A plan by farmers to stage a major protest in Dublin tomorrow has been sharply criticised by the Labour MEP Ms Bernie Malone. "Farmers have no right to disrupt my city," she said yesterday.
The Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) expects between 15,000 and 20,000 of its members to assemble in Dublin tomorrow to protest at falling food prices.
They plan to gather at the Phoenix Park from 11 a.m. and then march along the north quays, over O'Connell Bridge and via College Green and Nassau Street to Merrion Square, where they will hold a rally.
Ms Malone said that blocking the streets of the capital or sitting in at the Department of Agriculture could be justified only if the protesters had no democratic rights or were excluded by the decision-making processes.
"But this is most definitely not the case with the farmers," she added. "They are involved in all the major decision-making processes and they are the best-organised lobby group in the country. Yet they choose to engage in tactics which would be roundly condemned if undertaken by students or, indeed, by workers."
Ms Malone said in a statement that those inconvenienced by the farmers' "antics" were likely to be PAYE workers paying, on average, four times more tax than the farmer.
Mr John Cushnahan, Fine Gael MEP for Munster, demanded an investigation into why, with falling prices for beef and other products, consumers were not seeing any equivalent cuts in their shopping baskets.
Mr Cushnahan said it was scandalous that the huge drops in the prices paid to producers of beef and other foods had not been passed on to consumers.
He has asked the Commissioner for Competition Policy, Mr Karel van Miert, and the Consumer Affairs Commissioner, Ms Emma Bonino, to undertake an urgent investigation.
Superquinn announced yesterday that it was cutting the price of Irish beef by over 30 per cent in response to the crisis in the farming sector. The supermarket chain said this would bring the price of beef down to levels not seen for 10 years.
Superquinn added that it was passing on reductions from its suppliers, which had come about because export markets had collapsed.
The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association yesterday advised consumers to fill their freezers with Irish beef as prices had not been so low in 10 years.