There’s an old saying in journalism that “if you’re in the Sunday papers for one week you are news, but if you’re still there a week later, you are toast”.

The pressure on Larry Murrin is only ratcheting up as we head into a second weekend where he fills column inches.

The IFA vigil outside Bord Bia headquarters was a significant escalation of the situation, but a reasonable reflection of the strength of feeling on the ground.

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And on Tuesday evening, we saw government backbenchers break cover. Peter Cleere, Cathal Crowe and Ryan O’Meara, a first-time Fianna Fáil TD,all called for Murrin to consider his position.

Until that moment, the government had stood up for Larry Murrin. It could be said that they had stood in front of him, with Micheál Martin and Martin Heydon providing a human shield for the embattled Bord Bia chair.

Both men had defended him, as did Jim O’Toole, Bord Bia’s CEO. The one person we hadn’t heard from was Larry Murrin himself. That is changing in these pages, and it’s clear from his interview with Lorcan Roche-Kelly that Murrin feels he should not have to step down.

Both sides are becoming entrenched.

Meanwhile, farmers in the south-east are wrestling with flooding and bluetongue.

There is a link, as both are largely weather-related events. Once, the prevailing winds across Ireland blew from the south west almost all the time. It meant that rain clouds had exhausted themselves before addressing the “sunny south east”.

But recently, a lot of the time has seen weather swirl in from the Bay of Biscay, catching Devon, Cornwall, Wales and Ireland’s south east corner.

That’s why the last few springs have been more difficult in a traditionally early planting area, and why the Slaney, Nore, Barrow and Suir all burst their banks this week.

It’s also why no farmer was really surprised that the first bluetongue case occurred within shouting distance of the Wexford coast, a midge was always going to successfully cross St George’s channel.

We can only hope that the government’s response to Bluetongue is more urgent and coherent than their flood relief programme has been in recent decades.

Labelling the problem

Every now and then you hear a line that stops you in your tracks. On Saturday morning, speaking on Countrywide , David Walsh-Kemmis of Ballykilcavan Brewing Company said that his total input costs -malt, hops and yeast- were 14c per pint of stout.

He speculated that companies like Diageo with economies of scale could possibly buy their inputs for half that price.

“The label costs 15c,” he added. “The bottle costs 22c. We could actually pay a lot more for the barley that we use and not make any real difference to the profitability of the brewery,” he added.

Farmers of every enterprise are price takers, helpless to gain a price that reflects their costs and leaves them a margin.

And as price takers, farmers don’t feel that they are able to gain a reward for the efforts they make to deliver a product that is sustainable and traceable.

And that is why they are so jaundiced over quality assurance schemes, Bord Bia and Larry Murrin.