Paddy's Day parade organising committee spent €12k on safety barrier hire

The organising committee of the 2023 St Patrick's Day Festival in Mullingar had to fork out €12,000 to rent safety barriers so that the parade would be given the green light.

The centre of Mullingar was closed on St Patrick's Day from Nugent's Corner to the Carey Bridge from 12pm to 6pm for the town's first St Patrick's parade since 2017.

In order for the event to proceed, Westmeath County Council informed the committee that they would have to erect safety barriers to prevent the crowd from spilling onto the road.

Speaking to the Westmeath Examiner, PRO Ray Dolan revealed that the cost of renting the barriers was €12,000, a significant sum for the voluntary committee to raise.

The festival would not have been able to go ahead, Ray said, without the generosity of local businesses that provided sponsorship. He also praised his fellow organising committee members and the scores of other volunteers who gave freely of their time to make sure that the festival was successful.

Overall, Ray said that the members of the organising committee were “absolutely over the moon” with how the parade and the other events over the weekend went, including the flotilla on Thursday evening that brought St Patrick (Bartle D’Arcy) to Mullingar Harbour.

“Everything went extremely well. The amount of people that turned up to the events was unbelievable. We tried something new on what we are now going to call St Patrick’s Eve.

“Having St Patrick come in on the canal was successful and it’s something that we are going to work on for next year. A lot of people were involved – Mullingar Canoe Club had 30 kayaks in the water, while the flotilla was organised by the IWAI Royal Canal Branch.”