LABOR Omnia Vincit is a Latin phrase meaning Hard Work Conquers All and it seemed particularly apt after an epic week at The Irish Farm Centre headquarters – the home of The Irish Field and our sister paper, the Irish Farmers Journal.

After years of talking and tinkering around with a new look revamp of our almost 150-year-old title, it finally happened this week. We hope that you find the revamped paper easier and more inviting to read. My hat is off to our ultra professional production team who have worked flat out on the new styles, headlines, colours and various type faces.

It was also a week where a €100 million Emergency Beef Fund was announced by the political powers that be and this very welcome announcement showed the strength of the huge lobbying forces at work in that sphere. They left no stone unturned to make their political punches felt. They unified together. They made their political weight felt.

The achievement was not lost on the sport horse industry which has consistently struggled to make any impact worth talking about on the political powerhouses – as can readily be seen with last year’s paltry annual budget increase of a mere €500,000.

Familiar faces

I ran into some familar faces at the Irish Farm Centre attending our revamp launch and while congratulating them on securing the €100 million for beef farmers, asked for any advice that I could pass onto the cash-starved sport horse industry stakeholders. “Get a more powerful lobby force and put the hard boots on,” shot back the immediate answer.

Huge work has been ongoing at Horse Sport Ireland on the five-year strategic plan for the sport horse industry which is worth over €800 million to the Irish economy and accounts for 13,000 full-time jobs.

Work on the estimates for the coming Budget is currently being hammered out across all government departments. Lobbying groups everywhere are making their cases and forwarding their reports and submissions. The paper mill is in overdrive in every sector.