Madam, - Farmers across Europe are shell-shocked following Tony Blair's suggestion that the solution to the shortfall in the EU budget is to raid the Common Agricultural Policy (Cap) once more.
If this proposal is considered seriously, there will be total and absolute uproar. Farmers will not stand for it. I envisage a pan-European protest - of the Irish Farmers' Association and all other EU farm organisations - which would rock the EU to its foundations.
Farmers already are paying for the Fair Trade Agreement. We have moved twice in the past five years on Cap reform to accommodate World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks.
In 2004, farmers in Ireland and across Europe signed up to a nine-year contract, the Single Farm Payment. This guaranteed a set decoupled income in return for the abolition of price supports and export refunds (subsidies).
It is a legally binding contract. To have a contract torn up while farmers are trying to work within its new framework is not only unfair, but illegal, and the fight may well be taken to the European Court.
Some facts: only 38 per cent of the EU budget of €114.7 billion is spent on agriculture. The total budget is only 2 per cent of the aggregate budgets of the old 15-member EU countries and an even smaller fraction of the total budgets of the enlarged community. Indeed, it is a little over twice Ireland's budget. That budget ceiling has been agreed up to 2013.
This is a cockfight between Jacques Chirac and Tony Blair and is just the latest round in the fight on balancing the budget needed to accommodate enlargement.
It is incredible that Tony Blair has mooted change at such an early stage, while farmers have yet to receive their first single payment. It may amount to little more than posturing to his urban power base. However, it is a change that is totally unacceptable.
For the EU to survive in the years ahead, it must be able to produce as much as it consumes. (The Cap was designed after the second World War to guarantee Europe's food at reasonable prices to consumers.) A secure supply of safe food, jobs, alternative sources of fuel, raw materials and a clean environment are key components in any sustainable model for our future.
A strong farm and rural sector is therefore vital for all of us. It is high time we woke up and recognised that fact. Otherwise, our leaders will sleep-walk us - farmers - down a path to collapse and poverty. Yours, etc,
RUAIDHRÍ DEASY, Deputy President, Irish Farmers' Association, Roscrea.