Margaret Donnelly with Keith Lambkin, Agricultural Unit of Met Eireann, Kate Gannon, Corporate Affairs manager with Irish Water and Tom Keogh from Keogh’s Crisps in the Independent Tent at the Ploughing Championships in Screggan Co Offaly.

Kate Gannon,Corporate Affairs Manager at Irish Water and Tom Keogh from Keogh’s Crisps in the Independent Tent at the Ploughing Championships in Screggan Co Offaly.

Ireland could soon be facing a crisp shortage, according to one of Ireland’s leading crisp and potato producers.

Speaking at the Ploughing Championships in Tullamore Tom Keogh of Keogh’s Crisps said that the long drought has greatly affected the Irish potato crop.

"This year has been very, very difficult but it’s nothing new. We’ve dealt with a lot of issues over the last few years. This year we had an extremely late spring, which led to a very late planting season. Luckily the machinery that we have now in Ireland for potatoes, we can get a lot of crop planted in a very short period of time. We just had to get all the crop in, in a very short space of time. Then, it never rained."

Keogh said that the company invested in an irrigation system that could water some 15pc of the farm's crops.

"We had to identify the crop that had the highest value and then get water to that. Then, we found the water reserves in the rivers started to dry up so we had to stop irrigating for a long time during the dry season because we were in danger of endangering the wildlife by taking out the water reserve."

He added that the drought had a severe impact on the production of the potato crops.

Expand Close Margaret Donnelly with Keith Lambkin, Agricultural Unit of Met Eireann, Kate Gannon, Corporate Affairs manager with Irish Water and Tom Keogh from Keogh’s Crisps in the Independent Tent at the Ploughing Championships in Screggan Co Offaly. / Facebook

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Whatsapp Margaret Donnelly with Keith Lambkin, Agricultural Unit of Met Eireann, Kate Gannon, Corporate Affairs manager with Irish Water and Tom Keogh from Keogh’s Crisps in the Independent Tent at the Ploughing Championships in Screggan Co Offaly.

“We had about 60pc reduction in the crop. Since the rain has come, that has reduced to 30pc based on tests we did over the weekend.

“However, when the rain arrived it brought a whole other set of issues because the crop had shut down and when it started to rain, the crop aborted the old potato and started growing again. In August, the crop thought it was the start of spring and began growing again.”

He said that there is risk that Ireland will face a crisp shortage next year.

“Because of the extreme weather, we have crops that are still growing and maturing. Our harvest isn’t going to take place until the middle of October. You will not see an issue in the crisp trade until after March 2019, because we are still harvesting at the moment every day and that will continue. It’s only when the harvest will finish that we can say ‘we’re actually back 40pc this year’ and then we can put proper plans in place.”

Kate Gannon, Corporate Affairs Manager at Irish Water said that climate change is happening in Ireland and that farmers are the most at risk.

"We’re going to see more extreme events," Gannon said speaking at the Irish Independent tent in Tullamore.

“Ireland is lucky that we are a water rich country, but the drought this year presented huge challenges for us. At the height of it, we had 140 seas of our some 900 that were in drought or were in potential of drought.”

Kate said that while Ireland is technically out of a draught, some water reserves across the country are still low.

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