Rural people were urged to stand up and stake their claim to their way of life, by a farm leader who said their lifestyle was coming under increasing attack.
Mr Frank Allen, the president of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association, said yesterday that rural pursuits and the way rural people lived their lives was coming under increasing attack.
Mr Allen said if rural people conceded on the question of foxhunting, then shooting and fishing and all the other rural pursuits would be targeted.
He said all these areas were under assault but there was more support for them here than in Britain. If the activity was banned in Britain, it would increase the pressure for a ban in the Republic.
"They do not have Government support here at the present time and I do not envisage them having it for some time, but as society becomes more urbanised and the balance changes, and more power and more numbers going to urban society, the pressure will obviously increase," he said.
"It is important that rural people stake their claim, be it either in rural housing, or rural pursuits or their general way of life, and hunting is part of that," he said at the Tullamore National Livestock Show yesterday.
Mr Allen said when he was young, he and his friends went out every Sunday hunting hares. They never killed a hare.
"Nowadays, people do not do that kind of thing. They are involved in drugs and various other activities which are not good for the personality or the mind.
"I have the highest regard for people who are pro-hunting. It is their right," he said.
Mr Allen, who runs a mixed farm in Co Limerick, said the case of the badger was fairly typical of the situation.
"While the badger is a protected animal under the Wildlife Act, yet it is a vector of TB in cattle," he said. "My argument to that is that we should take out the diseased badgers as well as the diseased cattle but the people who protect badgers are opposed to them being taken out." Last week the Irish Council Against Blood Sports attacked fox-hunting and described it as "barbaric".