"Joe: I am dosed, dipped, dagged and degraded." When cardboard sheep bearing this and other messages were brandished in front of camera lenses during last week's farmers' protest, one Joe was certainly not impressed.
The Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh? Hardly. Any politician facing a difficult task, as he is at this week's EU Farm Council on reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in Brussels, must be glad to have his hand strengthened from any quarter.
No, this Joe's surname is Molloy - small farmer, environmentalist and angler in the Connemara village of Cornamona.
"Damage limitation" is how Mr Molloy (64) wryly describes the efforts by the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) to highlight the impact of proposed reforms, which will result in substantial cuts in subsidies. In his view, the association does not represent him or many of his colleagues on small holdings on the western seaboard. He is in favour of CAP reform, but feels the current proposals don't go half far enough.
"The IFA speaks for the rich farmers - well, that is no secret," he says, sitting on a fuel can in his garage, as relentless rain pelts the roof and envelops the surrounding uplands of Joyce Country, north of Lough Corrib. In his opinion, the representative organisation has colluded in implementing EU policies which have already destroyed the livelihoods of many, and which threaten the future of the landscape he loves.
Some 80 per cent of Connemara farmers are, like Joe, part-time. Many have been members of the United Farmers' Association (UFA), which has been weakened by splits. Mr Molloy says he is still a UFA supporter. With 10 head of cattle and 13.5 hectares of land, he makes no apologies for having to supplement his income.
"It was always this way, because of where we are. I have worked on roads as a labourer, I earned nine bob a day breaking rocks for Galway County Council, I drove machinery and I worked in mining. I was a mechanic for nearly 30 years, but I closed down the garage a little while ago."
The "Brussels cheque" is "a myth", he says, and he won't be losing too much sleep over a reduction in EU subsidies. "I applied for area aid three years ago, along with many I know, and I was turned down. I didn't get cattle headage this year because of a bureaucratic mix-up. Yet when the Department's inspector came out, he found that everything was correct."
The other myth - or urban prejudice - is the attitude that all farmers are ripping up the environment on which they depend, he says. "I am an environmentalist, but I have not destroyed my land. Greed and overstocking by those who were tempted by the large hand-outs from the EU without any control on stockage - that is what has caused the degradation."
Recent cases where animal owners were fined or even jailed for cruelty could not come soon enough, in his view. "Cattle and sheep have been dying because of overstocking for the last three years, but it is only now that we are hearing about it because it has been exacerbated by the weather. And believe me, we haven't seen the end of it. March and April are the deadly months, when animals aren't fed the way they should be."
As far as EU-led responses are concerned, he is particularly critical of the Rural Environment Protection Scheme (REPS). "We need some protection, but the IFA agreed to this on our behalf without consulting us. And it has become an industry for planners and consultants, who seek their fees upfront, and who justify their existence by telling you what you already know and then directing that thousands of miles of barbed wire and millions of stakes be erected along rivers, streams and by lakeshores." The aim of this is to ensure that farmers don't keep stock on the land by preventing animals from reaching drinking water.
Meanwhile, other threats to the environment are being actively encouraged, like forestry, he says. "The State actually permits the spread of thousands of tonnes of fertiliser by helicopter on plantations, most of which ends up in waterways.
"I am an angler and I have witnessed the decline of fish stocks on the Corrib. I went up to the Hill of Doon one evening and I couldn't believe what I saw on the Corrib - green algae, a mat of it. This intensive farming, which the Department has been promoting, has been responsible for the fact that 50 per cent of group-water schemes are polluted.
"I lay the blame on the Department for the bankrupt policies it has handed to us. All the rules and regulations are geared towards the corporate sector, which has given us BSE, CJD, salmonella, and a fear of eating meat and drinking milk," he says. He is convinced that the only solution is a radical reform of CAP to cut over-production.
Current production levels and techniques represent a form of self-destruction, he says.
"AIDs and all these new diseases we are getting is just nature answering back."
Genetically-modified food is another example, he says. He cannot understand how Monsanto, the biotechnology company which has already run foul of the Health and Safety Executive in Britain, has been welcomed and permitted to run field trials by the Department of Agriculture here.
Once a week, Joe seeks solace up the hillside in Carrick West, where pure water gushes out and runs down the valley. "I drink it and I feel elated, and I also feel sorry for those who don't have that experience." However, he believes he is one of a dying species, subject to an extensive clearance of land to make way for a "playground for the rich".
"Like the sherpa in the Himalayas, the Red Indian of North America, the aborigine of Australia, we will be geared up to accommodate busloads of tourists, with our donkeys and carts and our medieval garb. Those of us that are left," he adds.
The recent Tuam archdiocese report by Prof Micheal MacGreil gives all the startling statistics about population decline and the negative effect that EU structural funds have already had on small communities. Cornamona on the Corrib is one of those. Last year, it had no new pupils in the national school. "Very soon," says Joe Molloy, "we will just be a memory."
Tomorrow
"In 30 years it's never been worse. Pig farmers are taking 1977 prices for pigs produced today," Liam Ryan, of Kil brittain, Co Cork, tells Southern Correspondent Dick Hogan in tomorrow's Southern Report, which looks at the farming crisis in Kerry and Cork. The Regional Notebooks will continue this look at the crisis on the land throughout the week.
