A busload of farmers from north Tipperary will descend on Leinster House next Tuesday, when the Oireachtas Agriculture Committee will hear a submission from a delegation drawn from their ranks. The issue being raised is Department of Agriculture inspections, precisely inspections in North Tipperary/East Clare. Farmers have have long complained about the inspection regime in the area. The figures, as revealed in these pages in January, back them up.

The Department of Agriculture’s Nenagh office carried out an average of 321 inspections in each of the six years to 2015 compared with an average of 299. Nationally, one-third of the farmers inspected were penalised, while half of the north Tipperary/east Clare farmers inspected got a penalty. The average penalty applied nationally over the six years was €880 – for them it was €1,303.

At a protest back in March outside the Department’s Nenagh office, we reported stories from farmers where a REPS inspection proceeded on the farm of a man whose mother had died that day, and where an inspection proceeded on the day of a family confirmation.

Relentless pressure has followed- IFA officers collected 600 signatures for a petition in a single weekend. That petition was presented to Agriculture committee chair Pat Deering, and here we are.

Richard Kennedy as deputy president has responsibility for negotiating the IFA charter of rights and will be present.

The vexed question of whether farmers are always and fully informed of their rights around the inspection process is significant nationally, but it may that the battleground will be in north Tipperary.

That’s all independent of the high profile court judgement last summer overturning a 100% penalty incurred by farmer Michael O’Connor from Nenagh.