The FBD National Livestock show was another huge success last Sunday. The event has grown over the years and is now one of the largest one-day livestock events in Europe.

The traffic management plan, which in recent years had drawn some criticism, worked like clockwork with very little delay getting into or out of the show, which was remarkable given that an estimated 70,000 people attended on Sunday.

Show secretary Chelsey Cox, chairman John Keena and the show committee, along with the hundreds of volunteers who not only work on show day but before and after the show, deserve huge credit for pulling off such a large event incident free. We shouldn’t forget the time that local volunteers give up to help run the event.

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Ireland is unique in its meitheal culture in organising and running events, and the meitheal of volunteers is integral to the success of the FBD National livestock show every year.

The show also wouldn’t exist without the exhibitors of the huge numbers of livestock on display at Sunday’s show. The interest and passion that Irish livestock farmers have in genetics and breeding the best possible cattle and sheep is unrivalled around the world.

Looking around the rings, that passion is being passed on to the next generation, with young people central in exhibiting in many of the rings on the day.

For anyone that missed the event, our live blog from the show with videos, highlights and results on farmersjournal.ie is the perfect way to relive the event. Nevan McKiernan also documents many of the winners on this week’s pedigree pages.

Debate

Following the show every year, the debate follows about whether the show should be more than a one-day event. Looking in from the outside, it’s easy to say that it should be, but executing that is a completely different proposition.

The volunteer help and goodwill that the show depends on would be harder to get across a two or three day event.

A longer event would also add cost for exhibitors seeking accommodation and spending extra days at the show. On the other side of the argument, you have a lot of effort setting up stands and showcasing the industry for one day’s exposure.

The show executive are the only people who are qualified to make that decision and if they feel it’s the right thing to do for the show, I’m sure that decision will be made. For now, the one-day event continues to go from strength to strength.

Sunday’s event drew attendants from all over Ireland and indeed further afield.

If we look at Balmoral show or the Highland show in Scotland, they have purpose-built facilities for accommodating cattle for the week-long events. The four-day Royal Highland Show welcomes over 200,000 visitors from across the UK and Ireland at the end of June each year.

The purpose-built site situated next door to Edinburgh airport is one of the finest showgrounds in the world and has over 1 million visitors each year to various events, both agricultural and non-agricultural.

Northern Ireland has a similar facility albeit at a smaller scale in the Eikon Exhibition centre, again a very suitable venue with agricultural events such as Balmoral show and the Winter Fair held each year, attracting big numbers of farmers and non farmers.

While the Republic of Ireland has many suitable venues for shows and events, it has no large-scale, purpose-built home for agricultural events since the last RDS spring show ceased to exist in 1992.

Ireland has some of the best livestock genetics and machinery manufacturers in Europe and should have a national centre to showcase them.

We are also the home of some cutting-edge technology companies who are at the top of the class on the world stage.

Realising a national Irish agricultural events centre would take years to come to fruition but like everything else, it has to start somewhere and merits discussion as to how it could be made happen.