Upwardly mobile people on Planet of the Apps

IT was like the Planet of the Apps at the National Ploughing Championships in Athy, Co Kildare.

Young and old were seen to be using state-of-the-art mobile phones which appeared to be equipped with many of the latest downloadable applications.

People even competed with each other for space in the Glanbia Avonmore Milk Bar as they raised their camera and video phones to photograph Kilkenny hurling heroes Jackie Tyrrell and JJ Delaney with the Liam MacCarthy (All-Ireland) and Bob O’Keeffe cups (Leinster). Denis (Rackard) Coady, the popular Kilkenny team equipment manager, brought the cups to the stand, where the visitors also included Environment Minister Big Phil Hogan, still beaming at the All-Ireland triumph of his native county.

But it was not all GAA cups that were the focus of the camera phone snappers — Munster rugby players turned up later with the Magner’s League Cup. The new RaboDirect Pro 12 League Cup was also on view.

Kieran O’Connor, sponsorship manager with Glanbia, said there was a tremendous public reaction to the various sportsmen including Munster, Ireland and Lions rugby legend John “The Bull” Hayes, a suckler farmer from Cappamore, Co Limerick, and Kilkenny hurling superstar Tommy Walsh.

However, camera phones were not to be seen when farmers and Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney met and chatted about the issues of the day.

The minister had a busy day of engagements, meeting and chatting with people in the farming and agri-food industry which is now being seen as key to national economic recovery.

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin, who was accompanied by the party’s agriculture spokesperson Michael Moynihan, also did a meet and chat tour before it started to pour rain.

He called on the Government to protect the sector in the upcoming budget and in the negotiations on the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. It was important to work towards ensuring the sustainability of the sector over the next two decades, he said.

A fit looking Luke Ming Flanagan, TD, looked serious as he briskly walked across the grounds, not far from a Turf Cutters and Contractors Association exhibition, part of a campaign against bog closures.

“Turf cutters own the bogs and are proud custodians of a heritage that has carefully managed and conserved our Irish bogs for hundreds of generations,” said the TCCA, in a leaflet issued in affiliation with Kildare Turf Cutters Association.

“This precisely is why our bogs are now so valuable to the EU and coveted by self-appointed experts,”

Concern of another kind was voiced by Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association president Jackie Cahill, who called for action against gangs who are, he said, stealing scrap metal from farms. It is an epidemic of theft with groups arriving in vans and proceeding to steal whatever they want or wish to sell.

He said the Garda must become a much more frequent presence in commercial recycling centres.

The ICMSA boss from Thurles didn’t mention it, but on a day when the “ploughing” went hi-tech there must surely be an app available to help the efforts to deter and detect the scrap metal thieves.