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CountryWide

RTÉ Radio 1

The CountryWide team feature the events, people and happenings that bring colour and life to communities, towns and villages across Ireland. Listen live Saturdays at 8am on RTÉ Radio 1.

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  • 28 episodes
  • Avg 13 min
  • English

Episodes 28

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  • August 22 · 6 min

    How has hot and dry weather impacted potato farming?

    Journalist Hannah Quinn Mulligan met with potato farmer Donald Tracy in Kildare whose harvest has been reduced to half due to the hot and dry weather this year. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • August 22 · 20 min

    How impactful are nature-based solutions to flooding?

    Dr Mary Burke, geographer at Trinity College Dublin talked about her research SloWaters project that encourages farmers to slow the flow of water off their lands during heavy rains to reduce the risk of flooding downstream. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • August 22 · 13 min

    Annacotty Weir in Limerick to be removed to restore natural river channel

    Under the EU Nature restoration plan, Ireland must draw up an inventory of artificial barriers on its rivers and decide which of them will come out to restore at least 25,000 kilometers of free flowing rivers by 2030. One of these barriers is Annacotty weir in Limerick on the river Mulkear. Head of Inland Fisheries Ireland Hazel King joined us to tell us more. And some locals told Ella McSweeney their concerns. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • August 15 · 7 min

    Cork Community Garden

    The city's food festival, Cork on a Fork, has two more days to run. Some of the best of it isn't happening in restaurants at all. Up on the northside, in Knocknaheeny and Hollyhill, there's a community garden that neighbours have built between them, run by the NICHE Community Health Project. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • August 15 · 4 min

    Algal Bloom

    It’s unfortunately become part of the summer in Ireland - reports of algal blooms on our lakes, some toxic, with county councils across the country warning us to not bathe in the water and keep dogs away. Frances Lucy is a freshwater scientist at ATU who’s spent her career studying Irish freshwater. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • August 15 · 8 min

    Rambling House

    Every rural parish had homes where the latch was never down. They were called rambling houses, and they were a deeply held tradition in rural Ireland, helping bond communities. It’s a tradition that’s being celebrated by Birr Men Together working with artist Hazel Greene to collect the stories and songs that made those nights what they were. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • August 15 · 23 min

    Uplands and Commonage

    We’ll begin on the hills and it’s about commonage - land own between farmers. Roughly 400,000 hectares of farmland is held under commonage, and it can become some of the richest habitat in the country. Managing it well means getting all the shareholders to agree, which can be easier said than done. So what’s the future for our uplands? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • August 8 · 8 min

    Dublin Horse Show 2026

    It's been one hundred years since Irish Army officers first jumped for their country, and now we are looking at how they’re marking the centenary at this week's Dublin Horse Show in the RDS. Suzanne Campbell reports. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • August 8 · 8 min

    Little Terns

    The season is nearly at an end for Ireland's smallest and rarest seabirds, Little Terns, and they'll soon be off on their journey south back to Africa. As they nest on the ground, they're extremely vulnerable to disturbance from all of us. Della Kilroy went to Kilcoole to meet the conservationists working to protect the seabird species. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • August 8 · 10 min

    Water Shortages

    In 2018, a summer drought hit Ireland hard, and farmers were counting the cost of it for months afterwards. This year, it's happening all over again. July was the driest on record, so what does this mean for dairy farmers? Ella visits Malcolm Kidd, a young dairy farmer outside Bagenalstown to see how he's dealing with the drought. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • August 8 · 8 min

    Offshore Wind Farms

    Five new wind farms are waiting on planning approval in the Irish Sea and it appears that the sites line up with some of the best fishing grounds on the east coast. So it's no great surprise that fishermen are worried, both about losing space to work, and about what all those structures under the water might do to the marine environment they depend on. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • August 8 · 9 min

    Water Shortages (continued)

    It's not only Malcolm's farm affected, it's playing out on other farms, mainly in the south and southeast. So what does this actually mean for farmers, and how do you make a farm more resilient to to extremes - droughts in summers, and deluges of rain in winter? Cathal Somers from Teagasc, and Conor Murphy of NUI Maynooth discuss further. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • August 1 · 18 min

    The River Shannon: Part 1

    Today's programme is a River Shannon special as we hear about the life along the river. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • August 1 · 25 min

    The River Shannon: Part 2

    We continue our River Shannon special, and Regan Hutchins also chats to Donal Boland about life living on the Shannon, on a boat in Co Offaly. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • July 25 · 7 min

    Croke Patrick Stakeholders

    Tomorrow is Reek Sunday - when thousands of people will make their way up Croagh Patrick. Over ten years ago, Martin Keating decided to do something about the increasing number of feet taking its toll on the mountain. He started ringing around - farmers, landowners and conversations grew the Croagh Patrick Stakeholders Group, which he chairs today. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • July 25 · 8 min

    The Green Loy

    The loy is a long, narrow spade that broke hard ground for generations. A new exhibition at The Dock in Carrick-on-Shannon takes the loy as its starting point. The Green Loy is curated to make a quiet case that the everyday things of rural life - tools, dressers, haycocks, quilts - are works of art in their own right, and a link between people and the land they worked. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • July 25 · 7 min

    ECO-UNESCO'S Eco-Choices

    ECO-UNESCO, Ireland's environmental education and youth organisation has built a whole programme around the idea that time outdoors is good for us. It's called ECO-Choices, and it uses nature-based activities and outdoor learning to help young people. Della Kilroy joined one group on one of their weekly summer outings. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • July 25 · 9 min

    Farming and mental health in Ireland

    Louise McHugh is a professor of psychology and the deputy head in the school of psychology at UCD, and she’s been involved in researching mental health and suicide in the farming community in Ireland. If you've been affected by anything we've discussed, please go to rte.ie/helplines for helplines and services. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Showing 1–20 of 28 episodes