Thousands of people are descending on Tullamore today to attend Ireland’s largest agricultural show.
The Tullamore Agricultural and National Livestock Show is taking place on the 260-acre Butterfield Estate in Blueball after it was cancelled for the two years running due to poor weather conditions.
Organisers are expecting 50,000 people to attend the event today.
Gardaí have warned motorists there will be delays in the area all day and that diversions will be in place.
This year’s programme of events features cultural, commercial and competitive interests ranging from livestock, equestrian, home industries, inventions, vintage, fashion, style and performing arts.
The trade exhibition area alone will has more than 550 trade stands.
A team of international judges will hand out a prize fund of €160,000 will be up for grabs in over 1,000 classes.
Opening the show today, Fine Gael MEP Mairéad McGuinness said the Government had failed to plan for the future of farming, focusing instead on a "dangerous agenda of slashing farm support schemes without any clear analysis of the impact of these deep cuts on farm families, jobs in the food sector and on the wider rural economy".
Ms McGuinness said she believed Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith had "failed to defend farming at the Cabinet table".
"He has rushed to offer cuts in the industry which he should be seeking to protect and he has failed to recognise the impact of his decisions on the sector. It is also disappointing that Tánaiste Mary Coughlan – a former minister for agriculture – has failed to defend the sector and failed to fight cuts in schemes which she herself announced and introduced when she held the agriculture portfolio."
Ms McGuinness said "killing off" the REPs scheme for payments to farmer was in her view "environmental sabotage".
"Failure to pay farm waste management grants on time, cuts in the suckler welfare scheme, in Retirement and Young Farmers Installation schemes are also deeply damaging. We know that supporting quality production works, yet this Government has seen fit to knock these measures and in turn will set Irish agriculture back on its heels.”
Ms McGuinness, who is a member of the European Parliament’s agriculture and rural development and Environment committees said the upcoming review of the CAP must address this imbalance.