Well, if the CAP fits, let them wear it

Emmissions: We found ourselves in the middle of a highly charged debate the other night  on the merits and demerits of the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy and its potential effects on the average Irish farmer. The debate revolved around the issue of farmers getting paid to stay on the land - and what will happen if it comes to an end?

One party in the debate opined that "they'll all come up to Dublin and take over the place. Imagine another million people living here! I won't stand for it. It's not like they let you tramp around their land now, is it?"

But the EU bureaucrat in attendance was unwavering: "First, it's not going to happen. Second, they're citizens - they can go where they like."

"Well," was the response, "I think we should build a great big wall around the city. It'll keep those  . . .  people  . . .  out, Didn't it work for the English for hundreds of years?"

From this jewel, a little flicker of light emerged from the dark pit of our mind. Let me explain. I'd had a particularly dismal day, having emerged, mole-like, from my dank office onto rain-sodden O'Connell Bridge, underfed, under-appreciated and under the weather  . . .  only to be summarily saturated from head to toe by a passing juggernaut.

Tourists recoiled, junkies cackled, office girls sniggered, all glad it wasn't them. I have long ago accepted stoical resignation as the final resort of the dignified soul who knows when he is beaten. Where else in the known world could a decent, PAYE-fearing citizen be so humiliated in the heart of the city he loves? What great mind deemed the busiest pedestrian interface of the capital to be an appropriate spot for 18-wheelers to tear through without respite?

The French have the right idea: they built a sandpit on the motorway running along the River Seine. I'd put up the cash myself if I had any.

Why fight it? The very logic of it, like racism or disliking Tom Waits, was beneath contempt.

I do, however, have to concede a sneaking admiration for the lorry-driver who, evidently fed up of the immovable country-bound traffic along the quays, recently drove off Burgh Quay and tried to swim for it. You have to marvel at the dedication to the job this genius displayed, despite the fact nobody had seen fit to tell him the Dublin Port Tunnel was about two miles north and wasn't quite ready anyway.

No wonder the earlier misanthropic outburst struck a chord. Why not lock the lorries out? Why must these rumbling titans be let through the very belly of the city, scattering all before them like the Genghis Khan's Mongol hordes?

Just build a big beast of a tunnel from Holyhead to Naas and another one from Cherbourg to Carrick-on-Suir. If they're so desperate to get through the cities, why not make it easier for them and us concrete city cavemen in the process?

Let the farmers deal with them. Won't they appreciate the bit of excitement as they're being paid to watch the grass grow?