Gormanston farmer's shock at overnight rave on land

A Gormanstown farmer has spoken of his shock to discover that a rave had taken place on his land over the weekend.

Darragh McCullough went to harvest his final field of the season only to find more than 100 people had turned it into an overnight pop-up rave.

Speaking on Today with Claire Byrne the broadcaster and farmer said he went up to the field early yesterday morning to do harvest, when he found the dregs of the party that had taken place the night before.

It comes after a rave in Dublin's south inner city on Saturday night, just one night after new restrictions were introduced to tackle Covid-19 in the capital.

Speaking on the shock discovery he said:

"we landed into the field ready to go, with the combine and tractors and trailers and everything else, only to be greeted by a couple of hundred, I reckon, at least a hundred, ravers.

"They were having a great time, it was just the dregs of the party."

Mr McCullough said he thought the party was finishing up by the time he arrived, but there were still about 100 people there.

"When I literally landed up and I have a video there of when I landed into the site... The music was off, and the guys were already packing away the decks. These guys were set up proper, they had vans, they had decks, they had huge amps and speakers, this was no messing.

"As I hopped out of my jeep to approach them and tell them to clear off, they turned and headed up the brow of the hill towards the ruin. There’s a ruin in the middle of the field, ideally located for an all-night party, may I add, overlooking the sea.

"It could have got ugly, if there’s booze involved and suddenly I got in and told everyone to clear off… I was amazed that basically everybody said OK, sorry about that, and headed for the gate," he said.

"A number of the partygoers went around with black bin liners, they came prepared with black bin liners, and picked up all the rubbish.

"I got talking to a few of them because I wanted to make sure that no stragglers were hanging around, so I kind of escorted them out of the site."

He struck up a conversation with some of them, and "it turned out they were all Brazilian and most of them were students, some professionals, there were Five Series BMWs there, so they weren’t all hard up students looking for a cheap night out".