DOWN THE YEARS

Memories from days gone by

Serious threat from foot and mouth February 2001

County Wexford’s farms have been declared virtual ‘no-go’ areas by the IFA, underpinning the fight by customs officers and agricultural inspectors at ‘frontline’ Rosslare Harbour to keep dreaded foot and mouth disease from our shores.

‘Other than the border with the north, we’re first in the line of fire here,’ said Adrian King, the IFA’s Regional Manager for the south-east, urging farmers to stay at home and ordinary people to stay off farmlands.

‘Basically, rural farms are no-go areas…farmers should take all precautions on their own movements. We have already spoken to merchants and creameries with regards to disinfecting their vehicles.

‘What we’re basically telling farmers is to stay at home…to walking groups, hunts, people exercising their dogs, we would be grateful if they would stay off farmland, in view of the seriousness of the situation.’

Mr King said that despite all the precautions, he believed there was only a 50-50 chance to keeping the epidemic out, given the level of business contact with Britain, where the virus has reached epidemic proportions, and its ready access via the busy Rosslare Europort, Ireland’s gateway to Europe.

In a sign of the growing seriousness of the situation, Agriculture Minister Joe Walsh temporarily suspended all cattle marts.

Customs officers and Department of Agriculture inspectors are laboriously checking every car and truck coming off the ferries at Rosslare Europort, with passengers only allowed to disembark after walking through disinfectant mats and the undersides of cars and lorries being sprayed.

But given that the initial outbreak in Britain went unreported for up to two weeks, the fear is that the highly contagious disease could have already been brought in, although so far there is no evidence to suggest it has been.

‘We have to remember the most recent outbreak in Wales is not much further away from Wexford town than Carlow is. We’re shivering in our boots now,’ said Mr King.

‘If it comes here, it will devastate the whole business, co-ops, marts, and their ability to get paid. It would substantially change farming as we know it.’

Film shoot pumped £4 min to Wexford February 1998

The Wexford economy benefitted to the tune of £4 million last summer thanks to the three and a half week filming of Spielberg’s ‘Saving Private Ryan’ in Curracloe.

The Wexford Film Commission has just released official figures which give a breakdown of where the movie megabucks were spent in Wexford during the film shoot, which gave direct employment to over 200 people in the area.

The largest portion of the £4 million spent went on location and construction costs, contractor and environmental services, hardware, stationery, and other miscellaneous items which amounted to £1.5 million.

Approximately £1,250,000 was spent on accommodation and living expenses; £300,000 on the direct labour payroll; £270,000 on transport and fuel, and £650,000 on expenditure relating to army and FCA personnel and miscellaneous items.

According to Wexford Film Commission chairman, Cllr. Tommy Carr, the expenditure was spread over a wide area of the county, from Rosslare through to Gorey.

The success of the film, and the fact that record-breaking director Steven Spielberg and Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks were involved, has also led to a number of enquiries from other film-makers about using Wexford as a location.

From Bun clody to Brussels for Rory? February 1984

Wexford County Councillor Rory Murphy has declared his desire to run in the next European Elections and will make his first major bid for a Fianna Fáil nomination at a seminar in Wexford on Sunday.

The Bunclody farmer and businessman will be one of the nine prominent party men seeking a nomination for the Leinster constituency to address the seminar in the Talbot Hotel.

He is confident of widespread support in Co. Wexford, but his opponents for the nomination include many party personalities who are well known at national level.

They are former Ministers, Pádraig Faulkner, Paddy Power, and Jim Gibbons; European Parliament Vice-President, Paddy Lalor; as well as Jim Fitzsimons TD (Meath), Ciarán Murphy ( Wicklow), Sean Keegan (Longford/Westmeath), and Eamonn Meade (Kilkenny).

Fianna Fáil are expected to nominate two candidates in Leinster, but pressure is expected from Wexford to increase the number to three, to boost Mr Murphy’s chances of selection.

Moves to scupper the video pirates February 1986

Investigators working on behalf of the Irish Videogram Association are expected to make a raid on Wexford in the next few weeks, in a bid to root out video pirates who sell bootleg tapes.

INFACT (the Irish National Federation Against Copyright Theft) has already closed down one operator in the town, and fined another £5,000 for royalty losses.

The man who was fined that £5,000 is now also anxious to inform people of the pitfalls of buying and using illegal pirated copies of films.

[NAME WITHELD] said that at the time his premises was inspected, he didn’t know a copy from an original. He had bought his stock of videotapes from a number of different suppliers, and all had seemed trustworthy to him.

He says however that now that he knows more about the issue, he has come to realise that piracy is rife in Wexford, with bootleg tapes being offered in several shops and also in mobile video library vans that travel around the county.

‘INFACT know about it too and they’re doing something about it and that’s good,’ he said. ‘It’s equivalent to handling stolen goods, and that’s the way it’s seen.’

He said he is suffering ‘endless hassle’ from the effects of piracy. While some people might not unduly care about the legality or otherwise of tapes of films they want to see, particularly new-release blockbusters, he said that bad tapes can damage the video head players in people’s video machines.

‘I get customers coming to me about how the tapes I used to have must damaged their machines, and how they can’t get them fixed under guarantee,’ he said.

He hoped that the Revenue Commissioners will now also clamp down on others who continue to hawk pirated tapes.

PJ shows his true dedication to GAA February 1998

What’s the definition of a dedicated gael? Someone who passes up a chance to go to Paris, to instead stay home and play with Wexford in a game against the weakest football team in the country.

While 65 members of PJ Carley’s club Glynn/ Barntown jetted off to Paris last weekend at the invitation of a new club in the city called Paris Gaels, he voluntarily stayed behind.

The reason? To play in the U-21 Football Championship against Kilkenny, a match that Wexford were virtually guaranteed of winning.

In the event, they did just that, on a scoreline of 4-14 to 1-4. PJ helped along the way by scoring a goal and a point himself.

Meanwhile, his brothers, friends, and others from the club enjoyed a weekend of football and socialising in one of the world’s great cities.

From the adverts February 1983

A front page advert in 1983 declared that ‘ Wexford’s first shopping centre’ was about to be built on a four-acre site at Ballynagee, on the outskirts of town, and invited expressions of interest from businesses who might take shops there.

36 years later, that shopping centre still hasn’t been built. It must have hit a few snags along the way...