Around 1880, on a visit to Ireland, German Prussian leader Otto Von Bismarck declared that the ideal role for Irish farmers was to produce store cattle to be fattened elsewhere in Europe.

And so it proved for much of the next 120 years.

Mostly, the cattle went to Britain – the closest to us in geography, cattle breed types and in meat tradition.

The already strong live trade to food-scarce Britain was further consolidated in 1947 when the UK Fatstock Deficiency Payments were introduced and made payable on Irish cattle once they had completed three months domicile.

During this period, all cattle trails, roads, trains and ships headed east to Britain. Live shipping family dynasties came and went.

As an indication of the size of this trade, Ireland was still to aspire towards exporting 637,000 live cattle per year to Britain after the signing of the 1965 Anglo-Irish Free Trade agreement.

Under this agreement, Britain agreed to extend the deficiency payment on 25,000t of carcase beef from Ireland, alongside that paid on Irish live cattle domiciled in the UK.

This deal, coupled with US cow and prime beef contracts, was a boost to the fledgling beef slaughter plants in Ireland. Since then, the slaughter plants have been trying to elbow out live shippers.

But live shipping found other customers and outlets over the next 30 years and, at times, played a vital role in supporting cattle prices to the Irish farmer.

A feature of the Irish beef rows of spring/summer 2014 was the weakness of the Irish farmer’s hand facing the power of the meat plants. A viable live shipping competitor was sadly lacking.

When Ireland first joined the EU, the community was short of beef. Irish farmers enjoyed a price spike along with enhanced transition payments plus annual price increases, almost like the Irish public service’s so-called benchmarking increases from 2002 to 2008.

But, during the 1970s and 1980s, the markets changed profoundly. The EU had switched into beef surplus and Ireland’s 500,000t per annum output was that surplus. To shift this surplus, export refunds were introduced. New opportunities opened up for both live and carcase trade entrepreneurs.

Now the beef-deficient, oil-rich North Africa and Middle East became the focus for Irish produce. The live trade became concentrated into the hands of fewer but bigger barons.

When Britain was the big customer, the trade was dominated by forward-store bullocks for beef finishing and replacement heifers for the suckler herds of Scotland and north England.

The blue/grey Angus Shorthorn cross heifer from the west of Ireland was a favourite with the English and Scottish for suckler herd replacements.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Michael Towey from Roscommon was a seriously big player, shipping both heifers and bullocks. Another was J and P Molihan from Longford.

In 1964, John Molihan exported 10,000 young bulls to Egypt reportedly at a price of £6 12s 6d per head from Wicklow.

Western families, such as the Clarkes, Caulfields, Foleys, Maxwells, MacSharrys (out of which EU Commissioner Ray emerged), along with Meath-based Connans, Lyons, O’Connells and others, became household names for shipping heifers.

Other names were famed for shipping the forward stores. Included here were the Horgans and Murphys from Cork, Purcells, Carters, and Dillons from the Midlands.

Purcells, who started out working for Towey, quickly established their own business and became the biggest of them all.

Belgian national Omer Van Landegham was a big player, shipping cattle to the continent and further afield. He purchased a farm in north Dublin and established the impressive Skidoo pedigree Charolais and Belgian Blue herds.

A big proportion of the feeder cattle for Britain passed through the Dublin market and the sale yards operated by Ganleys, Craigies and Gavin Lowe. All were based along the North Circular Road.

Cattle were transported to Dublin by train, then walked from the stations to the market. Those bought for shipping were walked to the B&I and British Rail Port depots at the North Wall.

Livestock shipping agent Paddy Gernon, who started life as a drover, remembers walking groups of up to 50 cattle to the port through the Dublin streets watched by vigilant gardaí. This continued up till the early 1970s when the Dublin market closed.

At its peak, over 10,000 cattle a week were shipped through Dublin. Ganleys et al operated sales rings. Cattle were weighed in the Dublin market but it operated as a traditional fair.

