New bridge opening slammed as ‘fiasco’

November 1997

The official re-opening of Wexford Bridge has been labelled a civic fiasco after hundreds of townspeople were prevented from participating in the ceremony.

A huge crowd of frustrated onlookers was left hanging around on Wexford Quays for an hour and a half on Saturday afternoon while the opening ceremony took place on the Ferrybank side of the bridge.

They couldn’t see or hear what was going on and were prevented from crossing to the other side by gardaí on duty on the Wexford town side of the bridge.

Former Mayor of Wexford Vincent Byrne, who was among the waiting throng, condemned the oversight this week and said an opportunity for public participation in a community ceremony celebrating civic success had been lost.

‘I despair at the deliberate disregard for, and lack of connection between our civic authorities and their public,’ he said.

Council chairman, John Browne, said he wasn’t aware that people had been stopped from walking across the bridge to join the celebrations.

‘I wouldn’t like to think that people were prevented from coming over to the ceremony, especially on such a wonderful day for Wexford,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t aware of any instruction being given that people couldn’t walk across.’

The bridge was barred to all traffic until the Minister for the Environment, Noel Dempsey, was driven across in a vintage car. There was an unscheduled change to proceedings too, when well-known local woman Maggie Hurley took it upon herself to walk in front of that car for most of the way. And all the time townspeople who gathered at the Wexford side of the bridge remained frustrated that they had not been allowed to walk across to see the ceremony and then walk back towards town.

‘For an hour and a half, our sole ‘entertainment’ was to be told by frustrated gardaí to ‘move back’ and ‘move onto the pavement’,’ said Vincent Byrne. ‘ There were no speakers to relay what was happening, no connection whatsoever to what was going on, apart from oft-repeated suggestion from the gardaí that if we didn’t move, the ceremony wouldn’t take place’.

According to Deputy Browne, the ceremony was held on the Ferrybank side as a gesture of courtesy to the people living ‘over the water’ who had been inconvenienced most during the 10-week bridge closure.