100 tractors take part in city protest as farmer fury grows over ‘red tape’ rules
UP to 100 tractors took part in the Galway IFA farmer tractor protest on Thursday evening last through the city as part of a nationwide network of similar demonstrations across the country.
The tractor cavalcade left Carnmore shortly after 6pm and moved through the city via the motorway, the Old Dublin Road, Lough Atalia and Eyre Square before exiting the city via Bohermore at around 7pm.
The IFA liaised closely with Gardaí to keep traffic disruption to a minimum and with no stops along the way, very little by way of delays was reported.
According to the IFA, while the protests were held to show solidarity with their farming counterparts across Germany and France, Irish farmers were also ‘sick to the teeth’ with rules, regulations, bureaucracy, late payments and constant downward pressures on incomes.
Galway IFA Chair, Stephen Canavan, said that farmers had a very simple message for Government; the Minister for Agriculture, Charlie McConalogue; Dept. officials and inspectors; and the EU – ‘enough is enough’.
“Farmers are just being completely taken for granted with the whole raft of legislation, rules and restrictions that’s being imposed on them without a shred of concern for their wellbeing and incomes.
“It really is a case of just one hit after another from the Nature Restoration Law to the nitrates restrictions – the politicians and the bureaucrats are just doing what they like with farmers.
“Farmers have bent over backwards to do everything possible to embrace environmental concerns and always have been trusted guardians of the countryside, but we seem to be getting no credit whatsoever for this,” Stephen Canavan told the Farming Tribune.
Pictured: CYCLIST PASSES BY: Casting a cold eye on life and farming woes, a cyclist passes by one of the tractors involved in the farmers’ protest in Eyre Square last Thursday evening. PHOTO: JOE O’SHAUGHNESSY.