Brendan Smith seems set for Brussels following the Fianna Fáil selection convention at the weekend. The former agriculture minister held off a strong challenge from Niall Blaney, with former ICMSA president John Comer a distant third.

Meanwhile, Wexford councilor Malcolm Byrne upset Billy Kelleher for Fianna Fáil’s nomination in Ireland South.

One question on many people’s lips is whether Peter Casey will run. The Midlands/Northwest will be the “group of death”. Fianna Fáil will surely take a seat, and sitting MEPs Matt Carthy and Mairead McGuinness are near certainties. That leaves one seat to be fought between current MEPs Marian Harkin and Luke Ming Flanagan, two strong vote-getters, and Maria Walsh, a charismatic candidate. To add to the mix, Fianna Fáil is tipped to add Galway TD Anne Rabbitte to its ticket (even though she only got one-third of Niall Blaney’s vote).

Casey might instead run in the five-seat Ireland South, which currently has no strong independent candidate. It looks like a carve-up between two each for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, with Liadh Ní Riada, like her Sinn Féin colleagues, sure of re-election. FF needs to add a second candidate to win a second seat, of course, and Kelleher is high-profile. All assuming the UK don’t end up contesting the election, in which case there’s no fifth seat. Brexit is like dust, it gets everywhere.

The thousands of students who took to the streets last Friday demanding action on climate change will be pleased to know that they appear to have put the fear of God in the farming establishment. There were multiple mentions of the protest among the great and the good of Irish agriculture assembled at the RDS for an agri-food climate action summit. The adults in the room felt the “urgency” of the situation, while their children protested on the issue, outside Leinster House, just up the road.

The kids had not yet left the streets when Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed announced a long-awaited €10m pot of money for rooftop solar panels on farm sheds, presenting it as a “response to students’ climate change demonstrations”. The Dealer cannot recall a farmers’ protest achieving results so quickly. Maybe we should send our children out to march against Brexit and low farm incomes?

Drom and Inch GAA Club, just outside Thurles in north Tipperary, held a fundraising event called the Oskars last weekend to raise money for a new pitch. Seven short films were created, with locals as the actors. Former Fine Gael minister and independent poll-topper in north Tipp. Michael Lowry made an impromptu appearance in a scene from Braveheart. Decked out as a member of the clergy, a line from the Holycross man got one of the loudest laughs of the night, when after blessing the troops before they went into battle he whispered to William Wallace: “Make sure you put the Fianna Fáil lads up the front on the charge.”

Numerous local farmers took part, including senior inspector at the Department of Agriculture Bill Callanan, who starred as ‘the Yank’ in Our Field. He was the highest bidder on the titular field, however all ended well when he donated the use of the field to the parish.

Sandwiched between tractor trailer-mounted scenes of border checkpoints featuring Irish customs officers, smugglers and US President Donald Trump, passengers on the Lakeland Dairies float threw sweets at the populace assembled outside the co-op’s head office in Killashandra, Co Cavan, during the town’s St Patrick’s Day parade. And good ones at that – Quality Street. The Dealer has not seen such extravagance since the heyday of the boom. Lakeland appears to have cash left in its coffers after gobbling up LacPatrick.

Historian Dáibhí Ó Cróinín from NUI Galway shattered some of The Dealer’s beliefs on the Leap of Faith show on RTÉ Radio 1 last Friday, suggesting that St Patrick did not single-handedly convert the Irish.

“This idea that Patrick was driving around Ireland like a farmer on a tractor spreading Christianity like slurry – that’s not possible,” Prof Ó Cróinín said. Instead, the mass conversion of this island’s population could only have been the work of a large number of missionaries. Not to mention the poor availability of slurry spreaders in the fifth century.

I see that IPL’s (formerly One51) executive directors Alan Walsh (CEO) and Pat Dalton (CFO) received bonuses of €352,000 (CAD$534,000) last year, despite profits plunging by 90%.

Shareholders will be scratching their heads after these senior executives sold them a dream of an IPO which has now cost upwards of €24m (CAD$37m), with a depleted share price and diminishing profits. I’m reminded of the bonus culture that prevailed in the past.

I see that Seán Clarke has been re-elected as chair of ifac. The Mayo farmer, who has been a long-standing member of the committee, was first elected as ifac chair in 2017. Clarke had previously been the Connacht vice-president of the IFA. Teddy Cashman was also re-elected as vice-chair. He was previously the IFA liquid milk chair.

Ifac specialises in taxation and succession planning for farmers and agri-businesses.