A Dublin Labour MEP has probably helped ensure the success of today's planned farm demonstration in Dublin by saying: "Farmers have no right to disrupt my city."
Beforehand, some farmers were undecided about spending the day in Dublin, listening to long speeches and disrupting traffic on the quays. But Ms Bernie Malone's remarks ended that.
The MEP's argument that farmers are not excluded from the decision-making process and have alternative ways of protesting has already got lost.
"She is not bloody Molly Malone, she is Bernie Malone and it is our city too and we will go and show her that we have as much right to protest as building labourers or anyone else, " said one angry man in Tullamore yesterday.
His rage, for that is what it is, is typical of the reaction in farming circles to criticism by urban folk or non-farmers.
They feel misunderstood, maligned and unhappy with people's inability to see and share their problems because there are deep-rooted problems in Irish agriculture today.
In his advert calling on farmers and their families to take part in today's march, the president of the IFA, Mr Tom Parlon, said it was being held because the association "is not prepared to accept Government and EU inaction on collapsing farm incomes, disastrous cattle, pig and sheep prices, including red tape and bureaucracy".
But how bad are things down on the farm? Is the march justified or is this the largest whinge for decades? The facts show that for most farmers this has been one of the worst years ever. Progress also means that before long thousands of them are likely to go out of business. A series of events has seriously affected farm incomes this year, the most important being the collapse of the Russian economy, which means Irish beef farmers face very low prices.
This, combined with a drop in beef consumption in the lucrative EU markets caused by the BSE crisis, increased numbers of cattle and poor weather, has inflicted a severe blow on the 100,000 farmers in the sector.
Bad weather has created a serious fodder problem for the poorest farmers, those along the west coast, many of whom have little or no winter feeding for their animals. Sheep prices, especially those for older mountain ewes, collapsed this autumn leaving surplus supplies. This was compounded by the pending enforcement of an EU regulation to clear 200,000 ewes off over-grazed mountain and commonage in the west.
The collapse of the Asian economies and the destruction of a Northern Ireland pig processing plant in a fire in June have sent pig prices tumbling.
Of course the number of farmers has been declining rapidly. Since 1960 the numbers working in agriculture have fallen from 390,000 in 1960 to 134,000 last year.
In contrast, the number at work in the economy as a whole has risen from 1,055,000 in 1960 to 1,338,000 last year. Agriculture's share of total employment has fallen from 37 per cent to 10 per cent in the same period.
Within the sector, there are enormous variations in income. Basically two-thirds of the farming community barely scrape by and independent research has shown just over 50,000 farms are commercially viable.
These are the comfortable farmers who generally produce large quantities of milk or cereals and lap up the cream of Irish agriculture.
In a way, the poorer farmers protect these fat cats of the agriworld because when total farm income is divided by 134,000, the average is very low indeed: just under £11,000 last year.
A careful examination of the figures shows that just over one-third of Irish farmers have an income of more than £10,000 from their farms but nearly 60 per cent have off-farm income from part-time jobs held by the farmer or the farmer's partner.
It is hard to convince urban folk that farmers, who own 95 per cent of the land and paid only £70 million in income tax in 1995 should deserve support.
But many of these asset-rich folk have low incomes and have not benefited greatly from the direct payments of nearly £1 billion last year.
Unfortunately, too much of this money goes to too few in the farming community where it appears the more you have, the more you get. For too long 80 per cent of the cake has gone to 20 per cent of the farmers, although this is changing slowly.
There are those who will say the farm organisations, which large farmers control, need today's march more than anyone else in order to demonstrate they are interested in the plight of the small farmer.