Ploughing ahead
THEY’RE arguably the most formidable mother-and-daughter duo in the country, a feisty can-do pair of women who, this week, will oversee the three-day National Ploughing Championships, the largest event of its kind in Ireland and Britain and one that will generate over €10 million for the local economy.
That Anna Marie McHugh, PRO and assistant managing director with the National Ploughing Association (NPA), would one day call her mum boss was always inevitable. NPA managing director Anna May McHugh had her office at the family home near Athy when her two children were babies.
“Even as a child, I worked for the NPA. I stamped letters and photocopied. To me, I was the linchpin in the whole thing,” laughs Anna Marie.
But as a young woman, she wanted to do her own thing, find her own direction. A first step was to complete a marketing diploma in Carlow Institute of Technology.
“I wanted to do PR because of the whole ploughing and event organisation. I loved that entire area. In Macra Na Feirme I was always involved in the organisational end of things and in PR.
“I was club PRO, county PRO, county travel officer and was on the national council. I get that from Mam. She’s big into giving in a voluntary capacity. As a child, I remember a team of us getting together to paint the school in the evenings — Dad, Mam, my brother, DJ, and me.”
Following graduation, Anna Marie worked for a summer in Bord Na Móna’s marketing department and another summer in a pharmaceutical plant in Clarecastle doing administration. “I worked as a professional youth worker with Foróige for three years. I thoroughly enjoyed that.”
In 1994, the NPA was looking for somebody to coordinate preparations for the 1996 World Ploughing Championship.
Anna May put it to the NPA that her daughter might make a good candidate, Anna Marie went for interview and got signed up on a two-year contract. Once the event was over, she went on a world trip, which — during the first five months of 1997 — took her to the US, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Hong Kong and Bangkok.
Though Anna Marie got her first contract on the recommendation of her mother and NPA managing director, she clearly stood on her own merits when it came to getting a permanent job.
“Just before I came back, the NPA offered me a full-time position. It wasn’t from Anna May. We have a board of 34 directors who come from all over Ireland.”
By then in her late 20s, Anna Marie embarked on a PR diploma course at the Public Relations Institute.
The McHugh mum-and-daughter relationship is close. For Anna Marie, her mum is mother, sister, best friend and boss. When she had to have an emergency caesarean last year just as the pair were en route to a meeting, it was Anna May who held her hand through the procedure. “It never crossed my mind that Mum would be the one to be with me when I was having the baby. But people didn’t find it unusual — they said ‘sure, you’re always together’.”
Admittedly though, conducting your day job with your mum on the other side of the desk wouldn’t be everybody’s dream. So how do they manage it?
“It’s challenging in ways, very rewarding in others,” says Anna Marie. “We know how to bring out the best in each other. Anna May puts me to the frontline in areas where I’m stronger and she takes the lead where she has superior knowledge.
“I’d be a cooler person though. I can remove myself from a situation better than Mam can. She’s been with the NPA for 60 years — she lives it and takes everything personally. At times, she’ll react in a personal way, whereas I’ll step out of a situation and independently make a call on it.”
Anna Marie is very “definitive” says Anna May. “She has to have everything — such as contracts, for example — finalised to the last detail. I’m much more inclined to trust. I honour my contractors and I expect them to do the same — otherwise they’re not back next year.”
The pair admit to arguing. “About prices, costings. I’d be very conservative, a bit careful — I’ve seen the poor days — whereas Anna Marie would say ‘you’ve got to keep marketing, the day you stop that is the end’,” says Anna May.
Anna Marie recalls getting off school for national ploughing week. “It was great to stay in hotels. Mam would be so involved with meetings that we could just disappear, just creep off and go to dances. I was at Gina Dale Haze and The Champions in Tralee when I was 15. I was tall for my age and told everyone I was at college.”
She once described her mum as a workaholic for whom “family was number one so long as it didn’t interfere with the ploughing”. Married to three-times ploughing champion Declan Buttle, Anna Marie, 42, has a 14-month-old son, Saran, and intends to guard more jealously time with him than her own mum did with her kids. “You can’t buy back time — when it’s gone, it’s gone.”
The McHugh women comprise 50% of the NPA’s full-time workforce. (Anna May’s son, DJ, is a full-time farmer and chairman of Laois County Ploughing). And with the 2011 National Ploughing Championship costing €3m to run, drawing over 1,000 exhibitors and 180,000 members of the public over three days, it’s easy to see why mum and daughter work 70-hour weeks in the seven-week lead-up to the event.
“It’s a rollercoaster, all hands on deck — you don’t have a choice. During the rest of the year, I try to finish on time and get home. In the run-up to the championship, I start at 9am, then later on collect the baby, get him fed, go back to work and finish at midnight. I’d have the baby monitor with me in the office.”
Anna Marie admits to not having a fraction of her mum’s energy. “I push myself to the limit but Anna May is up no later than 6.30am and she’s last to finish, around 1am. She has a notebook in which she writes before going to sleep and again when she wakes in the morning. She’s never one to say she’s wrecked — the rest of us would need a strong coffee.”
For Anna May, the ploughing is a passion, a vocation. “The NPA looks after me well,” is all she’ll say about salary. She doesn’t confide her age though she points out she has worked at the ploughing event for 60 years, ever since as a young girl she was asked to help its founder JJ Bergin with some typing.
While Anna Marie describes the year-round work schedule as having peaks and dips, even a cursory glance at what’s entailed in an NPA job dispels the notion that these women have lots of leisure time. Work demands range from guiding county ploughing match organisers on the staging of events to post-event work; from meeting with statutory officials prior to national ploughing championship to visiting potential event sites to providing teams travelling to international competitions with logistics help.
So do the McHughs get any downtime? “In the run-up to the festival? Zilch. The most we do is grab a cup of tea and sneak a few minutes of the All-Ireland finals. Over a summer weekend, I might get an hour at Electric Picnic. During winter it’s easier,” says Anna Marie, who — with Declan and Saran — lives with her mum in Athy during the week and moves to her husband’s native Wexford at the weekend.
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