Sir, – Further to Barbara Lindberg's photograph of Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney at the National Ploughing Championships (September 24th), Mr Coveney is not the first minister of an Irish administration to get noticed because of the porcine species!
Diarmuid Lynch was food controller (in effect the first minister for agriculture) in the Sinn Féin executive of 1917, which planned to govern Ireland from Dublin, bypassing Westminster.
Lynch, in protest at the exporting of food to feed the British army when there was a food shortage in Ireland, organised the kidnapping, or pignapping, of a drove of pigs being herded to the North Wall for export. The pigs were slaughtered in a Dublin Corporation yard. The meat was sold to the local Dublin people. The pig owners were compensated and Lynch got publicity at home and abroad for the Sinn Féin executive cause. The deed was so popular that a ballad, The Pig Push,was composed by Cathal MacDubhghaill and sung in the pubs to the air of The Wearing of the Green.
Like Mr Coveney, Lynch was elected as a TD in Cork South Central. Both men were pupils of the Knocknamanagh National School in Minane Bridge. – Yours, etc,
EILEEN McGOUGH,
Kinsale,
Co Cork.