Tom Clintonformer IFA president who was caught up in controversy over milk quota regulations
EARLIER THIS year former Irish Farmers Association president, Tom Clinton shared a platform in New Zealand with Rt Hon Dame Jenny Shipley, the former prime minister of New Zealand.
He was the keynote speaker at the 2010 annual conference of the New Zealand Large Herds Association, one of the powerhouse organisations of global agriculture in New Zealand. That is the kind of company the man from Kells, Co Meath, now addresses, a long way in both time and location from 1961, when he was milking six cows by hand on less than 70 acres.
These days, Clinton spends two or three months of the year on his dairy farm in New Zealand, a farm of 1,450 hectares, with 2,500 cows. He also has property interests in the US and in France.
The family farm near Kells, Co Meath, is now run by one of his eight children and has expanded to a 400-cow dairy operation.
Now, at 63 years of age, Clinton is in demand as an expert on the dairy industry across the world.
Twenty years ago he was treading a different path. He had completed half his term as president of the IFA when he became embroiled in a controversy over breaches of the milk quota regulations.
Under intense pressure, he resigned in January 1990 and was replaced by Alan Gillis.
Leaving the IFA job took him off a well-travelled route which may well have seen him end up in politics like his uncle, Mark Clinton, a former minister for Agriculture and former MEP.
“I would have wished the IFA presidency had not ended the way it did, but in truth, I was not going to go into politics,” he says. Instead, he sold a farm he had inherited on the outskirts of Kells and decided to invest what he had received abroad, specifically in New Zealand.
“I paid the same money for the farm there that I would have for a small farm in Ireland but the difference was I could expand the operation there, not here, because of the EU restrictions” he says.
Even today as a world dairy expert, Clinton accepts the highlight of his career was when he ran the credit committee of the IFA in the 1980s.
Farmers, hit by low prices, bad weather and bad debts, turned to him to negotiate and argue their case with the banks.
“It was a lot of hard work but it was good work and we took on the banks. I am very proud people still come to my home looking for business and even personal advice,” he says.
“I would not be unhappy to see that on my tombstone,” he laughs, adding he has plans to go on living for a good while yet.