‘Myself and Danny Healy-Rae wouldn’t get on – I don’t agree with his views on climate change’

ENERGY and electricity always interested Dinny Galvin, and finding ways to save money on them has been a lifelong passion for him.

“I had only one year in secondary school. My dad passed away when I was 16 and I had to jump into his wellingtons straight away,” he says.

“My mother was alive at the time and I had two sisters who needed to be supported. I just had to put the head down and plough on.”

When he took over from his father, Dinny was milking eight cows in a tie-up byre and had about 30 ewes.

Over the years he built the herd up from 8,000 to 50,000 gallons, having invested a lot of money, time and effort in the farm over the years.

“I’m well able to build a stone wall for you,” Dinny says, recalling his time in the construction sector.

“I was at that in the boom times and did quite well, and it helped me to buy quota.”

Farm accident scare

However, it was a scare with a potential farm accident that led him to his most recent career move as an AI technician.

“My cows have to travel on the public road for milking and one evening a neighbour was walking nearby and the bull lost the head,” he says.

“Thank God no one was hurt, but I brought him down the following day and I said ‘you ain’t going on the road again’.”

The scare prompted Dinny to enroll in an AI course and after breeding his own herd for several years, he started working for Dovea Genetics.

Through his work he meets farmers from all over the Dingle Peninsula and he says most are willing to make changes on their farms that could benefit the environment.

“If you sit down with a bunch of farmers and talk to them, they’ll work with you. If you dictate to them and tell them you have to do A, B, C and D they’ll turn off you,” he says.

Dinny says the negativity towards farmers about green issues upsets him and he believes most farmers would have no issues taking some environmental actions.

“Myself and Danny HealyRae wouldn’t get on for five minutes. I don’t agree with his views on climate change,” he says.

“Agriculture is contributing [to greenhouse gas emissions]. He’s mad to be saying we’re not, but farmers can do something about it.

“I’ll put my had up and say ‘yes, we are contributing to it’, but we are not doing the big damage. There are corners on every farm where these things are possible.

Dingle all the way:

Dinny Galvin pictured on his dairy farm on the Dingle Peninsula where he built his herd output up from 8,000 to 50,000 gallons

“Farmers are custodians of the land they just need to be incentivised and helped. Individually on every farm, fellas need to take stock of things.

“We need to be sustainable because we are trying to sell our product on a world market.”

However, Dinny is very much against a cull of the national herd in order to meet climate change targets. He believes that huge strides can be made to reduce the environmental footprint of farms without such a drastic measure.

Nevertheless, he says some of the dairy expansion that has taken place in recent years has been extreme.

“I see 150 cows now where there was once only 50. That’s nearly a three-man job, but I see lads trying to do it on their own. They are putting huge pressure on themselves,” he says.

Dinny also laments the state of the beef sector which he says could have much to gain from new energy technology solar panels could offer much-needed additional income for these farmers.

“PV panels are a must on dairy farm, but they could work for beef farmers too. People forget that farmers have the roof space,” he adds.

‘I see 150 cows now where there was once only 50. That’s nearly a three-man job, but I see lads trying to do it on their own. They’re putting huge pressure on themselves’