“What’s worth having is worth asking for”, that’s the clear view of an Enniscrone farmer who took a stand last week against a private helicopter landing in his field without permission. The incident has gone viral on social media over recent days, after Johnny Kilcullen pulled his tractor up alongside a helicoptor to ensure that the offending chopper couldn’t make a quick getwaway.

The helicopter had been flown to Enniscrone to get aerial footage of the sinking of the MV Shingle ship in Killala Bay on Wednesday last. The former smuggling ship, seized by authorities 10 years ago, was deliberately sunk off Killala Bay to create an artificial reef and a wreck for divers.

Days before the ship was sunk, Mr Kilcullen had witnessed the chopper ‘doing a recce’ and on Wednesday, the day of the sinking, he saw it had landed in his field close to the pier in Enniscrone, without making any contact with him.

Johnny says to land on private property in an emergency that’s fine, but private craft landing have to ask, there’s a whole protocol to follow around such landings. So he contacted the gardaí and gave them the helicopter’s registration number.

He then decided to park his Zetor 4×4 tractor alongside the helicopter and drove it down to the field and put the loader bucket up into the air so the pilot wouldn’t be able to simply fly away. He left his phone number on a post-it note on the seat of the helicopter.

He then went out on a boat to view the historical sinking of the MV Shingle and his phone started ringing.

The helicopter crew claimed that they had landed in the wrong field.

After a few more calls the farmer told a garda that if they needed to get the chopper out, they could open it’s back window and push the tractor out of the way.

A group of men did just that, resulting in videos that went viral.

This lunchtime Midwest News Editor Teresa O’Malley spoke to Johnny  about the stance he had taken and the international publicity that has arisen after the saga went viral….