Listening to Mercosur protesters in Athlone, it is clear that the Irish authorities have done an exceptionally bad job of explaining the facts. Photograph: Gareth Chaney/AFP via Getty Images
As a young civil servant in the Department of Finance’s economics team in the 1970s and early 1980s, I learned on the job about a wide range of policy challenges. A significant amount of my time was spent on the agricultural sector, so the Farmers Journal was a must read.
This focus on agriculture reflected the sector’s importance for the Irish economy. In the early 1970s, agriculture accounted for 18 per cent of Irish national income, falling to about 10 per cent by the early 1980s.
Today, if the Common Agricultural Policy paymen
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