A convoy of tractors will invade the capital next week heralding the beginning of a series of protests by farmers who say their livelihoods are under threat.
Details of next week's Family Farm Survival Campaign, were announced by the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) president Mr John Dillon today.
He said a nationwide, week-long tractor protest beginning on Monday would see tractors leaving every county in the country culminating in over 300 tractors converging on Dublin at lunchtime on Friday for a rally outside Government Buildings.
The "tractorcade" protest will be first in a number of IFA protests in the new year, Mr Dillon warned. "The crisis in farming has undermined confidence to an alarming extent," he said.
He criticised Government policy on farms incomes, saying: "At a time when farming is already in crisis, the Government really put the boot in on farmers in both the Budget and their cuts in the 2003 Book of Estimates."
He said farmers anger at their falling income was exacerbated by "ever-increasing costs and bureaucracy", against a background of "rock-bottom" prices for their produce.
"In the past ten years over 20,000 farmers have been forced to get a job off the farm in order to provide a viable livelihood for their families."
"The Minister for Agriculture Joe Walsh is now saying to the remaining full-time farmers 'your only alternative is to follow your neighbours out of full-time farming'.
"I reject this approach and I am going to campaign to maintain the viability of full-time farming," Mr Dillon told a press conference this afternoon.