Mary Lou McDonald brought her A-game to the ICMSA AGM on Monday. The Sinn Féin leader, accompanied by the party’s agriculture spokesman Matt Carthy, spent over an hour in what was the most significant public engagement between a Sinn Féin leader and a traditional farm organisation in living memory. McDonald began by paying tribute to farming, describing it as the one sector that has proven itself up to the task of economic generation, “again and again”.

She balanced praising the dairy sector, which she said “helped Ireland to come through the financial crisis faster than we otherwise would have done”, with acknowledging Sinn Féin’s traditional support base among farmers.

“Sinn Féin makes no secret of and no apologies for our support of smaller and poorer farmers, those in peripheral regions and on marginal land, those in our suckler and sheep sectors,” she said.

Climate

“Sinn Féin is committed to ensuring that Ireland meets our emission reduction targets,” McDonald said. That would involve hard decisions for agriculture, she added.

She accused the Government parties of missing “every climate target they have set themselves”, describing it as disingenuous “for them to point the finger at farmers and suggest it is your fault.”

The questions that followed were harder than those Ryan Tubridy had put to her last week. Straight out of the gate came one on taxation.

One farmer asked: “Can you give me a solid iron-clad undertaking here that any capital taxes do not affect farm assets.”

“Yes,” replied McDonald, “working assets, farm assets, of course they are distinct from other assets that we would look to capture in a wealth tax.”