Archive News
Cian takes the helm as iconic festival enters a new phase
Date Published: {J}
The new man heading up this year’s Galway International Oyster Festival can certainly vouch that the molluscs work.
Father of four, Cian Ó Broin, best known in Galway City as the General Manager of the Meyrick Hotel and the man who oversaw the transition of the hotel from its former life as the Great Southern Hotel, is this year’s festival chairman.
In fact, he remembers well that on his first day on the job in the Meyrick, he had just had three hours’ sleep as staff put the finishing touches to the ‘new look’ hotel before it re-opened its doors to the public.
Not everyone liked the ‘black’ decor of the renovated foyer five and a half years ago, but, under Cian’s management, it has been softened over the years and he says it is still a work in progress.
As chair of the Oyster Festival committee, Cian says this year the event is very different with more emphasis on the food aspect and an even bigger effort to make it a family event on the Sunday.
This year’s programme certainly reflects the current economic climate. The corporate market has practically dried up so the committee had to look at inventive ways to keep the festival going, which this year is in its 57th year.
If Cian is fazed about any of this, he doesn’t show it. Part of his professional training is keeping a clear head. He isn’t the General Manager of a four-star hotel for nothing!
He has certainly earned his stripes along the way, having worked hard as a teenager for Cavistons Food Emporium in Sandycove, Dublin, then studying hotel management in the RTC (now the GMIT), honing his skills in Black Forest in Germany and starting his career in hotels as an Assistant Manager in the Connemara Coast Hotel many moons ago.
He met his ‘Galway Girl’ while he attended college and has been gradually establishing his roots here in the West ever since.
Dublin born Cian speaks beautifully, a reflection of his upbringing. His mother is Councillor Jane Dillon Byrne, a Labour party member and member of the Rathdown/Dún Laoghaire Council, who has been in politics for as long as Cian can remember.
He candidly admits that he even changed his name to the Irish version after he went to Coláiste Eoin so he could be his own man. His Dublin neighbourhood is akin, he says, to Wisteria Lane, though unlike the street in US series, Desperate Housewives, nobody really knows their neighbours. All the houses have long avenues leading from locked gates to the door and the identity of the neighbours read like a who’s who of magnates, developers and politicians.
He has a grá for the Gaeilge from his school days and is looking forward to refreshing it when his children (he has four under the age of five with wife, Marie, nee Grealy from Maree, Oranmore) go to school.
“I love living out the country. We live near my in-laws’ farm and my children are used to hens, cows, goats and I even milk the cows myself some evenings. I can’t imagine rearing a family in Dublin. The quality of life down here is great.
“Sure everyone in Dublin thinks I have the life of Reilly down Quay Street every weekend! And let them think it. Isn’t it great that this is the image people have of Galway. . . though I’m not sure we should be encouraging the hen or stag party brigade. In the long run, I don’t believe that is the image we should be creating for Galway. We should be focusing more on the cultural side,” he says.
Cian was very involved in the Christmas Market in Eyre Square last year and is involved again this year, as the Meyrick is like the Grande Dame overlooking the festivities.
“We learned a lot from last year’s event and I believe we can improve on it this year. It will be shorter for a start but will cover four weekends. It will also look even prettier with a picket fence all around the Square.
“There was some criticism of the number of food stands in last year’s Christmas Market but I believe that’s what saved it. I have been to Christmas markets on the Continent and I believe having one in Galway is appropriate. There’s nothing wrong with attracting over 60,000 extra people into the city coming up to Christmas!”
You can see when he is talking that Cian sees the bigger picture when it comes to what’s good for Galway’s tourism market.
Of course, the Meyrick is well placed overlooking the Square, just beside the bus, coach and train stations but he appreciates that the branding of Galway is ultra important to tourism and that the only way to sustain it, is to have a cohesive plan.
For more, read this weeek’s Galway City Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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