THE fallout from Monday’s shock announcement that the McCormack company which operates 15 businesses mainly in the North West, had gone into receivership is still being felt.
CLOSURE: The McCormack’s Mace shop on Mail Coach Road which was closed this week.
The 208 members of staff, suppliers and customers who may have paid deposits, or have credit or vouchers are still unclear as to their situation.
Local TD Eamon Scanlon described the loss of jobs as a “major blow.”
Deputy Scanlon believes that the first priority should be to try and keep jobs in the North West.
“In the short term, efforts need to be made to secure as many of these jobs as possible. The McCormack name is well known throughout the North West and it has been a significant employer and service provider in the region. I am urging the receiver to ensure that these businesses are sold as going concerns so that jobs and services can be protected,” he said,
He described the speed at which the businesses were closed as “worrying”.
For more on this story, see this week’s Sligo Weekender newspaper – in shops now. A digital edition of the paper is available by subscription, see our homepage, www.sligoweekender.ie, for more information.
EASKEY is a place brimming with history and character.
FULL LIFE: Eugene Forde, the former postman for Easkey. Picture by Alan Finn.
One native, who has a mixture of both this history and character is Eugene Forde, a former postman who brought people’s mail to Easkey for 40 years.
There are several elements to Eugene’s story and perhaps this article won’t do that story any justice.
Eugene was the son of a veteran of the First World War, John Forde. His father John served with his fellow Easkey man John Gordon in the Connacht Rangers.
Eugene was also a postman in the village for 40 years and all of that aside, he is a keen motorbike enthusiast, restoring bikes from yesteryear.
But it is the change in Easkey that Eugene has seen over the course of his life which starts off the conversation. He is now in his 90th year.
“The change around here is unbelievable. I was born here in 1925. I was born across the river about 20 yards away from the Castle. There were eight of us in my family,” he said.
USUALLY the circumnavigation of Ireland by sea is done with some creature comforts.
LANDING: Gary Sargent lands his 13 foot Laser dinghy in Mullaghmore on Monday evening. Picture by Alan Finn
For a start, there would be a facility aboard the yacht (usually) to have a cup of tea, to lie down or just simply to stop sailing at some stage or other during the journey.
This is not the case for Gary Sargent, who is sailing around Ireland in a 13 foot Laser dinghy.
Normally the Laser is a boat reserved for short distance sailing such as races around a course and not huge offshore distances.
Gary, however, is well into the 1,500km marathon sail and took a well deserved break this week along the way in Mullaghmore. He explained what made him want to undertake this mammoth challenge.
“I always wanted to sail around the world. Life I suppose is what happens when you are busy making other plans. It didn’t happen for me, but I realised that I needed to get something out of my system and my wife knew that too.”
“It started off as a joke to sail the dinghy around, but I slept on it for a few weeks and thought ‘yeah I might give this a lash’ and that is how it started. That was 2015 and that is why I am here after just sailing into Sligo,” Gary said on Monday.
Gary has previously sailed around Ireland in the annual Round Ireland Yacht race, but decided to undertake a different challenge to raise money for ChildVision, a charity who helps visually impaired children in Ireland.
“I had done the comfortable yacht thing. It felt hard at the time but it seems a whole lot easier now! I think this [sailing around in a dinghy] gives you massive respect for the water. We don’t leave without checking forecasts or tides, but that doesn’t matter. It is still so variable and unpredictable,” he said.
To make his way to Mullaghmore on Monday, Gary sailed just over 38 nautical miles. He made his way from Ballycastle to Mullaghmore, and although it is a significant distance in the boat, Gary has managed 40 plus miles in a day.
The result, despite less mileage is no less tiring.
“Today was a mix. At one stage I was sailing into the wind and at times with the swell it is like getting punched in the ribs and then after that you fight with the boat to keep it up. It is physical, but mentally too, I am exhausted,” Gary said.
The choice of charity is something which helps to keep Gary going.
