A Cavan Senator has outlined her experience of getting food to IFA protesters at the Bord Bia offices in Dublin over the weekend.
The farmers are continuing to call for the resignation of Bord Bia Chair, Larry Murrin, following revelations that his company, Dawn Foods, imports Brazilian Beef.
Sarah O'Reilly explained how she arrived at the Bord Bia HQ on Saturday night, to show her support for Cavan IFA, who were protesting outside the building.
On her arrival she found the farmers very agitated, as their colleagues in Leitrim IFA had informed them that the six protesters left in the building had not been granted access to food all day.
There was particular concern for two of the people in the building who had medical conditions.
Senator O'Reilly made contact with a colleague who has a direct line to the Minister of Agriculture and began negotiations to get food into the protesters.
The Aontú Senator was happy to say that at around 9.30pm she was able to get burgers and chips into the farmers in the building.
Speaking to Northern Sound, Senator O'Reilly outlined the situation she arrived upon.
"I decided on Saturday night that I'd head up just to show them a little bit of support. I arrived about 8pm/8.30pm and they were very agitated and concerned. They had taken over from the Leitrim IFA group who were there before them during the day and who had told them that the people inside, who were barricaded inside in the building, had received no food all day. I suppose they were really annoyed about that because there was two of the protesters, six people inside the building, and two of them had medical conditions. One of them was a diabetic. Now, I understood at the time that Board Bia brought the person with the diabetes away and fed them, but fed them in isolation in a room on their own so that they couldn't share their food with any of the others. So this was going on 8.30pm/9pm at night, and the five others in the building hadn't received anything, only water and an apple to share among the rest of them, one apple. They would have had the apple, I think, around lunchtime because they put a video up showing them sharing out the apple. That was about lunchtime on Saturday. When I arrived on Saturday night and none of them had received anything. At that stage, when they were eating the apple, they had had nothing to eat for 21 hours before that. So that was a long time."
