‘I think I had a serious CV in agriculture… I was disappointed not to get the Ministry’

Fianna Fáil TD Jackie Cahill talks about taking over the family farm at early age, losing an eye, reluctantly getting involved in farm politics, and the issues facing the sector

‘I’m definitely the only farmer in the Dáil that’s milking a herd of cows,” says Tipperary Fianna Fáil TD Jackie Cahill, pointing to a reduction in the number of farming TDs in recent times.

“A lot of the TDs that had been lobbying for farmers lost their seats in the last election,” he says, highlighting Kevin O’Keeffe, Michael D’Arcy, Bobby Aylward and Pat Deering.

“Farming wouldn’t have the lobbying power it once had. Tipperary is probably one of the counties that if we wanted to elect a farmer, we could, but there are not many counties like that now.”

While farming issues are a key focus for Cahill, he stresses that Covid-19 issues are dominating TDs’ time at the moment.

“Farming has come out of Covid relatively unscathed and very few other sectors of the economy can say that,” he says.

“I do a lot of work with private bus operators and their backs are to the wall; you have the issues with the pubs; schools are roaring for money to meet the social distancing guidelines; you have boutique owners who weren’t able to sell their stock and now have had to restock; B&Bs… you could go on and on.

“Farmers need to be conscious that there is a huge amount of demands on the exchequer at the moment and revenue coming in is going to be down substantially.

“Dara (Calleary) is going to have a hard fight at the cabinet table,” he warns.

Succession

Cahill, 57, believes that succession issues and the 24/7 nature of political life are a key driver behind the fall-off in active farmers in the Dáil, but he says he’s lucky.

“If I hadn’t a successor I wouldn’t be farming now either,” he says, adding that his nephew is “mad into farming”.

Unusually for the time, Cahill took over the family farm at a young age and still remembers the conversation with his father about his future.

“I was an only son and, while I got on exceptionally well with my father, there was never huge discussions about whether I would stay farming,” he says.

After what he describes as “a fairly good Leaving”, he was all set to head to university to study accountancy.

“I was coming in after milking the cows on an August morning, and he (father) was at the table. He says ‘you’re going to uni?’. I said I was and he says ‘I don’t want you to go, I won’t be able to keep going without you. Will you stay farming?’ I said I would, but what about my mother, who very much wanted me to go to university. ‘I’ll deal with her,’” he said.

“He went out the door and that was the end of the discussion.”

Cahill says he has no regrets about not going to university and notes that his father committed to hand over an outside farm to him when he was 20.

Things changed again when his father got sick soon after with Motor Neurone Disease and Cahill ended up taking over the reins at 24.

Farm accident

Fate then dealt another blow: Cahill suffered a bad farm accident, and was in and out of hospital for three years.

“A nail went into my eye and I eventually lost the eye. It gives me problems at times, but you couldn’t say I haven’t lived a full life,” he laughs.

The injury left him unable to do some physical work; and when he overextends himself, he could have to spend a day in bed with headaches.

“The nerve-endings in my eye were so badly damaged they never recovered. I couldn’t pull a calf now or anything like that. I have to be very careful, but you learn to live with those things.”

Cahill needed help on the farm, but that didn’t stop him significantly scaling it up.

“We bought a number of farms over the years and expanded our acreage a lot. My father used to rent an awful lot of ground and while he hadn’t a huge amount of land at home, he was ready to reinvest,” he says.

Family farm

Along with his nephew, who is also a qualified vet, Cahill milks 120 cows while also running some beef cattle.

“We were in liquid milk up to last year we got out because it wasn’t profitable; this was our first year spring calving,” he explains.

He says the drought in 2018 left an awful mark on dairy farming and says a surprising number of dairy farmers are still under pressure as a result.

“I feared the same thing was going to happen this year. The last week of May it was heading for disaster, then the rain came.

“Some people think these herds of cows are white gold, but the costs involved are plenty and if you go in too far, you’re not able to come back.”

Farm politics

For a man who would go on to lead one of the largest farm organisations in the country, farm politics held no attraction for a young Jackie Cahill.

“My father was an ICMSA man and was chair in Tipperary. He was great friends with former president Seán Kelly. Seán would ring the house at night to talk to Dad and my mother would tell me to take him out a chair. There would often be nights you’d be sent to get the electric fire.

“I used to say ‘what in hell could they be talking about on the phone for two hours?’. It was politics, of course. I grew up in farm politics, but I always said I wouldn’t get involved in it.”

However, the role of his father in his life again came to the fore.

“Three men came to the house one Friday evening to

‘We are in government, we are getting the blame for everything: if the cat had kittens at the moment, we’d get the blame’