The President of Ireland, Dr Patrick Hillery, was suitably suited and booted when he attended the opening of the All-Ireland Ploughing Championships at Old Kilmeaden Road, Butlerstown, in early October 1983.

An estimated 47,000 people (including a then-record 25,000 on day one) flooded the vast Suirside venue, with much of the 145 acres rendered a mudbath by 48 hours of torrential rain immediately before the event.

Paddy waded through the muck to mix with the crowds for three hours, and was hosted at Butlerstown House by John and Rosaleen Walsh.

Though a mild-mannered man, his most famous public pronouncement came at a fiery Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis in 1971 amid the bitter fallout from the Arms Trial. Dublin TD Kevin Boland, an opponent of Taoiseach Jack Lynch’s Northern policy, stormed a nearby podium and launched an attack on the party leadership, challenging them to “Come on up and put me down”.

While some of his supporters started chanting “We want Boland”, Hillery, who had been speaking, grabbed his own mic to shout down the rowdies with the immortal refrain: “If ye want a fight ye can have it … Ye can have Boland but ye can’t have Fianna Fáil!”

• Main photo by the late Joe McGrath