Gorey Market House Festival will not go ahead this summer
ANOTHER big-ticket event on the local calendar has fallen foul of the Covid-19 crisis, with the news that the hugely popular Gorey Market House Festival will not take place this year.
The government announced last week that mass gatherings of over 5,000 people would not take place in Ireland until the end of August at the earliest. The following afternoon, the festival committee announced that the August bank holiday weekend festival would not go ahead this summer.
In a statement, the committee said: ‘It is with regret that the Gorey Market House Festival Committee must announce the cancellation of this year’s event. On foot of the government announcement, that events requiring licences for crowds in excess of 5,000 will not be considered for the period up to the end of August, it became clear that the event couldn’t proceed. Whilst it is disappointing, the committee acknowledges that the health of our community and overcoming the current pandemic is far more important. The committee would like to assure everyone that the festival will return in 2021’,
Councillor Anthony Donohoe, Chairman of Gorey Market House Festival committee, has since said that a decent amount of planning work had already taken place for this year’s festival.
‘We had about eight meetings, Cillian [Byrne] had sourced the headline acts, while Paula and Sinead had been working on the fun day. We were hoping that the new town park would have been up and running and we had discussed using that for an opening event maybe with the fun day. It’s a big loss,’ said Cllr Donohoe.
‘ The August bank holiday weekend is a big one for Wexford and the Market House Festival gives a lift to the town’s economy with the pubs, clubs and restaurants, as well as hotels and B&Bs. It’s an excellent event and there’s buy-in by everybody. I know people living abroad who would specifically come home that weekend as they know there’s good entertainment on the street, and they make a holiday out of it’.
Cillian Byrne told this newspaper that lots of work had gone into tying down acts and that the line-up this year would have been a little different to last year’s festival.
‘It’s going to be very sorely missed, as it’s a lot of peoples’ favourite weekend of the year. Last year was definitely one of the best years, we had a band over from America and I was in talks with getting them back as people wanted to see them again.
‘With the acts, as it’s a popular weekend, you want to get them as early as possible. We had changed the format a bit from previous years, as the Friday had traditionally been for a young audiences with Beat FM and top DJs. We planned to change it this year to see what would say about it.
‘ This year’s Friday was going to be a country music themed night and Derek Ryan was booked. On Saturday,
Paddy Casey, who played in 2016 was due back and we were hoping he’d get a good reaction.
‘We’ve always gotten good value out of tribute acts, such as the Queen tribute last year. So for the Sunday night after the fun run, we had everything lined up as we like to mix it between the local and the semi-big acts. We were talking to Liam Byrne who does a really good Christy Moore, he was going to open up at around 6 p.m. and from there it was going to be a night of anthems, so we were going to do a Beatles and Oasis tribute with The Beatles for Sale and Live Forever’.
On the topic of local Municipal District funding that would have gone towards the festival, Cillian is hopeful that something good will come from it but that is yet to be decided.
Chairperson of the Municipal District Joe Sullivan said that the issue of funding from the district is a budgetary matter that will be discussed fully by elected councillors, not members of the festival committee.
Cllr Donohoe said that all involved will take the next few weeks to come up with an idea on what to do with it.
‘I know charities at the moment are crying out for money but I’d like us, as a Municipal District, to do something with it – maybe an event when all this has passed, something along the lines of the hospice barbecue where you’d invite all the elderly, as they are the ones that have been most affected by this virus. They’re cocooning and their lives have been turned upside down. If we could hold a free event for them, in a local hotel with a band and a barbecue so they can come on in and celebrate that the cocooning is over. The measure of any community is how it looks after its elderly, and I think we are stepping up to the mark.
‘We will discuss this as a full district to see what’s best to do with it,’ he said.
Although Cllr Donohoe is disappointed about the festival not going ahead, he said there is a bigger picture.
‘It was my first year as Chairperson and Michael Drea’s first year being just in as the new District Manager but in the grand scheme of things, it is just a festival. We’re dealing with a pandemic, we’re losing citizens and there’s bigger things going on with people losing loved ones, so we have to put things into perspective here. Everyone’s lives are effectively paused waiting to see what’s going to happen out of this’.