The Con Lucey report is a remarkable piece of work considering the narrow time frame in which it was put together. It is only three weeks since Eddie Downey “stepped back” and asked Con Lucey in to carry out his report.

At first glance, the report can be broadly broken down into three areas.

The first is pay levels of staff and farmer senior office holders.

The second is the corporate governance deficit that allowed these levels to clearly lose sight of the ethos of the IFA and disconnect from the incomes of the membership of the association. Both these issues have been pored over in the last month, and there are clear findings and recommendations in the report.

The third area is less eye-catching, but could prove more important in the long run. It is the examination of the current structures of the IFA, not just in terms of corporate governance, but as a decision-making body that determines and drives policy on behalf of farm families.

The impression created is of an organisation where the president and the general secretary worked very closely together – perhaps excessively so. The executive board was not used as a sounding board, and has little in the way of decision-making capacity, and so has been hamstrung.

The council also failed. It is notable that Con Lucey looks at whether it is appropriate that the county chairs are the representatives on the executive council. This was the fundamental tenet of the Dowling reforms, adopted by the IFA in 2005.

The effect has been to load the council with people who have future ambition; no bad thing in itself, but shorn of the counterbalance of a few contrarians.

Old system

Under the old system, the county chairs liased downwards with branch officers and chairs, like a county councillor, while the national council representatives dealt with national issues: top-down and bottom-up meeting in the middle.

There were always a healthy handful of council reps who had served as commodity or county chairs, and for whom this was their last significant post in the IFA. That gave a certain freedom to shoot from the hip on the issue of the day, immune from any fear that being controversial or critical might harm future election chances.

It is notable that Derek Deane in many ways fits this profile. It was he who moved against Pat Smith last January, he who raised the issue of Pat Smith’s pay. No committee functions without a cohort of contrarians willing to question everything and test its value.

Then there is the issue of the size of council at over 50 members. Giving everyone their say on each item of a packed agenda means meetings running into the small hours, but the balance between progressing issues and fully thrashing them out is hard to maintain on such an unwieldy structure.

Lucey clearly recommends giving commodity committees more power, and addressing the dual role of county chairs. He also suggests the executive board should have more teeth.

There are issues outstanding, of course. The question of whether Con Lucey can be truly objective about pay levels within the organisation is valid. He worked in the IFA, alongside almost all of the current staff, and rightly has the highest regard for his former colleagues. Does this hamper his ability to assess whether pay levels are appropriate? This matter may well need eyes that are utterly independent, but there doesn’t appear to be a massive sense of anger among farmers around the kind of figures currently being speculated on.

That apart, the report succinctly itemises the glaring structural deficits within the IFA, and puts forward concrete proposals to address them.

Perhaps Con Lucey should have been put in charge of the banking inquiry – we might have had a report years ago.

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Full Coverage: Con Lucey report