Did you hear the one about the Tipperary hurler and the Italian football supporter? If not, read on.

Remember when it seemed to be open season on farming during the first few weeks of the year? Mick Wallace, the Independent Wexford TD, rowed in with a pointed Dáil question to Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed in early February.

The question asked “if policies to decrease the beef and dairy herd and diversify farming output in order to reduce emissions from the agriculture sector will be introduced”.

“The meat and dairy herds are to Ireland what the coal industry is to Poland and the fracking gas industry is to the United States, namely, a short-sighted cash generator, the expansion of which is undermining the chances of survival of the planet,” continued Wallace.

Creed described the analogies as “unfortunate” and defended the carbon footprint of the Irish dairy and beef sectors in a long exchange.

The ICMSA president Pat McCormack went a little further, reminding the public of Mick Wallace’s past involvement in a sector which itself proved unsustainable.

“To hear deputy Wallace thrash the very sectors who had played the biggest part in rescuing our country from [the economic crash] will strike many of us as the single most brass-necked and hypocritical comments that the Irish public have heard in a very long time,” said McCormack.

McCormack played the ball as well as the man, pointing out that Irish farming is “not destructively extractive like coal mining or fracking”. He also highlighted that it is often farmers who “are and have been the most vociferous opponents of environmentally destructive sectors like mining, fracking”.

This is what they would call “senior hurling” in Tipperary. Mick Wallace, founder of Wexford Youths FC and a former Torino season-ticket holder (I don’t know if this indulgence has survived his bankruptcy) clutched his ankle and called for a yellow card.

He must have taken grave exception to something Mr McCormack said, because Independent News and Media-owned local paper the Wexford People published a fulsome apology for the article it ran on McCormack’s reaction. It highlighted that Mick Wallace had “an excellent track record in the industry in relation to the quality of the workmanship, the treatment of the workers and the financial success of the projects engaged”.

I doubt the ICMSA will be as quick to say “mea culpa”.