Francie Gorman

And to be clear,

The interventions that they made at the cabinet meeting earlier on were completely insufficient to solve the problem.

Possibly, but that isn't the view in rural Ireland.

I mean, we have farmer contractors and farmers who are going to, tillage farmers in particular, who are going to struggle to cover their costs in a way that you couldn't imagine at the start of the year.

And the government's response to this

but it was six million out of 250 million initially which was just given uh it was it was showing a complete disregard to the problems that existed in rural ireland on this i think it's fair to say it is it is it is a bit of a hangover but for the teacher of the country to make those com our former teacher of the country to make those comments um like they are divisive and there was no need for them and

I'd be very disappointed if you heard the current Taoiseach saying that if he was retired in a number of years' time.

And certainly as President of IFA, I always take the view that, and we have in IFA, that when you step down in this position as President of IFA, you're gone and you don't make it more difficult for your successors coming after you to do the job.

Well, certainly for a while.

And you certainly don't go about making the job of your successor more difficult.

And I think that Leo Varadkar's comments have made the job of government in general more difficult after a very, very difficult week for the country.

I think it will be a help, and I think that the Minister for Agriculture's comments are more explicit.

And it is about bringing everybody together.

I mean, we represent, we have 71,000, I think, 71,328 members in our association from different backgrounds, from different sectors, be it dairy, beef and sheep.

And the job is to try and keep everybody together and united.

And it's the same in the country.

We need the country united, whether you're a farmer, whether you're a teacher, a guard, a nurse,

driving a truck or a farmer contractor.

And comments like that after the week or fortnight that we've had were really, really unhempful.

And I was just surprised that the Taoiseach made them.