PLEDGE THAT EASTER FESTIVAL WILL BE ‘BIGGER AND BETTER THAN EVER’

THE president of Mallow Chamber, Pat Hayes, has pledged the Mallow Racing Home for Easter Festival will return for its 10th edition “bigger and better than ever before.”

Mr Hayes was speaking on Tuesday at the official launch of the 2019 festival against the stately backdrop of the landmark Mallow Castle, which will once again be a hive of activity over the Easter weekend.

Established in 2010, the festival has gone from strength-tostrength with each passing year, attracting thousands of people to Mallow over the course of the weekend to enjoy three glorious days of racing at the Cork Racecourse.

However, the festival is not just about ‘ the sport of king’s’ as Mallow will once again set to be transformed into a festival hub with a full programme of events set to take place at venues across the town.

“With just a few weeks to go to the festival Mallow is already buzzing with anticipation. There is no doubt but that this is one of the highlights of the local social calendar, drawing huge crowds to Mallow to enjoy the weekend and revel in the special festival atmosphere.”

Once again Mallow Castle will be the venue for the traditional food and craft fair and a plethora of other attractions including the live music, puppet making workshops and the ‘Wobbly Circus Show’.

The town centre will also be gripped by festival fever with on-street activities across the weekend, including stilt-walkers, face painting, a treasure hunt and live music.

“We are grateful to all of the volunteers and members of the business community that have come on board with their support to help ensure the festival will be bigger and better than ever before,” said Mr Hayes.

The chair of Cork County Council’s Kanturk/Mallow municipal district committee, Cllr Gearoid Murphy, said he was very proud to be associated with an event that “highlights all that is good about Mallow.”

“It takes a real community efforts to put together something on this scale each year. There will be something for everybody and it would be remiss of me not to commend the Council for the support they give the event each year,” he said.

Mary Hayes, senior executive officer with Cork County Council, said the authority was delighted to be involved with “this flagship event for Mallow.”

“We have always been a huge financial supporter of the festival, something that we intend to continue into the future to fulfil our ambition to see this landmark event for Mallow grow bigger with each passing years,” said Ms Hayes.

“Great work was also done by past festival committees under Mary Kelly and we as a Council would like to recognise the huge contribution she made to the event over the years.”

The manager of Cork Racecourse, Andrew Hogan, promised there would be plenty of activities taking place at the venue in addition to the three days of National Hunt, Flat and mixed racing.

“This is the highlight of the year for us and we are expecting big crowds, particularly on Sunday for Ladies Day. We will also have plenty of entertainment track side across the course of the weekend and will be showing the Irish Grand National on a large screen on Easter Monday,” said Andrew.

The full programme of festival events will be posted online at www.racinghomeforeaster. com and on their Facebook page next week.