Fired up

For the most part, my monthly column is machinery or machinery-sector focussed and that is how I like it but sometimes you have to get off the fence and stray from the norm. This is one of those times, so please bear with me as I row in on the happenings of the last few weeks in our modern Ireland. 

Now, unless you have been on the shuttle to Mars with the Americans you will know our country has been ‘in a terrible state o’ chassis’. The fuel crisis protests, a culmination of several things, really highlighted this point for me.
People are feeling pressure at the pumps and in the shops, they are trying to rent homes at extortionate prices but can’t afford to buy their own. Mostly, people are trying to make life better for themselves and their families, but obstacles keep popping up.

Many are among the ‘working poor’ who, at the end of the month, have very little left once the bills are paid, and loans are repaid. And that ‘very little’ is disappearing as the price of everything is going one way. And farmers and contractors are at the end of their tether as costs go up, up and up on one side but earnings on the other no way near match them!

The recent fuel protests really showed how much unrest and unhappiness there is right now among farmers and contractors, and indeed hauliers – all the people who put food on our plates. They had a message for the rest of the country: we need them and if they can’t operate, we are in dire straits! It is a shame that there  was another less accountable layer to the protests, which muddied this message.
I was chatting to a good friend of mine the other day, and he summed up very well the Government’s response to the recent protests and the fuel crisis. He said: “The tánaiste spoke very well for himself, he spoke very well on behalf of the Government, but he spoke terribly for the people.” My personal opinion is that the Governmant’s refusal to engage with some of the ‘leaders’ of the protestors – those who were doing it for all the right reasons – was wrong. Those who legitimately protested were just trying to protect their livelihoods: truckers, traders, builders and plumbers all standing shoulder to shoulder with farmers, contractors – all facing higher costs. 

Greater supports are needed to help rural Ireland and its treasured businesses to weather this storm. The €505 million fuel package from Government is not enough and as IFA president, Francie Gorman put it, far more must be done to address the frustration and anger in rural Ireland, particularly around the cost of doing business and over-regulation.

It is the Government’s job to protect its people, and its people are angry! But anger turns to hurt – both financially and emotionally – and hurt, my friends, runs deep and is scarring. And people are slow to forget this.
But those scars have to be pushed to the side – for now – as silage season is upon us and, as usual, the show goes on thanks to the hard-working men and women of rural Ireland. Many of these are the same men and women who mobilised to Dublin some weeks ago, and now they are expected to get on with it, despite all the challenges. 

Appropriately, I end this month’s column on a machinery note because, remember, it’s machinery that is one of the first steps in the chain when it comes to food production; you have to till, sow, roll, harvest, transport. And it takes fuel to run these machines and if they don’t run, well, that doesn’t bear thinking about. 

Until next month, farm safely, farm wisely.