Has urban Ireland finally a voice?

the farmers rowing in with the likes of Duffy/Geoghagen and having their strike stunt has meant their standing has took one hell of a beating.

If Leo Varadkar is your voice then youre fairly fooked.

Yes, I should have stated that that biomed/pharma nexus in Cork harbour is an urban rather than a rural development.

Ireland's inland infrastructure was so underdeveloped that it was easier to just bulk buy farm land all around the harbour for industrial zoning and simply ship in the factories. Now Lieber builds parts for massive port cranes in Kerry, ships them from Fenit to Rushbrooke in Cobh for final assembly before being exported.

It was interesting to read some of the Census 1926 highlights, like 51% of workers worked in an agri setting, compared to only 4% a century later. Two decades ago I used to have to call to a lot of farms in a previous job and the average holder would be late 50s or older, their successor will be living in the local town, or abroad with little or zero interest in taking on the holding that would fall over without subsidies. A lot of land would be rented out to one local big farmer who'd was consolidating the business with newer practices and technology.

I think the national idea of what is rural Ireland is can be extremely varied now compared to the black and white, urban/rural divide of the past. But the notion that rural Ireland is real/true/authentic Ireland seems as legitimate as your average yank romance flick showing boreens as national routes.

Dublin itself generates more PAYE income tax than the rest of the country combined.

We import most of the food we eat.

We export most of the food we produce.

The irish tax payer pays subsidies for the exported food they will never eat and will pay twice in the long game due to climate change fines incurred from our exported food production.

We need to find ways of helping rural ireland diversify employment so that it is not dependent on subsidised working practice.

And then he rolled back on it. He hadn't got the courage of his own convictions.

Its still the irish tax payer that foots the bill.

The irish taxpayer contributes about 3 billion to the EU each year and only gets back about 2.2 billion.

70% of the 2.2 billion is subsidies for agri and rural supports.

Agri is not contributing 70% of the 3 billion.

I agree we shouldnt create an urban rural divide and farms should receive subsidies to produce food security, but that doesnt mean we should over subsidise over production.

90% of our beef is exported. It isnt an efficient use of tax payers money to subsidise that over production and then to top it off, we get fined by the EU for not hitting climate targets because we over produced beef..