The National Ploughing Championships finished last evening having recorded the best attendance on record. It was the first time the event was held in Co Meath and up to 167,000 people visited the town of Ballinabrackey.
The managing director of the National Ploughing Association, Ms Anna May McHugh, said the event had far exceeded her expectations and the good weather and the excellent traffic management by Insp John Moloney and Meath County Council had made for a spectacular event.
However, she expressed concern at the rising cost of staging the event, an estimated €1.6 million this year. She said it would be impossible to continue with the championships were it not for the huge voluntary input.
Ms McHugh said the NPA would have to seek some funding from Government to help it stage the World Ploughing Championships which will be held here in 2006. "That is going to be a very costly event and we will have to go to the Government," she said.
Work has already started on staging next year's championships which will take place at Grangeford, between Tullow and Carlow town. "Our host farmer there is already preparing the land for the event by seeding some of the ground. I am looking forward to it because it is a wonderful site," she said.
Ms McHugh said consideration had been given to holding the championships at weekends to facilitate the growing number of part-time farmers who worked off the land during the week but that would create difficulties.
"We know that there would be large attendances on a Saturday but then the problem is that commercial firms may not be able to get staff to work weekends."
The Tánaiste, Ms Harney, officially closed the championships in the company of local TD Mr Tom Parlon, Minister for State at the Department of Finance.
She told a press conference that she was opposed to the suggestion in the Society of Actuaries report that the retirement age be extended to 75. "I believe people should have a little bit of time after their working lives to enjoy themselves, but that should be their own choice," she said.
The Tánaiste said that while Ireland had a pension-funding problem like many other countries because of demographics, the report was unlikely to find much support in Government.
She also said the best way to attract jobs to rural Ireland was to improve roads and other infrastructure, such as broadband.
She added that the Government would attempt to persuade the EU to change its lending rules under the Growth and Stability Pact to allow it to borrow for infrastructural projects as costs were spiralling.
Another visitor to the site yesterday was India's Ambassador, Mr Saurabh Kumar, and his wife, Sulekha, who have only been in Ireland for the past three days. He said he had read about the event in the media and decided to visit because his country had such an agricultural base.
Fine Gael's spokesman on agriculture, Mr Billy Timmins, said at the event that he would table a motion in the Dáil when it resumed on the recent attack by the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, on farm leaders.
Mr Timmins said he would call on Mr Walsh to withdraw his remarks about farm leaders "droning on" because they had caused great anger in the farming community.