‘The paperwork is enormous – and as for the tags...’

TOM CORCORAN is just getting over the visit from the Bord Bia inspector and he is one relieved man – he passed with flying colours.

“He was a grand fellow, the inspector, but the preparation for the visit can be very stressful. The amount of paperwork is enormous, to say nothing about the tags for the livestock. Tags should last a lifetime and with the beef animals they do because they are away early to the factory, but with the dairy boys it different,” he explains.

Tags are not Tom’s favourite part of dairy farming as he has had to replace around 20 nof them in his 95-cow British Friesian herd over the last while.

Tom farms a 130ac holding near Ballyhale, Co Kilkenny, where his dairy herd supply 450,000 litres of milk to Glanbia. He also has a sizeable beef operation, supplying cattle mainly to ABP.

“I had a friend visiting from Dublin recently and I was telling him about the tags and how it is illegal not to have them and how you have to pay penalties if they are not there. He was amazed. He said you have young criminals going around the city and they are not tagged but inno- cent cows have to be tagged. He was amazed but that’s the way it is,” Tom continues.

Tags and paperwork aside, he is a supporter of the various quality assurance schemes which he says can add 12c/kg to the price of his beef.

He is told they add value to the milk too, in terms of making the dairy products more marketable. However, farmers are not being rewarded for quality this year, with prices to suppliers on the floor.

Tom’s wife Ann is a nurse in Co Kilkenny and they have three children. Ronan, is still studying and is a tidy hurler and already the holder of an All-Ireland minor hurling medal from 2014. He plays with local club Ballyhale Shamrocks. Casey is still a pupil at the local secondary school, while the couple’s eldest, Clodagh, is completing her masters’ teaching degree at the University of Limerick.

The family had a great time recently hosting two families from Newfoundland on an exchange holiday in Ireland. It’s an annual two-way event to foster relations between Ireland and the Canadian islands.

“Their families emigrated from the southeast in the 1800s and every one of them who were over this year have the same Irish accents which their ancestor had when they left Ireland to take up fishing in Newfoundland. They were great craic and the exchange is a great idea,” Tom says.

Like every dairy farmer in the country Tom is unimpressed with the milk price but is not complaining because most of his invest-