A new farm group was launched on Sunday (April 16) at a meeting of some 300 farmers in Athlone, Co. Westmeath, with support for the group said to be “growing massively”.
The Farmers’ Alliance, as the group calls itself, has been established following an initial meeting in February, organised through Ireland’s Farm Discussion Group Facebook page.
One of the main drivers of the new group, Liam McLaughlin, who set up the Facebook page, indicated to Agriland that the response to the new group has been very strong.
Further meetings of the Farmers’ Alliance are set to take place in counties Limerick and Kerry in the coming weeks.
The meeting on Sunday was addressed virtually by Caroline van der Plas, the half-Irish leader of the Dutch agrarian political party Farmer-Citizen Movement (know by its Dutch initials BBB).
The BBB pulled off a major win in provincial elections in the Netherlands last month, winning the majority of both the popular vote and available seats, becoming the largest or joint largest party in all 12 of the provincial councils in the Netherlands.
Because of the Dutch electoral system, these results mean that the BBB could be set to win a sizeable proportion of the 75 seats in the country’s national senate in further elections next month.
Following the meeting of the Farmers’ Alliance on Sunday, McLaughlin said that the new Irish farmer group “has the full support of the BBB”.
He said that the group hopes to bring van der Plas to Ireland to address the group in person sometime during the summer.
Van der Plas spoke to the meeting on how her political party came to be formed, saying that there was a void left in the Netherlands from a lack of representation for farmers in the country.
Many in the Netherlands also feel that the Dutch government allows its policies to be too heavily influenced by the EU, without adequately taking farmer and rural interests into consideration, according to van der Plas.
The meeting was attended by TD Verona Murphy, who told Agriland that she was left impressed by the attendance at the meeting.
Describing the mood, she said that farmers there were frustrated over a lack of representation from their TDs and farmer organisations.
She also said that the meeting addressed not only agriculture, but a wide range of issues affecting rural Ireland.
Murphy added that it “feels to be in the offing” that the Farmers’ Alliance will follow the example of the BBB and run candidates in elections.