A farm leader last night attacked "the hypocrites" who accused farmers of polluting streams and rivers while they lived in newly-built houses in expanding villages where untreated and raw sewage was allowed to flow into adjacent streams and rivers, writes Seán Mac Connell in Limerick
Mr Pat O'Rourke, the president of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association, told his organisation's annual general meeting in Limerick that farmers wanted fair play and common courtesy even though some people seemed to despise them.
Mr O'Rourke speaking at his last agm as president, said he had stopped defending farmers against those who had for some reason developed an intense dislike for those who had stayed on the land.
"There is a very vocal section of our society that seems permanently out of sympathy with everything we try to do. I don't know why they seem to despise us in the manner they do," he told the delegates.
Mr O'Rourke said he had to bite his tongue when he heard some man or woman castigating Irish farmers as the country's worst polluters when he personally knew they were living in areas where untreated sewage was being pumped into rivers streams by the local councils.
"Ireland's worst polluters can only be those local authorities and county councils that allow developers and households to pump out untreated sewage into the rivers and streams within their jurisdiction."
He said the ICMSA was as interested as anyone else in ending these "most flagrant acts of pollution".