The Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, has said he fully recognises the difficulties being experienced by certain sectors of Irish agriculture.
Mr Walsh was responding to Tuesday's mass meeting of farmers in Dublin, which called on him to resign over what farmers said was his inaction as cattle, pig and sheep prices continued to fall.
Mr Walsh had some good news for the pig sector and announced that an EU scheme, Aids to Private Storage, to help pig farmers will be introduced from September 28th.
This EU-funded scheme, which provides for the removal of product from the market for six months, should take up to 70,000 tonnes of pigmeat from the EU markets and help stabilise prices.
The Minister defended his actions over recent months to help the farming industry, sector by sector, and outlined the difficulties facing them.
He said beef markets had been hit because of the crisis in Russia, and this had had a knock-on effect on other markets being supplied from Ireland.
The Minister insisted he had consistently supported the live export trade, and that this year's figures were well up on last year's.
He rejected any suggestion that he had misled anyone on the reopening of the Libyan live trade, which he said he expected to resume before the end of the month. He had also approved a ship to transport live lambs to Spain.