If you wanted to wish bad luck on someone in ancient China, you’d walk up to them and say “may you live in interesting times”.

In this sense, they took interesting to mean unusual or uncertain.

As we face into the autumn of 2017, there is no doubt we live in very interesting times.

Possibly the most interesting recent item is the sight of our agriculture minister Michael Creed aligning himself squarely with those pro-Brexiteers who voted to leave the European Union.

How has it happened?

How, you might ask, has this happened? To be more specific, how has the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine allowed himself to become another version of Nigel Farage, the leader of the UKIP party who marshalled the pro-Brexit brigade?

Baddies in Brussels

Farage’s irresistible message was that everything bad that happened in the UK was Brussels’ fault. The UK’s hands were tied on everything the people wanted and those baddies in Brussels were the ones holding the rope.

Now, come back across the Irish Sea and consider any agri scheme from the past few years, be it REPS to GLAS, the National Reserve for Entitlements or the Knowledge Transfer programme.

For each of these, we’re told the “rules” all come from Brussels. The extra paperwork? That’s Brussels.

Unannounced cross-compliance inspections? You guessed it, Brussels.

Or so we’re told.

It’s such a standard response from officialdom that we’re brainwashed into assuming they’ve nothing else to do in Brussels only make life hard for Irish farmers.

In fairness to Minister Creed, he’s only parroting the same line as all his predecessors.

Direct Payment Advisory Committee

Like Nigel Farage though, Minister Creed and the Department of Agriculture has had to admit every little piece of red tape doesn’t begin and end in Brussels.

The Green Cert requirement for applicants to the National Reserve was initially laid fully at the door of those dastardly bureaucrats in Brussels.

However, after being probed to provide more detail, the Minister’s office disclosed that “decisions in relation to the inclusion of additional educational criteria were taken in consultation with the Direct Payment Advisory Committee”.

So, who might be on this influential committee?

After much searching, all I could find was it’s the “main farming bodies and agricultural advisory and education providers”. That is, no mention of Brussels.

Creed in an unfortunate position

No doubt Minister Creed has the best of intentions for Irish agriculture. But it’s unfortunate that he now finds himself aligned with Nigel Farage and the pro-Brexit brigade in the UK – especially when both have been found to be blaming Brussels in the wrong for all their woes.

Kieran Sullivan and his brother farm part-time in Co. Waterford. You can follow him on Twitter: @kieran_sullivan

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