Fewer farmers than usual are expected to attend this year's Kerrygold Horse Show in the Royal Dublin Society in Ballsbridge because of the pressure on them caused by the bad weather, according to the managing director of the main sponsor, the Irish Dairy Board.
Dr Noel Cawley was commenting yesterday on the fact that fewer than 1,500 of the 27,000 cut-price tickets offered by the board to the dairy farmers had been accepted.
"The weather has been so awful that farmers are still trying to get their silage and most of them will take the option of getting the harvest rather than coming here this year," Dr Cawley said.
However, he and his board remained convinced of the worth of the Horse Show as its main vehicle for advertising Irish dairy products abroad through televisual coverage of the main events.
Now the longest-running major sporting sponsorship of its kind, the board has invested €6 million in the show over the last 14 years.
Dr Cawley said this year it would be bringing in its customers and buyers from around the world to entertain them and convince them to continue buying Irish butter, cheese and skim milk powder.
This year, he said, the board was bringing in 240 guests and some of them would be from Ireland's fastest-growing dairy market, Poland.
"We are making great advances in Poland and have followed the main supermarkets in there. Sales of branded product are growing strongly there," he said.
He hoped this would also happen in other east European countries where there was clearly a market for butter. Irish butter is more yellow than continental brands and easier to spread.
Of the other European markets, Dr Cawley said that the Spanish market was performing particularly well and there was a growing demand from the US for Irish cheeses.
On milk prices generally, it had been a very difficult year and each time the EU increased export refunds, the world prices had fallen back.
"The truth is that all the co-operatives are subsidising the milk prices and the biggest market will continue to be intervention," he said.
Only for the Dairy Board's subsidiaries, the board would not be making any profit this year on Irish products.
However, he expected it would be a reasonable year.
It was clear to him that the European Commission appeared to be determined to cut the intervention prices.
"I am a bit surprised that the European farm ministers have taken it so lightly because farmers in Germany, France and Denmark and Ireland are all hurting."
There was good news from another source for the show yesterday, with the announcement that Bord Fáilte, for the first time, is to assist the Dublin Horse Show for the Nations Cup in 2003 by providing a grant of €175,000.
The sponsorship is to assist the RDS in the development of the event into one of the eight international Super League show jumping events.
The show has been selected by the Federation Equestre International to be one of the eight Super League showjumping venues, with Italy, Switzerland, England and Canada.
The Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr O'Donoghue, said he was delighted that the board would provide sponsorship for the event, which was a wonderful coup for the RDS and would yield immense dividends for Irish tourism.
The Horse Show director, Mr Gerry McAuliffe, said the event was now on a par with Aachen and Rome and Hickstead and he was very pleased Bord Fáilte had recognised the importance of the event in terms of tourism.