireland. The association's pre-harvest forum was literally hijacked by 150 angry grain-growing members of the Irish Farmers' Association.
They were protesting over the falling prices they are receiving for their grain and over the import of grain to Ireland which they claimed was forcing down the price by €20 per tonne this harvest.
Led by IFA president Mr John Dillon, the farmers took over the running of the meeting which takes place annually to determine the extent of the harvest by assessing contributions from representatives from Teagasc, the Department of Agriculture, the millers, the compounders and the farm organisations themselves.
Mr Funge said: "The whole thing was very upsetting and people felt they were being intimidated. It was an unwarranted intrusion.
"This forum has nothing to do with the setting of grain prices but a round-the-table discussion about the harvest. If the IFA want to meet the Cereals Association of Ireland or the Irish Grain and Feed Association, all they had to do was ask. And anyhow, they had their own representative at the forum," he said.
The farmers, who crowded into the small room carrying placards, kept demanding that the importers of cheap grain identify themselves.
They asked the chairman of the forum, Mr Phillip Jones, to explain why they were being forced to take lower prices.
Mr Paddy Harrington, the official IFA representative at the forum, said the millers, compounders and importers were trying to put farmers out of business.
He said there would be no grain-growers left in the country in 10 years if the current pricing levels continued.
Mr Dillon accused two Irish companies of conspiring with some of the major feed compounders to force down the price of native Irish grain, and accused them of importing 500,000 tonnes of grain in the past year.
Other farmers taking part in the sometimes noisy protest accused the importers and compounders of importing grain from outside Europe where there was no traceability.
The compounders were accused of bringing BSE to the Irish herd by including infected meat and bonemeal into cattle feed.
There was criticism, too, for Teagasc, which Mr Dillon described as "an arm of Government", for failing to recommend Irish grain for animal feed earlier this year.
The IFA delegation left when a further meeting of the interested groups was arranged for later this week.
The forum concluded that, despite the bad weather this summer, the grain harvest would be just over two million tonnes because there were increased plantings of 298,000 hectares this year.