If you look at the list of exhibitors at this year's National Ploughing Championships, you will find the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement, the Methodist Church, the Central Statistics Office and Oxfam Ireland.
That such disparate strands of Irish society feel the need to pitch their wares at the three-day festival is a testament to its stature, not just as rural Ireland’s showpiece event, but as one of the largest agricultural trade fairs in the world.
With a record 300,000 people expected to attend this year's event, which begins in Tullamore on Tuesday, it is now six times the size of Electric Picnic and the biggest outdoor festival of any kind in Europe.
Apart from machinery, livestock and ploughing, the championships serves as Ireland’s unofficial car show, with the show’s auto arena one of the largest exhibition areas.
More recently, it has also become a proxy battleground for big retailers such as Tesco, SuperValu, Lidl and Aldi.
This year, Aldi, one of the main sponsors, will have former Irish rugby captain Paul O'Connell running drills outside its tent, while 2fm DJ Jenny Greene cranks out tunes inside. The event could probably become the Electric Picnic of country and western music if the organisers wanted to push it in that direction.
Anna May McHugh sighs at the notion. As managing director of the event since 1972, she is more responsible than anyone else for its growth, albeit this was also helped by the demise of the Spring Show. She believes, however, that the event has got too big and has become a victim of its own success.
Beyond expectations
“We have as much as we can handle. It started with ploughing. It’s grown beyond our expectations. We have no intention of growing the event larger than it is today,” she says.
From here on in, McHugh wants the focus to be on improving the quality of the experience. With audiences mushrooming, logistical pressures, including road access, have become a major headache. Organisers had to lay 25km of metal trackway, at a cost of €500,000, just to allow heavy machinery access to the site.
More than 5,000km of electrical cable and 10 generators, enough electricity for a small town, are also needed to power the site, while some 2,300 temporary staff, volunteers, judges and stewards have been appointed to marshall the event.
The physical footprint of this year’s event, including off-road preparations and site works, covers an area of 700 acres, with the land rented from up to 30 separate landowners at various rates which are not disclosed.
The company behind the event, the National Ploughing Association, is a voluntary organisation, so there are no shareholders, or dividends paid, McHugh says. It is controlled by a board of 32 directors, representing each county.
Accounts filed with the Companies Registration Office reveal few financial details other than the fact it had accumulated profits of €13.1 million as of January this year.
The individual salaries of the managing director, McHugh, and her daughter Anna Marie, who is listed as an assistant director, and the other seven staff, are not detailed.
Wage bill
Neither is a combined wage bill for the company’s key personnel, which had been provided previously.
In the set of accounts for the year ending January 2015, a combined wage bill for eight staff amounted to €461,218. In addition, directors’ remuneration of €210,075 was also paid.
Previous accounts of the association show managing director McHugh was paid €126,000 in 2010, down from €149,000 the previous year.
The 2015 accounts show after-tax profits for the event jumped more than 20 per cent, from €978,856 to €1.19 million.
Turnover, comprising gate receipts, exhibitors’ fees and sponsorship, was €5.1 million for the year to the end of January, up from €4.5 million the previous year.
Profits
“We don’t deny what profits we have but if we had two bad years, we’d only have enough saved to run the event,” McHugh says.
The company declined to give a more detailed breakdown of its income other than to indicate that gate receipts, generated from a standard one-day admission price of €20, formed the largest part.
A substantial portion of income is also generated by stand prices, which vary depending on the size of the space, from around €500 to €9,000 for the bigger exhibition spaces.
The residual is derived from sponsorship deals, with Eir, FBD Insurance, Bank of Ireland and Aldi the main sponsors this year.
With the event, now in its 85th year, oscillating between harvest festival and shop window, ploughing appears to be an ever-decreasing element.
Nonetheless, ploughing remains the nostalgic core and McHugh rejects the notion the name should change.
“It started with ploughing and we don’t intend ever dropping the word ploughing,” she says.
