DEAR SIR:

The letter in last week’s Irish Farmers Journal from Diarmuid Cohalan, Co Cork, headlined “Branch structure decline contributed to crisis” should be compulsory reading for those charged with the reform of the IFA.

There is so much social isolation in rural Ireland that the local IFA meetings were very important for people to meet. The IFA had a moral responsibility to curtail rural social isolation because of its branch structure throughout the whole country.

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This is what the IFA should be about rather than selling telecom packages – on one day alone I got four telephone calls from IFA to change to their package.

Monthly meeting

It would not be too much to expect the IFA to have a monthly meeting in its branches during the winter months where issues would in turn be taken to the County Executive meetings and provide a small amount of money needed to have such a structure in place.

The central IFA structure was adopted as a sort of cut and paste measure to keep it in touch with the local branch.

One meeting a year is an insult to the intelligence of IFA ordinary members. I hope the new reforms will look at all aspects of the ups and downs of farming.