The problem is that the IFA constantly bangs on about seeking greater transparency from the businesses that farmers depend on for their livelihoods.

Meat factories are regularly attacked by the likes of the IFA because nobody really has any idea how much they are making. Are they operating on razor-tight margins that justify prices barely covering the farmers’ cost of production?

Or, as many suspect, are they actually amassing huge fortunes on the backs of thousands of small farmers that would be operating at a loss only for the EU subsidy payments that are keeping them afloat?

Farmers are dead right to demand more transparency. If, as the factories claim, there are no fortunes being made, what have they got to hide?

But when the leader of the IFA is also afraid of showing what his business makes, that seriously weakens the organisation’s case for more transparency.

Why should the Queally, Browne, Goodman or Keating families feel obliged to reveal to all and sundry what their factories are making if farmers aren’t prepared to reciprocate?

Part of the reason for this predicament has been the almost invisible but constant consolidation of farming operations.

The IFA’s mantra that Irish farms are cute family-run operations is a somewhat skewed version of reality.

Yes, the CAP subsidy payment is still funnelled out to close to 130,000 individual farming entities, but the vast majority of these are part-time operations that account for less and less of the actual output from Irish agriculture.

It’s estimated that 25pc of the national kill is being sourced from 160 farms, despite there being closer to 100,000 farms with beef listed as an enterprise.

Close to 230 pig farms account for the €500m of annual pork output, while 34 mushroom growers employ an average of 100 each, and produce €120m annually.

There’s probably not more than 300 commercial vegetable and potato producers left, producing about €200m of crops.

That’s about 700 farms that account for close to €1.5bn of output, or an average of over €2m per farm.

I’m guessing there’s another 300 dairy and tillage farms that would be in the same league.

This would mean that about 1,000 farmers, or less than 1pc of the total, account for 20pc of total Irish farm-gate output.

These operations happily fly under the umbrella of the IFA’s ‘family farm’ and, in most cases, are family owned and operated. But they are almost all incorporated entities, employing lots of staff, and often making lots of money.

Figures from Ireland’s largest farm accountancy group, IFAC, show that the rate of farms adopting a company status continues unabated.

Close to half of all their dairy clients are now operating some form of a company structure.

In the business world, these are all figures that would be celebrated, but that flies in the face of the image that farm lobbyists trade on.

Tim Cullinan has achieved what most businessmen spend a lifetime striving for.

The five years before the most recent set of accounts saw Cullinan’s Woodville Farms bank profits averaging over €750,000 a year.

More remarkable is the fact that this self-made millionaire volunteered his time and effort to get involved with the IFA to such an extent that he became its president over three years ago.

Despite the sizeable €140,000 a year salary for the IFA president, it is unlikely to compensate fully for the loss of earnings that Cullinan will have endured during his long absence from his business.

So farmers have been and should be grateful to have such a capable person willing to sacrifice so much of his time and energy on their behalf.

However, the gulf between the majority of farmers that are part-time and barely profitable, and the minority that are developing large corporate set-ups is growing all the time.

That’s an uncomfortable reality that the IFA, and Cullinan in particular, know only too well.

When I asked him why he had taken his company unlimited, he had the classic corporate response: “No comment.”

​Darragh McCullough runs a mixed farm enterprise in Meath, elmgrovefarm.ie.