“I wanted to do it for this charity which maybe does not have national exposure. On one level the personal achievement is everything, but I think it would be wrong not to use it as a platform to raise money for a good cause. I am blown away by the work ChildVision do. They are the only educational centre for blind and visually impaired kids,” Gary commented.
Gary’s journey is being recorded on the live blog site ‘One Wild Ride’. There is also an option to donate on the page directly to ChildVision charity.
Sligo man Martin Keaveney is this year celebrating 60 years in the toolmaking and plastics business.
Martin Keaveney a tool maker from Sligo.
But in his lifetime of mould making, the Tonaphubble native broke the mould in many respects.
He was the first apprentice toolmaker in Ireland, he set up the first toolmaking business in Sligo town, his was the first Irish toolmaking company to export to the US and Africa, he was the first businessman to receive an IDA grant in retrospect and he was the first person from the West of Ireland to win the national Jacob’s Award as Outstanding Young Man of the Year.
And apart from all that he was also elected to Sligo Corporation on his first attempt and served a term as Mayor of Sligo.
Martin spoke to the Sligo Weekender this week about his successful and eventful career in toolmaking and politics.
He was born in 1939 and grew up on a small farm in Tonaphubble, which unlike now was then sparsely populated farmland on the outskirts of a much smaller Sligo town.
His parents came from Easkey and got the land as part of the Land Commission break-up of the big estates in the 1930s.
Martin spent three years in the Tech in Sligo after primary school and at the age of 16 went looking for a job. “I never considered going into farming”, he said.
The Gallagher family were setting up the Tool and Gauge tool making factory in Tubbercurry and in 1956 he became the first apprentice toolmaker in Ireland, a decision he has never regretted.
In his early days in Tubbercurry he stayed in “digs” with the local postmistress Mrs Leonard, as in those days it took an hour to get there from Sligo.
“It was a twisty road, full of potholes”, Martin remembers.
For Martin’s full story see this week’s Sligo Weekender- in shops now.
Sunflower Days in aid of North West Hospice take place from June 9-11. Sunflowers pins and Sunflower plants will be available to buy from North West Hospice Volunteers throughout the North West and the public’s support would be greatly appreciated.
A driver was detected travelling at 121km/h while going through a Sligo village with a 50km/h speed limit last weekend.
It was one of three Sligo cases highlighted by gardai this week in a list of 16 “notable speed occurrences” nationally following the large scale national speed enforcement operation “Slow Down”, conducted between 7am on Friday and 7am on Saturday.
By far the most shocking disregard of a speed limit nationally was the driver who sped through Ballinacarrow at 121km/h some time during that 24 hours.
Not alone were they way in excess of the 50km/h zone through the village on the N17 between Collooney and Tubbercurry, but were also breaking the general speed limit of 100km/h.
The other two cases highlighted from Sligo were less dramatic. One was 120km/h in the 100km/h general zone on the N15 at Mount Temple, Grange while the other was 119km/h in a 100 km/h zone on the N4 at Cloonymeenaghan, Riverstown.
The percentage of speeding drivers nationally was relatively small, with just 322 exceeding a speed limit out of 176,521 vehicles checked.
Operation Slow Down was conducted on the day that new speed camera zones came into effect throughout the country.
In County Sligo the number of zones has more than doubled.
Of the 355 new zones nationally 11 of them are in Sligo, which with the existing nine brings the total now in the county to 20.
For the location of the cameras and more from this story, pick up a copy of this week’s paper- in shops Thursday.
On Saturday, June 11, popular local group, Anything Goes will be joined on the Hawk’s Well stage by the Dublin Gospel Choir. This promises to be a concert not to be missed.
In the first of a two part series on Collooney, the Weekender in the community speaks to the local Tidy Towns, people involved in Community Games, a new restaurateur in the area and the Couch 2 5k program.
Here is a taster of the two page feature in this week’s paper. Also, check out next week’s edition (June 2) for more stories from Collooney.
THE TidyTowns initiative has encouraged towns around the the country to tackle problems in their community including litter and dilapidated buildings.