Brothers Robert and Jim Ganley were sticklers for uniformity in cattle lots, gaining the confidence of buyers and sellers. Ganleys’ auction prices were recorded weekly by the Department of Agriculture for the national statistics. The B&I walk-on, walk-off cattle boats, which also carried foot passengers, travelled to Holyhead, Birkenhead, Silloth, Hexham, etc.

Strong links were formed between Irish exporters and the large farmer customers and estates in the UK.

The Irish exporters also shipped cattle in their own name and showed them in the big UK sales, such as York, Banbury, Rugby, Shrewsbury, etc. Some owned or rented farms in the UK as a fallback to hold cattle in the event of hitting a bad sale day.

A stain on the reputation of the Irish live cattle shippers was their boycott of the fledgling co-op marts, which started up in the 1950s. The notable exception to this was the Purcell family from Co Offaly.

Seamus Purcell supported the marts, but in turn was targeted by the rest of the shippers, who had him frozen out of the UK outlets such as Banbury and York. Purcells responded by organising their own special sale centres in the UK and eventually the dealer/exporter boycott of the Irish marts fizzled out.

Interestingly, some of the pioneers of the live trade to Libya included Hugh Tunney and Crawford Scott, later to become beef barons on both sides of the Irish border. They worked with the Molihans.

They had boatloads of stock in Libya when Gaddafi usurped control and were mightily relieved that the new regime honoured the deals on their cattle. They were paid by cheques drawn in Russia.

Libya and Tunisia remain customers for Irish cattle to this day.

The live trade to Britain declined after the 1960s. In 1975, it recovered to hit half a million again but then went into permanent decline. Paddy Gernon attributes some of the decline to the shortage of boats.

The halcyon period for the trade to North Africa was during the 1980s and 1990s. At its height, there were weeks when Egypt and Libya took over 10,000 cattle. This was real competition in the marketplace. Marts were buzzing as boats, capable of taking 3,000+ cattle, waited to be loaded in Waterford, Cork or Greenore.

The big players in the trade during this period were the Purcells and Horgans – later to be followed by the Dillons going to The Lebanon.

In particular, the charismatic Seamus Purcell secured huge government contracts in Libya and Egypt. His six brothers managed the buying and the filling of the boats, mainly through their huge lairage beside Waterford.

After contracts were signed in the early 1980s, the EU introduced export refunds, making these contracts highly profitable. Seamus Purcell purchased cattle ships and named them after his wife, Philomena, and sons, Gerard and Patrick.

Purcells, and Horgans, bought slaughter plants in Ireland and Scotland, which were subsequently sold.

In reality, this so-called third-country trade was highly subsidised for both beef and live cattle. The EU Commission, desperate to find a home for the Community (read Irish) beef surplus, introduced export refunds, which at one stage, constituted almost 70% of the value of the animal to the farmer.

This was a flat-rate payment made irrespective of the quality or breed of the beast. As a result, the export trade took mainly dairy-bred animals. There was little or no premium for “quality” beef cattle during this era, but there was competition for cattle.

BSE (Mad Cow Disease) eventually played havoc with the live (and carcase) trade to North Africa. It stopped in the early 1990s and got going again, only to come to a bigger halt in 1996.

This was a traumatic time for Irish cattle farmers, who were by now relying on intervention and direct subsidies.

Worse international market isolation was to come during the 2001 foot and mouth disease outbreak, but by this stage, EU, and especially British, beef self-sufficiency had declined almost to a position of deficit. Happily for Irish exporters, this state of play continues.

In the late 1990s, as EU internal cattle numbers declined, the Irish live export trade in beef and forward stores was replaced by a within-EU trade in calves, weanlings and light stores.

In the late 1970s, Paddy Gernon had tested the first roll-on, roll-off cattle truck. This is now the standard means of getting young stock off the island.

But the cost of this transport is very high – for example, €900 per truck to the UK and €2,500 to France. In addition, the shippers are loaded with red tape.

Shipping calves and weanlings may not provide immediate competition for beef factories, but longer term it stops a build-up of numbers. This trade has also delivered premiums for quality weanlings.

While we can all see the merit of the added value from the carcase meat trade, the adage “you need a live trade to keep the dead trade lively” is as apt today as ever.