By Vivienne Clarke
The 89th National Ploughing Championships has been cancelled for 2020, after it was initially hoped it could continue “behind closed gates”.
It comes after a record 216,000 visitors attended the first two days of the national competition last year.
Assistant director of the National Ploughing Association (NPA), Annamarie McHugh, has explained that the competitions scheduled to take place next month in Ballintrane, Co Carlow without spectators will now not go ahead due to a rise in Covid-19 cases.
A small number of qualifying events for the world ploughing championships in 2021 will take place behind closed doors in October, subject to HSE and public health recommendations at that time.
With the latest escalation of Covid-19 in the country our Executive just felt that it wouldn't be in the best public interest to go ahead with the competition in its entirety.
Ms McHugh told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland that the NPA had thought “long and hard” about the decision for the past few weeks.
“With the latest escalation of Covid-19 in the country our Executive just felt that it wouldn't be in the best public interest to go ahead with the competition in its entirety,” she said.
“We have a number of international competitions including the world contest which hopefully we will be hosting here in Ireland in September 2021 - so to have the Irish competitors in those competitions - they are the qualifiers, we're going ahead with the qualifiers - it's six classes in all that we need to go ahead, to be able to select the teams for those international competitions - they're the ones we're hoping to have in early October.”
Rural community
The annual event, which attracted a total 297,000 visitors last year, is an opportunity for the farming community to get together before the winter, she added.
“It's always been very important from a social point of view for the rural community and for the urban community in recent years.
When Covid struck earlier in the year people thought it would be over by now and they were going to use the ploughing to spring board their year again, give it a boost and start off again.
“It's a huge blow. We're trying to have some element of association with that week, that there will be a bit of talk, a bit of banter, and people's memories of ploughing week. We'll have a few online competitions where people can put their ploughing photos from down through the years, just different engagements, so that we get people talking about ploughing and remembering and looking forward to next year.”
John Whelan, assistant managing director of the NPA and current All Ireland champion in the reversible class, said that the cancellation of the ploughing event is a “massive” loss to the local economy to the value of €45 million.
“It's a huge showcase for businesses, for the trade. When Covid struck earlier in the year people thought it would be over by now and they were going to use the ploughing to spring board their year again, give it a boost and start off again. This pandemic has dragged on a lot longer than people thought.”
