This year's National Ploughing Championships has recorded its highest attendance ever. About 167,000 people came to Birr, Co Offaly, where the event, which finished yesterday, was held. The figure exceeds that of last year's four-day event in Carlow, when the National Ploughing Association (NPA) hosted the world championships.
The event has assumed such nationwide importance that despite all the political action in Leinster House, both the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, spent most of yesterday there.
The Taoiseach was relaxed and visited many of the stands, joking and chatting to the farming people who were at the exhibition.
All the presidential candidates had visited the 500-acre site before the tents were taken down last night as Birr and the surrounding area began to get back to normality.
None of them could pass up the opportunity of meeting so many people from so many different parts of the country all in the one place and in festive humour.
Political pundits estimated that a visit to the ploughing championships was the equivalent of travelling 30,000 miles because all of rural Ireland seemed to be here.
It is estimated that the event generated about £10 million for the local economy and some of those who visited the show used accommodation about 50 miles from the site.
Mrs Anna May McHugh, managing director of the NPA, reaffirmed last night that the championships have developed so much that she was going to limit any further growth.
"It will lose its character as a rural event if the stands grow any more and it will also mean that the ploughing championships will be pushed further away from the main site because the two cannot mix," she said.
Mrs McHugh estimated that it had cost about £800,000 to stage the championships and she paid tribute to the local ploughing association which had worked so hard to make the event a success.
Next year's championships will be held on the farm of Donal and Aidan Murphy near Ferns, Co Wexford, and will form part of the 1798 commemoration celebrations there.
In the main ploughing events yesterday two well-known names in the world of Irish ploughing won the right to represent Ireland at the world championships in Germany next year.
Mr Martin Kehoe, Wexford, who has twice won the world title and Mr Eamon Tracey, Carlow, will carry the Irish flag next year.
Mr Kehoe is Ireland's best-known ploughman and Mr Treacy is a son of Mr John Treacy, who was runner-up for the world title in 1973 and has been runner-up in world titles twice before.