Ultimately, we are all the centres of our own universe and, understandably, we become absorbed by the issues facing us as individuals.

Over the last week, I have attended a number of gatherings – all of them interesting, all of them dealing with issues of importance, but each of the main speakers had a different view of the world.

At farm industry level, the opening of the new Kerrygold plant on the Dairygold Co-op site at Mitchelstown marks a milestone in the development of two totally farmer-owned institutions – let’s hope the linkages grow to farmers benefit. But I may have been one of the few there who, when they played a brief clip of the former Bord Bainne chief executive Tony O’Reilly launching the Kerrygold brand in the late 1960s, was able to reflect how he was in his prime, during his apparently effortless ascent to the corporate heights in Ireland and America. But now he has been declared bankrupt, his wonderful art collection dispersed, his Irish farm and home sold.

I was pondering this when a west Cork farmer I know well told me firmly that it wasn’t only in Donegal that there were harvesting problems, but that a persistent sea mist in coastal areas of Cork had resulted in unharvested, sprouted grain and rotten broken down straw. The stress of this with the combination of low milk prices must be placing huge strain on individual families.

Meanwhile, in Dublin, I went to listen to two speakers also facing real challenges. Hearing the Taoiseach speak before he went to Bratislava, he was clearly anxious about the national changes in store as a result of the UK leaving the EU. Like the rest of us, he has no real knowledge of what the eventual deal will mean for Ireland, coming as it does on top of the Apple judgement in Brussels and the ever-increasing demands at home for greater government spending in a range of health and social welfare areas as well as trying to deal with the realisation of the damage being done by our high tax rate and unbalanced tax structure.

And finally, I listened to Peter Sutherland, now the UN special representative of the Secretary General for International Migration, and the intensely held views he had on our duties to less fortunate fellow human beings. But while Sutherland’s concerns and commitment were very real, he acknowledged he had no silver bullet to offer except to plead for greater joint European action to help refugees.

His view down the decades has been a call for greater European integration, and he has never strayed from that.

But back to individual farmers’ problems, the sense of personal responsibility for a farm is so real and the feeling of isolation in a time of family and personal trauma can be so acute that listening to some of the human stories, I have no doubt we need some kind of specialised service available to help. Who should run it and pay for it is for another day but, ultimately, the farm organisations themselves have to come up with a proposal.