President Mary McAleese and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern will attend the National Ploughing Championships which get under way here today for what has become one of the largest annual outdoor events in Europe.
Present also will be Minister for Justice Michael McDowell and the Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny, along with US ambassador to Ireland James C Kenny.The president of Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams, is also scheduled to attend.
There was a sense of excitement down here on the giant 600-acre seaside site yesterday as the final touches were put to the largest ploughing championships in the world. However, the National Ploughing Association (NPA) organisers were looking at the sky - not in prayer but to monitor the worsening weather.
"It's a bit breezy all right and, while that may not be too good for the tents, it will be grand for drying up the ground so the ploughmen and women can have a decent run," said the NPA's Anna Marie McHugh yesterday, as she surveyed the scene.
"There is no question of the tented village being blown away," she laughed, "but I have to warn anyone coming here to bring their wet gear.
"Everything seems to be in place and there has been a huge influx of visitors already. There is not a spare bed, not even in holiday homes, within a radius of 30 miles," she said.
The event, which costs nearly €2 million to stage and attracts up to 150,000 people, injects up to €20 million into the local economy and provides an ideal holiday harvest break for the farming community.
It also gives a major marketing platform to retailers and manufacturers who will have tens of millions of euro of goods on the hundreds of stands. Dozens of voluntary organisations, charities both from this and the Third World and most of the Government departments have stands, including the dreaded taxman.
The acid test of a ploughing championship, as always, is not the weather, but the management of traffic volumes.
According to Anna Marie, the system has been tested well over the weekend with the huge volumes of trade traffic coming and leaving the site.
She urged people to follow the road signs placed in a radius of 20 miles of the site.