The largest one-day attendance at the National Ploughing Championships was recorded yesterday when more than 75,000 people arrived at the site near Kinnegad.
While there were some traffic delays caused by the sheer volume of vehicles, traffic management was good and delays were kept to a minimum.
So many turned up at the site that some companies, including Glanbia, ran out of product yesterday and had to reorder.
The National Ploughing Association general manager, Mrs Anna May McHugh, expressed her satisfaction with the site and its management and said the fine weather had produced excellent ploughing competitions.
Among the many visitors to the championships was the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, who had travelled to the event for a Progressive Democrat function.
Mr Tom Parlon, the Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach, has had a major presence on the site for the last two days as he continues his drive to build up the organisation in Laois Offaly.
Close to the PD stand was Mr Pat Cox, where the public was invited to meet the president of the European Parliament.
There was a large turn out at the public information meetings, which are being held twice daily by the Department of Agriculture and Food, about the most recent CAP reforms.
These were the subject of a major study by Teagasc, the agriculture and food development authority, the details of which were announced at the event.
Mr Dermot McCarthy said all indications were that dairy farmers will have to increase their scale of operations to survive in the future.
He said studies had shown that a dairy farmer with 50 dairy cows and store cattle enterprise on 100 acres was currently making an income of €38,000.
"According to our analysis, the worst option for this farmer is to continue with his/her present farming system. This would result in an income in 2008 of just over €30,500, a drop of 20 per cent," he said.
The best option for such a farmer would be to increase the size of the dairy quota from 23,000 litres at present by 13,000 litres per year over the next five years which would result in an income increase of almost 16 per cent to €44,000, he said.