PRESIDENT SPENDS BUSY DAY IN DUNDALK AT THREE EVENTS
March 2000
PRESIDENT Mary McAleese has a busy day in town.
She visits the Friary exactly 167 years after it was the first national school officially recognised in Dundalk.
The president makes a big impression on pupils who had spent the previous two weeks preparing for the occasion.
The children want to know all about their important visitor.
However, it isn’t just a day for the very young.
Pride of place goes to one of the school’s oldest past-pupils, 95-year-old Maisie Bellew who sits centre stage between the president and her husband Dr. Martin McAleese.
Infant school principal Mary O’Rourke explains the Friary had been recognised as the first national school in Dundalk on 3 March, 1833, and since then the children of the area benefited greatly from early education made possible by the foresight of the Dominican order.
The president informs her young audience she would be able to go back to Dublin and tell everyone that the school has the best singers in Ireland, referring to a rousing version of ‘ The Star of the County Down’.
Next stop is the Woodland Park halting site, President McAleese having asked to see the innovative work being carried on there.
Formalities are dispensed with as she visits the recently-opened community building and officially opens the laundry.
The president and her husband are a big hit with the children who attend the Right Start pre-school based in the grounds of St. Joseph’s NS.
The children who attend Gaelscoil and St. Joseph’s and avail of the homework club are also pleased to see the important guests.
Meanwhile, the Women Together Group, comprising ladies from the Traveller and settled communities who have been meeting for the past five years, and the women who run the coffee shop as Ozanam House for St Vincent de Paul, serve tea and biscuits.
The laundry service is set up with the assistance of Dundalk UDC, FÁS, Dundalk Travellers’ Committee, Louth County Enterprise Board and New Skills North East.
After cutting the ribbon President McAleese wishes the women running the laundry, Marie McDonagh and Margaret McDonagh, all the best.
They both completed a ten-week ‘Start Your Own Business’ and ‘New Skills’ course in preparation for operating the service.
Finally, the president addresses the Guidance Counsellors’ National Conference in the Fairway Hotel.
She praises the vital role played by the counsellors in helping young people, and indeed those returning to education, chart their future life’s course.
Over 550 guidance counsellors from second-level schools and colleges throughout Ireland, seminar and workshop providers, exhibitors and specially invited guests from Ireland and the UK attend.
The event marks the AGM of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors.