Paul Hosford: Leaders' visits to the Ploughing Championships have an air of electioneering

On Thursday, the notion of an election hung in the air thicker than the early morning fog that had threatened not to clear

Taoiseach Simon Harris was on site early at the National Ploughing Championships in Ratheniska, Co Laois. 

The Ploughing Championships, Micheál Martin said, is the "signature event" of rural Ireland.

Here, he contended, you can get the pulse of the country. Indeed Taoiseach Simon Harris said that it was good to get "out of the Dublin bubble". Of course, the glorious weather helped in Ratheniska, particularly for this writer, a Ploughing neophyte.