Micheál Martin’s near 15-year leadership of Fianna Fáil is under unprecedented pressure following what was a disastrous presidential election campaign.

Would a change of party leader, and Taoiseach, matter much to farming? It might.

Right now, Jim O’Callaghan is the only identifiable successor should Martin be ousted by his own parliamentary party.

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He’s someone that has had very little formal engagement with the farming community, and he represents perhaps the most affluent urban constituency in the country.

Issues like ANC payments and Mercosur wouldn’t come up too often among his Dublin Bay South constituents.

Of course, all politicians depend on their advisers and on the sectoral specialists within the party to brief them.

Were O’Callaghan to come in, he would have over six months before taking the chair of the European Council, which comprises the EU’s 27 heads of state. That could be a pivotal period for the CAP’s future, and its funding. Ireland is being looked to as the likely broker of an overall EU budget deal for 2028-2035.

We would certainly have more focus on the CAP than Lithuania, who succeed Ireland in early 2027.

While agriculture is important to the Baltic state, the main focus will be on security, with Russia on its doorstep. And Greece, which is next in line, will be focused on immigration.

There is a precedent here. Most farmers remember that in 2013, Simon Coveney chaired the ministerial council that agreed a CAP that rowed back on the drastic Ciolos reforms.

They might not recall that in parallel, Enda Kenny brokered an overall EU budget deal that properly supported the CAP as Ireland and Europe struggled to emerge from the economic crash of five years earlier.

It’s unlikely that many of Fianna Fáil’s TDs and senators will have CAP at the forefront of their minds when considering a new leader.

But the focus on the CAP and the EU budget in Brussels is so intense that Billy Kelleher and Barry Cowen will. Kelleher has emerged from his party’s electoral debacle with credit. He spoke impressively across a wide range of farming issues at Saturday’s Macra conference in Rosscarbery, right when Catherine Connolly’s landslide election was confirmed.

And Cowen will be an influential voice in his party as it deliberates its immediate future. The initial pressure on Martin has died down a little, but any little slip now could be fatal.

Meanwhile, Simon Harris has avoided the same level of scrutiny. Fine Gael may have blown a unique opportunity to win the presidency for the first time, but Heather Humphreys’ 424,987 votes suggests Fine Gael’s base held up.

It’s just that she completely failed to attract votes from outside her party. For now, the Fine Gael shed is quiet, but Harris, like Martin, needs a few months of progress on key issues to settle everything down.