The final cut

“There’s going to be people let go out of this yard this evening. That’s just the bottom line.”

Agricultural contractor Cormac McBreen is ashen-faced as he speaks, explaining that by the end of last Monday’s working day he will have handed at least two employees their notice. It is not a decision taken lightly.

Cormac stares out beyond his yard in Taghart South, perched on the ragged edge of Shercock parish, and fixes his gaze on something far in the distance as he steadies himself for what he’s about to say next.

A seventh-generation farmer and co-founder of Coral Plant & Agri alongside his brother Alden, Cormac is close to letting his emotions spill over. When he returns to the conversation, however, there’s steel to his voice.

“The government can deal with them. That’s the government’s fault. It’s not my fault. But I’m not being a busy fool any more. Not for anyone.”

He is speaking less to the Celt than 12 hours after posting an online message that sent shockwaves through his local area and beyond. Even now, the decision is still settling, yet Cormac is resolute. The yard has not yet gone quiet. Tractors are moving in and out and the phone rings almost non-stop. Work is still available. But, in his mind, the outcome is already decided.

“After hearing of the 0.25 cent off green diesel from our Government and weighing things up, we have decided to halt the Agri Contracting services as of midnight tonight,” he wrote on social media last Sunday.

No consultation. No winding down. Midnight.

“For starters my mental health cannot take it,” the post said. “I lived through one recession and my race to the bottom ends today.”

He adds that he cried for an hour that morning after seeing his children for the first time in a week, having spent days in Dublin on O’Connell Street with other fuel price protestors.

It is an extraordinary admission, not because it’s unique, but because it is rarely spoken aloud in a sector and culture generally built on stoic endurance rather than raw disclosure.

But the emotional toll is only part of the story.

“I stopped at Nobber graveyard and prayed to all my relatives that passed before me early, and to my grandfather for guidance,” he said. “My gut feeling has never been wrong. I often go against it and I pay the price. Not this time. Life is too short.”

Back in the yard, the consequences of that instinct are immediate, and Cormac is unflinching. He views the government’s fuel support package not as relief, but as betrayal - not only of farmers and contractors, whom he describes as operating within a “false economy”, but of ordinary working people and homeowners.

“What do they have to show for it? Nothing,” he reflects of the package offered by government.

Around him, polished machinery stand idle, gleaming under a sky that shifts between grey and unseasonably warm. The engines are off, and will stay that way until everything gets sold.

“I’ve been through one recession,” Cormac repeats. “And I am not going through another.”

At the centre of his grievance is cost - tangible, relentless, and still rising. Not mere abstract inflation but the arithmetic of survival in heavy machinery contracting.

“The two red Massey Ferguson tractors there in 2019 were €95,000 plus VAT. That same tractor today is €175,000 plus VAT,” he points, pausing as if numbers themselves resist belief.

“There’s a fusion baler there in the shed, never saw a bale since it was bought. That was €55,000 plus VAT. The same baler today is just over €100,000.”

Fuel, too, has transformed the economics of his operation. His machines, running at “full tilt” as he puts it, consume around 40 litres of diesel an hour.

“I was buying diesel at the beginning of this year at 81 cent. I’m now buying it at practically €1.50 plus VAT.”

It means the margins have disappeared entirely.

“Where do you put your rates? You’d need to be getting over €100 an hour just to stand still. You can’t even add it up any more. It’s just not feasible.”

Yet the advice is always the same: pass the cost on to the farmer. The reality though, he argues, is that this is simply impossible.

“My mental health is not going to take it this summer dealing with farmers whinging and crying. I can’t take it. So I’m getting out now, at the top and before the whole thing goes bust.”

Remarkably, Cormac says he was warned about the truth of the situation 20 plus years ago.

The family took over the farm from his uncle in 2007, though the groundwork began earlier. His uncle, James McBreen, now nearing 90, had seen multiple cycles of boom and bust during his life.

“He’s seen it all.”

Cormac says the same of his father, Victor McBreen, a retired schoolteacher from Bailieborough.

“They told me and my brother not to get into contracting,” Cormac says. “They said we wouldn’t get paid. That it was too hard a game.”

The advice got ignored. Youth has a way of mistaking warning for pessimism.

By 2010, Coral Plant & Agri was formally established. It began modestly - one or two tractors, a baler - but expanded steadily. Alongside agricultural work, the brothers drove cranes in Dublin, setting up on their own. Today Coral stands as one of the biggest suppliers of tower crane operators and labour hire in that sector in the Capital with somewhere north of 150 people employed.

“What people don’t understand is that contracting in Ireland is a false economy. Farming is no different. You don’t get paid for six months. Sometimes a year. We’re carrying cash flow for a full year. We built a business on top of another business just to keep a sinking ship afloat.”

For him, the government’s fuel measures are not just insufficient - but insulting.

“I don’t even have words anymore,” he says. “For me it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Cormac’s monthly finance bill currently stands somewhere in the region of €70,000. “My diesel bill in March was €25,000. My labour bill was €20,000. And we didn’t even turn over €40,000. So it’ll take months just to catch up. The decision was made for me by the reality of it.”

What he wanted instead, he says, was simple: A cap.

“They should cap diesel at €1. Something workable. We’re paying over 60% tax on it already. They could do it if they wanted to.”

He acknowledges the burden on government but returns repeatedly to lived experience.

“I was paying 81 cent earlier this year. Now it’s €1.50. I’ve carried every increase. If it goes to €2, the government should take responsibility for it. That’s my straight answer.”

Right or wrong, beneath the harsh economics lies human concern.

“If a neighbour needs a tank [slurry] mixed in 30 minutes, we get it done. But now that job means someone is coming from 15 miles away, burning diesel, passing my yard to do the exact same work.”

His deepest concern remains for his staff. One employee, he notes, is in the middle of securing a €290,000 mortgage.

“Right now she’s above in Carrickmacross with her fella signing off on that. If I go bust in two months, she’s on the road too.”

That, he says, is where the decision he made late on Sunday night became unavoidable.

“I’ve my money made. I’ve also been through it all before,” outlining how he went from working on the buildings to retraining to work in a gym, before pivoting to become among the most successful in the country selling aloe vera products from home.

“I know what’s coming. I am not going through another recession. When I sell the machinery, that will protect me. If I don’t, the bank will take everything, sell it cheap, and then chase after me for the shortfall.”

Cormac believes many in the contracting industry are quietly surviving through similar balancing acts.

He describes it as an “expensive hobby”, caused by the lure brought on by “shiny machinery syndrome”.

But above on O’Connell Street during the fuel protests, he says he had time to reflect sitting on the tiered plinth of The Emancipator.

“Every job I do is taking work from another local contractor,” he considers. “I never thought of it like that before this week. But that’s the truth.”

Now, Cormac says he’s stepping away so that others might survive.

“If I pull out, maybe someone else keeps going. Someone who actually needs it as their livelihood.”

His voice softens as his thoughts are brought back to the people who depend on the yard for a wage.

“I don’t need to make a living out of it, I was just doing it for me. But I’ve learned the hard way in the past. Maybe it’s time to just batten down the hatches and look after the few employees we have, and hopefully, 20 years from now, they’ll still be with us.”