LAST UPDATE | 26 Apr 2023
MEMBERS OF THE farming organisation Macra na Feirme have met with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar at Government Buildings today after the group marched almost 100 kilometres to Dublin city centre.
The group, which represents 10,000 young people living in rural Ireland, began its march last night from Athy, Co Kildare where it was founded in 1944.
Macra President John Keane handed a letter into Government Buildings calling for stronger government support for young farmers and young people in rural communities.
“One in 16. That’s the number of farmers that are currently farming under the age of 35. We want we want that figure to change,” he said after the march.
Many members of the march wore t-shirts with the number 16 to highlight this statistic.
The march was held to highlight several problems that Macra believes are harming rural young people, such as difficulties accessing affordable housing, “cumbersome” housing planning guidelines and a lack of public transport for rural Ireland.
Macra has also criticised what it calls “disjointed and sparse healthcare services for rural communities”, as well as a “lack of planning for the future of our rural communities informed by rural people”.
Ahead of their meeting with Varadkar, Keane said:
“We’re going to be saying to the Taoiseach the very same thing that we’ve said for the last 24 hours. We want a future in rural Ireland, we want young people to be able to gain, to grow, to develop, to thrive in rural Ireland and in their rural communities.”
“We need direct investments in the issues that we’ve outlined: our critical healthcare services, from our GPs to access to critical care beds in local and regional hospitals. It’s access to rural transport. I mean, we’ve given an example here of buses in local villages across the country that come once a day.
“The government wants us to move to an environmentally friendly society, to move away from the car. But how can we do that if we haven’t got to public transport?”
Macra were represented by Keane, its president-elect Elaine Houlihan, the chair of the rural youth committee Niamh Farrell, the chair of the agricultural affairs committee Liam Hanrahan, Shane Dolphin and Mick Curran CEO of Macra.
The delegation raised its concerns in relation to the future of rural Ireland in respect of the eight areas of concern that its members had marched for.
Macra said in a statement this evening that the Taoiseach and three ministers responded positively to the concerns and indeed the solutions that were put forward.
Keane said of the meeting: “We had a positive engagement with the Taoiseach and the ministers, we feel that considerable progress has been made in the areas of a definition of a Family Farm and also in the area of the creation of a succession Scheme for Farmers”
The Taoiseach also made a commitment to meet Macra again to address its concerns in relation to the eight points as raised in two to three months time so that progress can be measured, the group said.
The Taoiseach thanked the group for the work that they do and listened to their suggestions and proposals.
Of the hundred people that finished the march at Merrion Square before returning to Government Buildings, approximately 25 had walked the entire 79 kilometre route overnight while other had joined along the way or only walked some stretches.
Andrew Dunne, Macra’s county chairperson for Laois, told The Journal that the low number of young farmers is due to immigration and the lack of an adequate farming succession scheme.
“There’s been a lack of support that young farmers and young people within rural Ireland have faced over the last number of years,” he said.
“They’ve been pretty much forced to leave the country to find better opportunities. Young people just been forgotten about.”
Some members of the march carried signs with names of government ministers as estate agents ‘selling rural Ireland’.
President-elect of Macra Elaine Houlihan said that the turnout for the march shows “the drive that rural Ireland have for a future in rural Ireland”.
“If we don’t get the action that we require out of this I suppose it’s ‘Watch this space’ to see what we do next because we are serious about having a future in rural Ireland and I’ll say it again, the government needs to realize that.”
With reporting by Hayley Halpin
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