Thousands of tractors will take to Irish roads next week to mark the start of the Irish Farmers' Association's family farm survival campaign.
Announcing details of the protest yesterday, IFA president Mr John Dillon said the "tractorcade" protest, which will end on the streets of Dublin next Friday, had been called to highlight low farm incomes. "We are facing silent extinction unless we stand up and be counted. It is a case of be silent or stand up," he said.
From next Monday onwards, tractors will set off from rally points in Bantry, Tralee, Ennis, Oranmore, Ballina, Sligo, Cavan, Lifford, Castlebellingham, Wexford and Dungarvan to converge on Dublin for a protest at Government Buildings next Friday afternoon.
Accepting that the week-long tractor protest would be likely to cause traffic disruption, Mr Dillon said that was not the intention of the IFA, which did not want to alienate non-farming people.
"But we have to be able to get the message across that in the last 10 years, 22,000 farmers have been forced off the land to find work," he said.
"We have to get the message across that between the Book of Estimates and the Budget, the farming community lost €200 million between cuts and additional charges.
"Even this morning in The Irish Times, I see we face further charges, with education grants being assessed on assets, which fails to recognise that a farm is a tool for making income, not an asset in the sense it's portrayed.
"I think the public will support us when we get the message home that the average farm income is only €15,000 annually and we had cuts of 13 per cent last year.
"At a time when farming was already in crisis, the Government really put the boot in on farmers in both the Budget and their cuts in the Estimates."
The first target of the protest will be the Minister for Agriculture and Food, Mr Walsh, who, Mr Dillon said, appeared not to understand what was happening to the farming community.
The main corps of the motorcade, which leaves from Bantry on Monday morning, will hold a rally in Mr Walsh's home town, Clonakilty, before heading into Cork city. Mr Dillon said the tractors would not travel on the hard shoulders of roads and motorways, but on the roads themselves.
"We have an agreement with the gardaí that only 300 tractors will enter Dublin city next Friday and we will only come into the city after the morning traffic has eased," he said.
The general secretary of the organisation, Mr Michael Berkery, denied that the rally was an attempt to win back the political muscle that the IFA appeared to have lost in recent years.
The action, he said, was necessary to highlight the growing problems in the farming community which was under siege. The "tractorcade", he said, was the first step in mobilising the farming community across the State to protect itself from extinction.
The timing of the protest is significant, as January 6th marks the 48th anniversary of the establishment of the National Farmers' Association in Dublin. Bantry was also the starting point for the historic farmers' rights march of 1966.