Imagine waking up and finding out that your local TD or County Councillor had written to your bank asking them not to loan you money.
Now imagine that it wasn’t your local TD or Councillor, but a senior member of the European Parliament, and that this letter to your bank – asking them to deny you a loan – was even written in the official headed paper of the European Parliament.
Unfortunately for the young farmers of Ireland, they do not have to imagine, because that is precisely what Irish Green Party MEP, Ciaran Cuffe did.
It has generated outrage among young farmer organisations such as Macra na Feirme and indeed within the wider agricultural sector.
But it has also enraged the normally compliant, ‘yes, Minister Ryan, how many bags full Minister Ryan’ brigade in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and it has reignited concerns that the Greens are, how shall we say, getting too big for their boots, when it comes to dominating government policy.
The background here for those who are not aware is that two weeks ago, Ciaran Cuffe, the Green Party MEP for Dublin, wrote to Bank of Ireland explicitly ‘requesting’ them not to support lending to young farmers who are currently engaged in what Mr Cuffe describes as ‘carbon-intensive’ farm practices.
That means dairy farming, the kind that puts milk and butter and cheese on our tables, or increasing the herd to produce beef, which most Irish people still eat for both taste and health benefits.
Cuffe also advised Bank of Ireland – a tax-payer bailed out bank – to think twice when it comes to loaning money to young famers who may wish to pursue growth in their livestock enterprises.
It took until yesterday for MEP Cuffe to belatedly back-track and admit that he was wrong to “single out young farmers” and that really, we are in all this carbon reduction business together.
Give me a break.
If any other member of parliament or even the Dáil or Seanad took two weeks to climb down, there would be outrage. But the Greens seem to believe they operate on a higher moral plane than the rest of us poor mortals.
They want us to believe that action they take is for the common-good, and that if that means saddling young farmers with crippling debt because they cannot get a loan, well, tough luck on them, I guess.
This sorry excuse for an apology is just not good enough.
For myself and for many other rural TD’s such as my colleagues in the Rural Independent Group, the actions taken by MEP Cuffe were a clear window into the ruthlessness, viciousness and duplicity that characterises the Green Party when it comes to agriculture and young farmers.
They scream about ‘engagement’ and ‘voluntary diversification’ when it comes to ‘transitioning’ away from carbon intensive practices, all the while completely ignoring the enormous efforts that farmers are making in these areas anyway.
What this letter reveals, is that behind the scenes the party and its most senior members are more than willing to use the institutional muscle of the pillar banks to wreak havoc with the lives of young farmers.
It was a disgraceful and quite frankly, a disgusting act of financial sabotage.
Will it be the last time that we see the Greens engage in this kind of stealth undermining of young farmers who may not wish to sing the Green Party’s tune?
Not on your life.
Carol Nolan is an Independent TD for the constituency of Laois Offaly and is a member of the Dáil Rural Independent Group.