Brendan Dunleavy, Killeshandra, Co Cavan.

DEAR SIR: Peter Young’s recent revelations about the sorry state of agricultural credit in Ireland prompts the following question: what do Ireland and North Korea have in common? Answer: They are the only two countries on the planet who do not have an agricultural bank.

Irish farmers are now thrown in with some very strange company indeed. Even Angola, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Vietnam and Outer Mongolia have their own agricultural banks. Peter Young’s analysis of the current farm credit crises lifts the lid on one of the biggest scandals in the history of Irish agriculture (Irish Farmers Journal 26 March 2016). Vulture capital funds have replaced venture capital funds. Peter’s exposé of these realities should be compulsory reading for the next ministers for finance and agriculture – before they get their seals of office from President Higgins.

It was not always like this in Ireland. Nearly 100 years ago, one of the first priorities of the new Irish State was to support the country’s farmers. Our first ministers for agriculture and finance – Michael Collins, Ernest Blythe and Paddy Hogan – knew what they had to do. Specifically, they knew that a reliable source of agricultural credit was one of the first steps in the essential process of nation-building.

Therefore, in 1927 they set up the Agricultural Credit Corporation (ACC). For the next 75 years, the ACC was a vital cog in the wheel of Irish agricultural development. But in 2002, the government of the day decided we didn’t need a State-owned agricultural bank any longer. Lending priorities changed from lending to farmers to lending to builders and there the problems started.

The ACC was privatised and sold off to the Dutch Group, Rabobank. Within a few years, hundreds of millions of euro were lost and written off. This was a new experience for the ACC. In the good old days of lending to Irish farmers, losses and debt write-offs were unheard of. It didn’t take long for Rabobank to consider its position. A decision to close down ACC and leave Ireland in a hurry set Irish agricultural credit services back 100 years. Most surprisingly, the only people who tried to stop any of this were the ACC staff trade unions, SIPTU and UNITE. No government agency or farm organisation ever raised an objection or question about what was going on in ACC/Rabobank.

We are now heading into a decade of celebrating events which started in 1916. Perhaps, as a nation, we should also remember the first national economic development actions implemented by our fledging State, nearly 100 years ago. Would it be asking too much that some of these constructive agricultural development actions might be repeated in 2016? Is it now high time for ACC mark two?

If it is consistent with its economic policies in Africa and southeast Asia, even the IMF could not object to this.