A river runs through it...

By Mark Little

The long lazy arc of the Meelick weir stretches across the swollen River Shannon at the meeting point of three of the nation’s four provinces. It is also a unique political junction: the meeting point of three of the four constituencies in the European elections.

I was standing on the Galway side of the river in the North-West constituency yesterday afternoon. On the other side is Offaly and the East constituency and at some point on its journey across the river, the weir enters Tipperary waters and the South constituency.

As Prime Time’s A-team, Samantha, Nick and Pat, grappled with the problems of filming in bad light and periodic blasts of rain, I got a chance to stroll out on the weir to take in the majesty of the Shannon and the comforting sound of the rushing brown water.

The river runs through this part of Ireland like a central artery, sustaining life and providing a boundary to it, but also making it more complicated.

A few miles upriver, just outside Banagher, we met farmer Tom Turley, who guided us towards his 17^th century farmhouse with a dry-witted crack about the floodwaters spreading out from the river.

‘We’re two miles from the Shannon,’ he told Sam on the phone, ‘and getting closer all the time’.

Meeting Tom is an antidote of sorts. Usually, my only contact with farm activists like Tom are in the antiseptic, thoroughly urban surroundings of a TV studio where it’s hard to conjure up the reality of CAP, REPS and nitrates directives and the whole host of issues facing the nation’s 120,000 farmers.

But looking out towards the Shannon, it was easy to see and smell and hear the increasingly harsh reality of farming in Ireland. First there’s the weather. Tom’s biggest worry isn’t the floodwaters from the Shannon but the near continuous rain of recent weeks which has left farmers across Ireland with almost no silage to feed their animals. Tom says he is a week or ten days away from a real crisis, and he’s already had to provide emergency feed to some of his neighbours in a worst state than he.

In so many parts of Ireland, the workings of the European Union are a distant, alien reality but on Tom’s farm Europe touches everything. Tom speaks with passion about the notion of Europe, and Ireland’s place in it, but you quickly sense his disillusionment with policies out of Brussels and the way they are being implemented in places like Banagher.

Too much regulation was a constant theme with Tom as we walked through his fields, scattering the cattle - sucklers and their protective mothers - and a disciplined corps of sheep. Tom told me he needs to worry about every stray bit of plastic on his land, every detail of his daily routine, even the proximity of cattle to the nettles around the farm gate.

Recession has bitten deeply here. ‘I am running faster and harder to make even less,’ Tom told me. The burden of form-filling and administration takes up an ever increasing share of his time. And the margins on the lamb and organic beef he produces continue to be squeezed by the big retailers. He predicts a real crisis in food security across Europe if change doesn’t come, and not just change to agricultural policy but the way we produce, regulate and sell the food we depend on.

I’ve heard all this before. I’m also aware of the counter-arguments. I know this is just one side of many complicated issues. But I am glad the Shannon led me to Tom, to one farmer’s reality and to some of the genuinely pressing issues that shape these European elections for an increasingly hard-pressed and sceptical slice of the electorate.

By the way, we’re going to back on the Shannon next week and are particularly interested in any stories or comments or suggestions from people in Athlone or Limerick and all points in between. We’d love to be able to take as many points of views into account for this piece we are doing. Do send us an email an let us know your feelings on this issues to primetime[at]rte[dot]ie, or you can leave a comment below, either way, feel free to get in touch.