Author: National Ploughing Association

 A few snaps of some of the special items on the Beechill Bulbs stand for the next 3 days. Please go to bulbs.ie for more info

Event:  Panel Discussion on Empty Homes and the Reviving of Ireland’s Rural Towns
Date & Time: 11.00am, Thursday 19th September 2019
Location: Row 36, Block 4, Stand 692

Event Details:
Peter McVerry Trust will host a panel discussion looking at how we can regenerate rural towns and villages by reusing empty buildings.

The panel will be moderated by Joyce Fegan, of the Irish Examiner, with panellists Alison Harvey of the Heritage Council, Paul Johnston of Waterford County Council and Aoife Corcoran of Peter McVerry Trust.

The event will look at the challenges facing rural towns, how empty homes can play a key role and what steps need to be taken to get buildings back into use. Each of the speakers will be able to highlight successful reuse examples.

Event: Launch of Peter McVerry Trust’s Report on Rural Homelessness
Date & Time: 11.00am, Tuesday 17th September 2019
Location: Row 36, Block 4, Stand 692

Event Details:
Peter McVerry Trust will publish a new report examining rural homelessness in Ireland. The report will look at the number of people now impacted by homelessness and the factors driving rural homelessness outside of Irish cities. It will set out five new measures to tackle rural homelessness.

The main speaker at the event will be Pat Doyle, CEO of Peter McVerry Trust.

UCD are delighted to attend the ploughing again this year and would appreciate any support that you can offer.

During the course of the three days we have a number of activities planned. We will have live food science experiments in our marquee each day. We are launching our new Undergraduate Prospectus for 2020 which is always an important documents for potential agricultural science students each year and we are calling on Alumni to drop by and provide video testimonials to us over the three days.

We plan to launch our Research Seminar Series on Wednesday afternoon and on Thursday morning we hope to celebrate a recent award that we won at the School for our commitment to Gender Equality – the Athena Bronze Award. Given the challenges that we have had attending the ploughing in terms of resources etc due to the date clashing with Higher Options we would be delighted if Anna May and Anna Maria might be available on Thursday morning to join us for a photo with some members of our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) committee, perhaps around 10am / 11am. We are commitmented to Gender Equality in the Agriculture and Food Industry.