Despite Government pleas for large events to be postponed where possible, nearly 80,000 people will attend such gatherings in Dublin in coming days.
The promoters of a series of Westlife concerts starting on Monday, for which 70,000 tickets have been sold, maintain they will go ahead, while the Meteor Ireland Music Awards take place tonight with an audience of 3,500.
The organisers of the Irish International Antiques and Fine Arts Fair in the RDS hope to attract 7,000 people to the event, which runs from tomorrow to Monday.
A spokesman for the Department of Agriculture yesterday stressed there had been no relaxation in its guidelines that large events should be postponed if possible, especially if they involved people from rural areas.
Callers to The Irish Times objected to a number of English antique-dealers attending the fair and believed they would have been attending local fairs in England and could easily bring foot-and-mouth disease with them.
Mr Patrick O'Sullivan, the fair's organiser, said there would be only eight dealers coming from England and all were urban-based. The RDS already had the most stringent safety procedures he had seen in the capital. "We're drowning in Dettol here," he said.
A spokesman for the organiser of tonight's music awards at the Point, MCD, repeated an earlier statement that it was "taking the threat of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease very seriously". He said it was in "ongoing contact with the relevant Government authorities . . and is taking their advice regarding preventative procedures".
The proceeds of the show are going to charity and many performers, among them Elton John, Morcheeba, David Gray and Atomic Kitten, are from Britain. Hundreds of fans are expected to travel from the UK.