'It's gone mad'- Mayo farmers at ploughing hit out at rising fuel prices
Mayo farmers at the National Ploughing Championships hit out at the ‘crazy’ fuel prices
Over the past three days, farmers from across the country have been travelling to Screggan, Co. Offaly to attend the National Ploughing Championships.
Following the fuel protests that took place earlier in the year, reporter John Gleeson spoke to farmers from Co. Mayo about the fuel prices which are rising once again.
“It’s gone mad,” said Mayo Abbey man Michael Fallon, who works in contracting, adding that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to pay for.
“The last diesel we bought was €1.54 a litre, it was €0.97 back in Feburary.”
Michael believes there is need for protests similar to what we seen earlier in the year, “I think there’ll have to be, they don’t seem to be doing anything about it, there taking more in now then if they didn’t put the carbon tax on at all that they suspended so...where is it going to stop.”
“They can’t keep taxing us out of existence,” Michael added, calling on the government to make cuts at the next budget in support of farmers and haulers.
He spoke about the hidden costs that farmers also experience, “no one talks about the price of a barrel of oil going up, what we have to buy to put into bailers and tractors, they’re all talking about the diesel but there’s hidden costs then as well.”
JP Murphy, who is a farmer and plasterer from Belmullet, Co. Mayo, agrees that the “crazy” fuel prices make it difficult to “keep everything going.”
“It’s ridiculous what they’re trying to do, there’s contractors out there trying to survive, I don’t know what’s going to happen if they keep going with the prices.”
JP added that he believes the government “will have to do something about carbon tax, people won’t be able to travel or go to work.”