Edition Bobbett2. Speeches and statements by Elizabeth F. Bobbett

1939 Bridgetown, Meeting of the Irish Farmers’ Federation

Source: Limerick Leader, 22.04.1939

Miss Elizabeth F. Bobbett said the Federation was going to make their voices heard from now onwards. Mr. Sean MacEntee, she said, speaking at the bankers dinner, said we must increase our industries, and he would instruct the Currency Commission to send out more money. Why did he not send out ten million pounds to relieve the farmers. Britain had a Pigs Marketing Board like Eire. They put on a quota, with the result that the pigs had to be thrown into the river. Ireland is about to do the same. Britain asked Denmark and other countries to supply them, when the English farmer stopped breeding pigs, but did they ask Eire? No. Continuing, Miss Bobbett instanced a case where a man got a demand for £20 rates. The farmer had to borrow the money to pay the sheriff. That man got a receipt for £8 8s 11d, after paying £20, and the sheriff and his brat came again for the remainder. Anything, she said, can be got by determination, as was evidenced by their triumph over the Lucan Dairies last year. She appealed to all to join the Federation. She had an income tax collector visiting her one time who did not know the difference between a broken colt and an unbroken one. I told him, she added, to go up to the unbroken one and he would not be long until he would know. The were the kind of men you had telling farmers how to live (prolonged applause).