Stephen Cadogan: Hope for rural voters in talks on government formation

Not many of the 2,151,293 who voted in the election were working hard on the Sunday evening of the St Patrick’s Day weekend.

But it was just another working day for farmers.

They were in the midst of calving down the country’s two million cows, lambing the two million ewes, feeding livestock, and sowing about 170,000 hectares of spring cereals.