SATURDAY PROFILE: With this week's tractor protest, IFA president John Dillon seems to have finally unified the organisation behind him. But where will he next lead his militant army of farmers? Sean MacConnell, Agriculture Correspondent, reports.
The suggestion that John Dillon, president of the Irish Farmers' Association may be a Frenchman, is currently doing the rounds. The French farmers are the most militant in the European Union and are very quick to take to the streets to fight their corner - as is John Dillon.
Like his French counterparts, Dillon knows the EU rulebook on the Common Agricultural Policy backwards and believes in direct action.
Physically, he could pass as one of our Gallic cousins and it has been impolitely suggested that, like many Frenchmen, his English is virtually incomprehensible.
However, it is doubtful that there is even a drop of French or even Norman blood in the 54-year old bespectacled farmer who was born in Pallasgreen, Co Limerick on a farm held by his family for the previous 300 years.
The young Dillon was unremarkable except that he developed a passion for cross-country running, in which he excelled as a youngster.
Small in stature, but, to quote his friends, strong as an ox, the young Dillon won many races by hitting the front early and running flat out to destroy the opposition.
While his running years are over, Dillon has carried the lessons he learned in that sport into his agri-political life, which began with his membership of Macra na Feirme when he was only 14 years-old.
Nearly 40 years later, he climbed to the top job in Irish agri-politics by using the same methods, exhausting his enemies by getting out in front and destroying their confidence.
He toyed with mainstream politics too and for a time was active in Fine Gael, following a family tradition. He left it for the PDs, but quit that party too and now claims to have no political allegiance.
Along the way, Dillon built up the family farm to one of the most productive in the area and married Essie, whom he met at a Macra function. Now they have nine children.
Always regarded as an outsider in the slick machine which was the IFA, Dillon beat his way to the job of president this time last year, confounding his enemies and stunning the "permanent government" of full-time workers who run the IFA from its Bluebell, Dublin offices.
Sophistication had been the order of the day at Bluebell, where it moulded the acceptable face of Irish farming for the public in the media through men such as Tom Parlon, Alan Gillis and even John Donnelly.
However, Dillon was different. His is a different kind of clay, too gritty to shape to modern requirements, a clay with a mind of its own.
He flatly refused to attend any of the courses to help him deal with the media or to mesh with the Bluebell machine. He did, however, add a number of new suits to what friends say was a small wardrobe.
Despite that, the Bluebell officials were pleasantly surprised to find they had not inherited a raving militant completely without political know-how.
On three occasions during the year, the 67-member National Executive Council of the IFA discussed and could have carried motions calling for the resignation of the Minister for Agriculture, Joe Walsh. But each time it was Dillon who indicated that this was not the route to go and pointed out that the Government would circle the wagons and target the organisation.
"Those who saw him as an ignorant gobshite at the beginning of the year now have a bit more respect for him," says one council member. "However, Dillon is like opera. You either hate it or love it, there is no ground in between."
It may be assumed that the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, does not like "opera" because of a snub meted out to him by Dillon at Cork airport during the Nice referendum campaign.
The Taoiseach believed he had all the farm organisations on board to vote Yes in the referendum to reverse the No decision. He was correct, but he had not reckoned on Dillon refusing to meet him at Cork airport for a photocall with the other farm organisations.
Dillon refused to go to the airport and instructed his deputy, Ruaidhrí Deasy, who was already in the airport car-park, not to take part in the event.
Ahern was not amused, but did compliment the IFA after the votes were counted on running its own highly successful Yes campaign.
Earlier last year, Dillon frightened the life out of the IFA when he decided it was time to take on the meat factories again on the issue of price. The IFA under Tom Parlon had blockaded the meat plants in January 2000 and this dispute ended with the IFA achieving 90p a pound for beef but a fine of £500,000 for breaking the law.
Dillon put his toe to the narrow line between law-breaking and legitimate protest when he arranged protests at all the main meat export factories last autumn. He escalated the protests from single-day to three-day events, during which no farmers supplied stock to the factories, which remained closed.
There was a fudged settlement when market demand drove up prices to a level acceptable for settlement. However, the factories had their revenge by dropping the prices they were paying for cattle aged over 30 months.
Dillon, who once worked in a meat plant to supplement farm income, was furious and has put the issue on the long finger until later this year.
What was interesting about that dispute was that it did not appear to have widespread support within the organisation. The protest lines were light and according to insiders, lightweight.
However, Dillon, who, according to one observer, calls "a spade a spade, a hoe a hoe and an asshole and asshole" was undeterred by his failure to achieve outright victory against the meat plants.
He had planned this week's state-wide protest as far back as June of last year, when he was convinced that the Department was not doing enough for the farmer.
It took a bad summer, falling product prices and a general air of gloom before Dillon could muster enough support to move the motorised divisions on Dublin.
Significantly, the Irish Farmers' Journal, the mouthpiece of the IFA, carried the announcement of the protest only on page three.
During Dillon's presidential campaign, the Journal's editor, Matthew Dempsey, who is also a "gentleman farmer" from Maynooth, wrote an editorial saying the days of the old-style street protest were over and a new way to approach problems would have to be found.
However, as the IFA president led what has now become known as "Dillon's army" into Dublin city yesterday, he had truly confirmed himself as leader of a unified organisation and the story made the front and back page of the Journal.
Dillon saw fit to praise his friends and his enemies equally at Goff's, as farmers warmed their hands at blazing tar barrels, waiting on Thursday night to move into the city.
Dillon, to quote his own election slogan, had delivered, and delivered in style.
He faces one more great hurdle, however. How to cope with a victory. His critics say that he knows not the meaning of compromise and that is a very difficult lesson to learn.
With three more years ahead of him, who knows where Dillon will next lead his "army"?
The Dillon File
Who is he?
John Dillon, president of the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA)
Why in the news?
Has been leading a major farm tractor protest to Dublin
Most appealing characteristic
His raw honesty
Least appealing characteristic
His raw honesty
Most likely to say
I disagree
Least likely to say
I agree