McAleese praises a ‘resilient’ community

IT WAS a tough summer for the farming community, President Mary McAleese acknowledged yesterday when she officially opened the ploughing championships in Athy, Co Kildare.

She said many of those present carry burdens of worry and unease, but they also bring that wonderful spirit of resilience and transcendence of facing life’s ups and downs with an ethic of hard work and care for one another. “When the championships were born back in 1931, Ireland was at that time too facing great challenges in an unstable world.

“We got through them, not to a perfect world but to an improving world that sometimes went two steps forward and one step back and much more rarely one step forward and two steps back.