Since 1922, Salesian Agricultural College Pallaskenry has been specialising in training students in the agricultural practices. Irish Tractor Agri & Plant touched base with its Principal Derek O’Donoghue to find out all the latest on Ireland’s premier working agri college.
Situated on a 550-acre estate of lush golden vale farmland, adjacent to the picturesque Shannon Estuary, 16km west of Limerick city, Salesian Agricultural College Pallaskenry is a fully-operational commercial farming enterprise that has been synonymous with agricultural education for over a century now.
These days the agri college has approximately 500 students enrolled, with 200 of those being full-time and another 300 as part-time/adult learners.
There are 28 staff members employed at the college which offers numerous full-time courses that are focused on agriculture and agricultural mechanisation, leading to ‘Young Trained Farmer’ status.
These courses include Level 5 Certificate in Agriculture and a Level 6 Advanced Certificate in Agriculture with specialisations in Dairy Herd Management, Drystock Herd Management & Agricultural Mechanisation. Salesian Agricultural College Pallaskenry also offers a Higher Certificate in Engineering in Agricultural Mechanisation (2 years) and an optional Bachelor in Engineering in Agricultural Engineering (Year 3).
Derek O’Donoghue has been Principal for the last 11 years and filled Irish Tractor Agri & Plant in on what’s been going on at this agri college as of late.
“From a machinery perspective, the AGCO Ireland Training Programme would be a popular one which has been introduced in recent times,” he outlined.
“So AGCO would have been sending the technicians from the Valtra, Fendt and Massey garages to the UK for training. A three-year training programme, and they were finding it more difficult to get Irish students to go between being involved with farming and being involved with sport.
“They were looking to try and train those technicians here in Ireland, so they settled on Pallaskenry being their training centre with the first intake of technicians in September 2023 and it’s a three-year training programme.
“So they’re no longer being trained in the UK. They’re being trained here in Ireland, and AGCO then would have started to resource and put training resources in place here in the college.”
The Principal added: “There’s another intake then this September. There are roughly 15 students started in it and they’re working away in their dealership, they come in for three weeks and they’re back then in the dealership for six weeks. After that, they’re in for another three weeks.
“That’s new and the entry is through the dealership. They decide who goes out.”
In partnership with Technological University of the Shannon (TUS), Teagasc and QQI the college offers a wide range of practical training courses and programmes.
Complementing modern machinery and workshop experiences, the working farm at Salesian Agricultural College Pallaskenry is home to a high-EBI 460-cow dairy herd, a 50-strong dairy calf-to-beef enterprise and a flock of 50 mid-season lambing ewes.
The enterprises allow students to put the theory learned in the classroom to practical, hands-on use, with sustainability to the fore.
Right now, there are several popular courses which the college has on offer to its students, with a number of those set to commence in Autumn 2025 (see more here: www.salesianag.ie/full-time-courses).
“Very simply, we offer agriculture and we offer engineering courses,” said O’Donoghue.
“On the agriculture side, we offer a course in conjunction with TUS and that’s the Bachelor of Engineering in Agricultural Engineering; B-Eng.”
“That course is very popular. It’s a three-year course, a Level 7 Engineering degree and a big component of that for students is they do a six-month placement at the end of Year1.
“There’s an intake of approximately 45 per year, but there’s 15 or 16 who go to the States every year working on the Harvest Crew and we’re linked with Ohio State University Exchange Programme on that.”
So, all of that considered, the burning question is what is it about Salesian Agri College Pallaskenry that has its students choosing it first ahead of other agri colleges out there?
O’Donoghue commented: “On the machinery side, we have a long tradition and what’s helping it there is a lot of the machinery dealerships, fabrication units across the country have past graduates of the college and they tend to encourage somebody who is thinking about doing Ag Mechanisation to go to Pallaskenry.
“So there’d be a very strong tie-in with the industry because of the success of past students.
“On the agriculture/dairy side, we have by far the largest commercial dairy herd in the ag college sector and we’re the only agricultural college with our own rotary milking parlour.”
Looking towards the months ahead for the college, its Principal says that maintaining student numbers is the main objective.
Along with that, he points to the importance of continually adapting to the latest agricultural technology as being paramount.
“Look, the hopes for the college would be when the economy is going well – this is right across the ag college sector – we would be maintaining numbers,” said O’Donoghue.
“At the moment, that would be the biggest challenge, rather than increasing numbers. Yes, we would love to increase numbers, but maintaining numbers would be the starting point.
“And the other thing is just to adapt to an increasing level of on-farm technology. Again, just on the machinery side, we have a slurry tanker with an in-built NIR, so we’re able to analyse the nutrient content of every load of slurry.
“We had a demonstration here yesterday. The sprayer came from Oak Park and the crops, Soil Essentials in Scotland where they can identify the individual docks and turn on each individual nozzle.
“So obviously less spray going out, substantially less spray from environmental sustainability, greater throughput and output out of the sprayer.
“It’s to keep adapting to the technology that becomes available to make better farming decisions, make farming easier and make farming more sustainable.”
Salesian Agricultural College
Pallaskenry,
Co Limerick
V94 V8N3
Tel: (061) 393 100
Web: salesianag.ie
Email: [email protected]
First published in Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 13 No 2, Autumn 2025
Featured, Salesian Agricultural College
