Miriam Lord: Welly-waving politicians fight for attention at the Ploughing

The political welly-wavers descended in force on Wednesday, moving a significant vowel away from their usual midweek antics in Leinster House to the bucolic ballyhoo of the Ploughing Championships in Laois.

Welly-waving (like that other type of mainly macho waving done in the Dáil) is a gender-neutral pursuit these days, practised by party leaders, senior representatives and ambitious underlings desperate to stand out in a crowded field and grab as much attention as possible.

The free-for-all forum that is the Ploughing offers politicians a golden chance to trumpet their agricultural credentials, commune with rural voters, throw major shapes for a massive audience and hold forth in front of the microphones on subjects they have already held forth on at length in the days before their escape to the country.

So with a week to go to Budget 2023 and all the parties on message and manoeuvres, it was no surprise when day two in Ratheniska produced an unprecedented display of welly-waving from the plethora of politicos who flocked to Europe’s largest outdoor event to show themselves off.

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Wednesday’s attendance was a record-breaking 115,000 – the biggest in the 91-year history of the Ploughing. And that was only the politicians. Not really. It only felt like that.

The first big arrival was the Taoiseach, who monopolised the morning before rushing to catch a flight to New York for his big speech to the United Nations General Assembly. (As it happens, that flight was later forced to turn back to Dublin after an hour after hitting a bird.)

Various Fianna Fáil satellites flickered in his orbit, chief among them Charlie McConalogue.

Apparently Charlie is the first Minister for Agriculture to do the whole three days of the Ploughing since Mary Coughlan in the early noughties. Donegal ministers are made of strong stuff, it seems.

Perhaps he is sticking around for the full experience because he knows he won’t be sent away with a flea in his ear by too many disgruntled farmers. “Commodity prices are good so he’ll get an easy enough time” explained one beef producer.

Before the Taoiseach was airlifted from the competition grounds he underwent a brief procedure to have local TD and Minister of State Sean Fleming, surgically removed from his shoulder.

He also managed a press conference, played hurling with some lads, hopped up and down off a tractor and had the banter with some “farmerettes” competing in the women’s match. Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien was also putting himself about while Carlow-Kilkenny TD Jennifer Murnane-O’Connor was mistaken for Sinn Féin deputy leader Michelle O’Neill by quite a few members of the public.

Speaking of putting themselves about, Sinn Féin made its presence felt this year with O’Neill and her party leader Mary Lou McDonald touring the stands of the various farming organisations. Mary Lou and her retinue paid a call on the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) just after midday.

“They used to call in just to make an appearance. We’d be more used to seeing Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael coming here – they’d be all for the dairy farmers” said one official. “This year things were definitely different. Mary Lou wanted to talk farming and she was all concerned about us. Sinn Féin stayed much longer than usual too.

“There is a definite love-bombing and charm offensive going on now – something we haven’t experienced before. It’s like the farming community is the next link in the chain. We were giving away ICMSA bags and snoods but I don’t think she took any.”

The party’s presence in the ICMSA pavilion unsettled Fianna Fáil. “Next minute, wasn’t Micheál Martin coming over from their tent ... when some of his people looked in and they saw Mary Lou and Michelle and the rest of them and didn’t they suddenly do a swerve into the Farmer’s Journal tent. They stayed in there until Sinn Féin left. We could see them peering out through the window. It was gas stuff altogether.”

The Ploughing is one of the rare times that MEPs get a chance to do some welly-waving. They are paraded around the place as fonts of knowledge about EU farm payments and form filling, which must be nice for them.

And as a consolation for not usually getting any notice, we realised that MEPs get nice customised jackets instead with their names, their party and its group affiliation in Europe embroidered into the fabric. Fine Gael’s Colm Markey had all his details on it along with the slogan “No Farmers. No Food. No Future.”

His party leader, Leo Varadkar, conducted his press conference in shirt sleeves because he has no need for an identifying jacket. Leo’s shirt was embellished with a life-size Martin Heydon, the Minister of State for Agriculture. “Great couple of days at the Ploughing so far. Really good engagement,” said Martin.

As with the Taoiseach and Sean Fleming earlier, a team of seamstresses was drafted in to unpick the stitching around Deputy Heydon and remove him from the Tánaiste’s shoulder at the end of his visit. Leo’s satellites included Minister for Justice Helen McEntee and Minister for Social Protection Heather Humphreys.

During the Tánaiste’s briefing, conducted on the busy walkway outside the tent, passersby engulfed journalists in a swam of chaos while a small boy wearing a Portugal hat stood in the little clearing in front of Leo, looking around, fascinated. There was a preponderance of Aldi-branded blue Stetson hats.

It felt like the Tánaiste, calm at the epicentre of the scrum, was going to talk forever. This may have been because Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill were making a speech in the nearby Sinn Féin tent at the same time.

It was just past the one tenanted by MEP Ming Flanagan (“Ploughing a Furrow in the European Parliament”) which was possibly the largest of all the political tents at the Ploughing. The left wing GUE/NGL grouping must have stumped up a fair wedge of expenses to help sole trader Ming swing such an expanse of prime Ploughing real estate. Stands, even the very smallest, do not come cheap at this event.

But while the Sinn Féin tent was rammed with the crowd bursting out the doors, Ming’s plot wasn’t attracting much custom, which was surprising, given that an assistant was standing outside and trying to drum up support by handing out packets of seeds.

Seeds? The little envelope didn’t say. What sort of seeds from Ming, known to enjoy am occasional joint back in the day and now a member of an EU cross-party group seeking to decriminalise cannabis? Ca-ca-ca-ca…what? Cabbage. Cabbage seeds.

Next door, Sinn Féin handlers eventually managed to extract Mary Lou from inside where supporters were queuing up to take selfies with her. With Michelle by her side, she effortlessly fielded a very wide range of questions surrounded by satellites Claire Kerrane, Brian Stanley and Kathleen Funchion.

Agriculture spokesman Matt Carthy, a former MEP, wore his old customised MEP jacket while the party’s current representative in Europe, Chris MacManus, wore a customised MEP cap.

When told that former DUP leader Edwin Poots, a farmer, was doing the rounds of the stands, Michelle smiled: “We just met him!”

No clean Cabra Jackeen shoes for Mary Lou either. She wore a pair of well-scuffed flat brown ankle boots, teamed with an agricultural pair of tweed herringbone trousers. A huge crowd gathered as she spoke about Liz Truss, school buses, culling the national herd, the forthcoming budget, farmers fearing “they are being cast as the villain of the piece”, and her delight at meeting “an organic intensive dairy farmer from Galway”.

Green Party leader Eamon Ryan was also due to attend, but as he is not a welly-waver, no one chose to check amid all the fuss.