Agri Careers shuts doors for a time due to 7,000-strong crowd

Health and safety concerns resulted in closure of access to the Agri Careers event at the RDS in Dublin for some hours on Thursday as 7,000 mainly young people packed out the Industries Hall for information on jobs in the rural economy.

Doors were kept shut until a certain number of attendees had left the jobs fair.

The event, organised by the Irish Farmers Journal, featured a "jobs wall" displaying more then 1,000 available positions in a diverse range of disciplines, from finance to software development, engineering and food technology.

“There are really well paid jobs in rural Ireland for software testers, technology developers, nutrition experts accountants and much more,” said David Leydon, commercial director of the Irish Farmers Journal.

One of the busiest stands during the day was that of Teagasc, the farm advisory board, where queues of young people had formed from early in the day.

Another was the Department of Agriculture, which has 200 vacancies on offer.

Range of positions

Guest speakers from a range of disciplines kept a seminar going all day.

The diversity of positions available in agribusiness was exemplified by the five Woulfe brothers who are all working in agriculture-related fields.

The eldest, Jim Woulfe, is chief executive of Dairygold, while the youngest, David Woulfe, works on the home farm.

Liam Woulfe is managing director of Grassland Agro, Michael Woulfe is vice-president of the Enzyme Business at the Kerry Group, and Richard Woulfe has his own accountancy practice in Rathkeale and has many farming clients.

Careers being advertised at the event included software testers at Randox Laboratory, an international clinical diagnostic company, based in Donegal.

They also included a sales position with Kepak, based in Ghana, and many other jobs with Irish companies providing products and expertise abroad.

Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney welcomed the exhibition as he announced the opening of iNet, an online application facility for the farm Basic Payment and Greening schemes.

iNet is designed to facilitate online applications for BPS, Greening and the Areas of Natural Constraint Scheme. “In 2015, some 93,000 farmers applied and we are hoping to significantly increase that number this year,” he said.