Interview: ‘Farmers were the backbone of rural Ireland. Ireland without its people is nothing’

“THE dairy system in Ireland has completely changed," Pat Farrelly begins, charting the peak and decline of an industry he’s well experienced to speak on.

"In the 1940s, milk for the people of the city of Dublin came from cows that were housed and milked in yards like Morehampton Road. The fodder was transported by horse and cart, from Meath and Kildare, and it was brought to the hay market in Smithfield. I remember as a child seeing eight or 10 horses and carts going in a convoy heading for Dublin with loads of hay up to the hay market.

“The people who transported the hay were called haymen and they were highly skilled. There was one famous man, Gus Bryan from Rathmolyon. On his way, home he used to get half a dozen barrels of porter from the local pubs or he would get iron for the local blacksmiths because there was no other transport. He was the first courier.”

However, things began to change as time moved on. Automation and automobiles were next along to revolutionise the dairy industry says 88-year-old father-of-five and Scurlogstown native, Pat.

"By the end of the war, lorries came about, and cows were milked in Meath and Kildare and the milk was transported to Dublin instead. There were Lucan Dairies, Merville Dairies, and Dublin Dairies, and they sent down lorries to collect the milk. Outside of every farmer's yard was a milk stand where farmers would place these 10 or 12-gallon milk cans, which would be picked up and brought to Dublin. Rural electrification didn't come to this part of the country until 1951 so all of the cows were milked by hand and we had no running water so they had to be cooled using river water. When electricity arrived this all changed."

Tuberculosis or TB was a major issue in Ireland in the first half of the 20th century, killing thousands every year, according to Pat

"Tuberculosis was rampant in the countryside. I always felt that one of the biggest spreaders of TB was the communal cow. This was when a farmer had a cow he let local people who didn't have land come down and take milk from them. If that cow had TB, it would help spread the TB, even to the farmer's own family.”

While the country slowly came to grips with TB, the condition was still the source of a lot of hardship for people.

"The Minister for Health, Dr Noel Browne, built the sanatoriums to help fight TB, but he was very lucky as well, because at that time, the drug streptomycin was discovered which was effective against TB. Back in the 1940s, my friend's parents got TB. Their family were very young they all had to be sent out to relations because the farmer and mother had to spend a year in Peamount Hospital. They lived in a thatched house with mud walls, and when they came out the first thing they were instructed was to knock the house because the TB spores were in the house. After being away from farming for a year they had to build a new house. That caused great hardship."

After seeing a vet treat a cow for milk fever, a condition caused by insufficient calcium around calving, when he was a teenager, Pat was inspired to pursue a career as a vet. He spent six years studying at UCD, spending his summers working with different vets around the country before he eventually moved back home and opened his own clinic in Scurlogstown in December 1962. When he first started, his mother May played a big part in helping him get set up.

"My mother was very helpful. People would arrive at all hours of the day or night even at the weekend. I was often woken up at night by a person who threw a stone at my window at night by a person in the yard with a ewe lambing. If I was on another call or out socialising my mother would take the message and often bring the farmer in, make them tea and keep them company until I got back. If someone wanted to telephone it was a big ordeal. For example, if a farmer in Rathmolyon wanted to phone, they would have to ring the post office in Rathmolyon, which would be transferred to Summerhill which would be transferred in turn to Dublin and then it would be transferred down to me.

“There weren't that many vets around back then. Paddy Fay, grandfather of footballer Darren Fay, was a pharmacist in Trim, but all the farmers called into him as well,” says Pat whose wife Joan passed away in 2021.

In the 1960s farmers led a protest from Kerry and West Cork to highlight the conditions under which farming was moving. They marched to Dublin and camped on Merrion Street in an attempt to meet Minister Charlie Haughey. As part of the protest, farmers blocked bridges around the country, as Pat explains.

"The local chair of Kiltale IFA, Tom Kane, came down and asked me would I bring my tractor out on the road to block the bridges as part of the protest. I was doing my veterinary work at the time so I asked Peter O'Neill from Trim who worked on my farm to go in my place. Soon after the protest ended the Gardai arrived with a summons for Peter O'Neill for blocking the bridge. I said 'That's not fair. I told him to do that, it's my responsibility'. So the summons was issued in my name".

There was a court case in Trim for all those involved. The first group were sentenced to three months imprisonment unless they signed a bond saying they would keep the peace and give good behaviour for two years, as well as fined. If they didn't sign it they got another three months imprisonment.

"When my turn came I said 'I'm not paying a fine or signing a bond to keep the peace, I didn't break the peace'.

“I went to the witness box and addressed the court saying 'we didn't obstruct the people, we are of the people, we went to the road to highlight the government's policy of obstruction that is sending thousands of people into exile and bankruptcy'. The judge told me political speeches weren't allowed. This caused uproar with the farmers present and the judge called for the court to be cleared but the farmers locked the doors and wouldn't let the gardai in.

“They arrested us eventually and brought over 100 of us to Mountjoy. After a few weeks, the government decided for us to be unconditionally released. Then a short time later we were all arrested again and brought down to Portlaoise for not paying the fine. After some time the governor released us even though we still refused to pay.

“Farmers were the backbone of rural Ireland. Ireland without its people is nothing. There was a lot of people emigrating then. It was awful to see them go, that's why something had to be done."