‘I’m devastated. Everything I brought with me was destroyed’
YESTERDAY’S storm damage at the Ploughing Championships could end up costing more than a million euro to stallholders.
Most of the merchants, who made up the majority of those directly affected by the worst damage, lost goods worth between €20,000 and €30,000.
In some cases, the sums could be higher. In one instance, a trader lost more than €10,000 in uninsured products.
Organisers will have to refund tens of thousands of people turning up today, although they have now extended the championships to Friday and people will be able to transfer their tickets.
Damage yesterday was mainly to tents and marquees, some of which were blown halfway across the entire site only to crash down on other stalls.
A tent promoting tourism was very badly smashed, and MEP Luke Ming Flanagan’s stall was completely demolished.
The nearby Fine Gael stall was also damaged and a large billboard bearing Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s face ended up face down in the mud. But it was soon cleared up, as was the damage to the FBD stall, which saw its front porch ripped from its frame.
Honda importer Universal Honda Ireland was last night assessing damage to six of its vehicles.
Most of their €300,000 fleet of cars at the company’s large corner stall took a direct hit from another business’s marquee.
John Saunders, sales and marketing director, said: ‘Structurally, we were okay. But we have some collateral damage on vehicles where another marquee got blown in across our stand and damaged six of our vehicles.
‘It is marks and dents and scrapes, but thankfully nobody was on site; thankfully there were no smashed windscreens.’
Like almost all stallholders, he only found out about the extent of the damage when he was allowed on site for the first time at around 2pm. The proposed reopening time changed every hour on the hour until finally the organisers decided to call off the second day of the popular event.
Even though the wind was due to subside at around lunchtime, it was still clearly very blustery.
Environmentalist Jane Jackson had her stall wrecked by the high winds. ‘I am gutted and devastated. Everything I had was destroyed,’ she told the Mail.
The stall was to promote 80Max, an interactive climate change project, encouraging drivers to stick to a 80kph vehicle speed to reduce greenhouse gases.
She ploughed €7,000 of her own money into it, including paying around €2,000 for the stall, plus money spent on van hire and computer screens.
‘It was our first big show,’ she said. ‘It is destroyed and I have little choice but to pack up and go home.’
Also packing up were a number of sheep breeders. A long tunnel where the sheep were housed had the weather-proof sheeting ripped off in the storm and its frame was badly buckled.
Sheep breeder, John Dolan, from Banner, Co. Offaly, said a prized ram he was showing at the championships for a friend had caught a chill and had to go home.