A big farmers’ protest in Dublin this weekend is being scaled back significantly.
Local families were to be among the expected 10,000 participants in the major national demonstration on Sunday morning.
It’s understood that a small gathering of representatives will still go ahead but organisers are now asking people not to travel.
Kilkenny Chair Jim Mulhall on the Glanbia Farm Show last night said they couldn’t in conscience bring a massive crowd with the Covid-19 numbers so high; “We all know what’s happening out in the wider community and Covid numbers are growing and we took a decision at an emergency national council meeting the other day to scale back the protest, we were hoping for up around the region of 10,000 people in Dublin and now it’ll be much-shrinked, no buses going and a completely different format”.
He also said climate change measures are going to hit local farmers in the pocket; “We have the nitrates, we have the CAP and we have the Climate Action bill and all three of them I suppose, two areas in particular like, the likes of Kilkenny and Carlow are in my view anyway are going to result in a reduction of some shape or form at farm level and probably reduce farmers’ ability to make a living”.
And he added the government and the EU are trying to for climate change mitigation measures on them by stealth through the Common Agricultural Policy; “People are worried about the new shape the CAP is going to take with its backdrop of the European Farm to Fork proposals is now being framed as an environmental, has a lot of environmental asks in it and there is no way should the CAP proposals be used as some way, shape or form to fund the new Climate Action Plan”.
