TRANSFORMNG ideas into new businesses was the main theme of the first ever Teagasc Rural Entrepreneurship conference held in Mullingar, Co Westmeath. The aim was to assist and guide people with new business ideas to set up their own enterprise.

HAULIERS were today beginning their annual conference amid deep concerns over spiralling diesel prices, penalty points and Dublin City Council’s controversial ban on lorries.

Farmers across the country will begin casting their votes today to elect a new president of the main industry lobby group.

THERE’S a powerful scene in the film of John B Keane’s play The Field where The Bull McCabe, a tenant farmer played by Richard Harris, raises his stick in angry defiance at being told that the three acres of rocky wasteland he has slaved over is about to be sold.

Mayo GAA chiefs meet tonight to decide if they will back a national rally for Padraig Nally, who was jailed for six years last week for manslaughter of a Traveller.

Kildare: IFA president John Dillon has urged the Government to provide incentives to assist the development of biofuel as an alternative energy.

INSPECTORS from the Competition Authority yesterday swooped on the IFA head office in Dublin.

News that foot-and-mouth had spread into Ireland devastated the community clustered around the Co Louth border with Northern Ireland - and sounded alarm bells nationwide.