Moate's St Patrick's Day parade returns after four year hiatus

After a four year hiatus, Moate's St Patrick's Day parade returned on Friday last and brought out the people of Moate in their droves.

With 48 separate float entries the parade was certainly the biggest and longest the town has ever seen, and the crowds that came out from the town and surrounding villages shocked the organising committee.

Moate's Parade Committee Chairman Stuart Clifford said he believes the success on the day was due to a number of factors. "We put out a great Facebook campaign, promoting each parade entry individually and all businesses who supported us by way of donations."

Also "the longing for a parade after a four year wait, most children up to five years old in Moate has no memory or understanding of what a parade is as we didn't have one last year when a lot of other towns did."

Explaining why Moate had no parade last year when neighbouring towns such as Athlone and Clara did Stuart stated:

"I went to Moate Action group to ask that very question back in March last year and to offer my services to help. I was told the old committee had disbanded for many reasons including, some just had different commitments now after four years, their business or family's had grown or they had offered their skills to other organisations or sports clubs and were committed there now. For others it was health reasons and some had just gotten older and after four years did not have the energy to go back to it."

As a result, Stuart decided to form a new committee and start from scratch. A huge response came from the town and 1500m of bunting was bought along with many large tri-colour flags. Mullingar Town Band were booked along with extras such as quality sound for the viewing stand, walkie talkies hired for marshalls, advertising signage and many other extras to give professionalism and quality to the day.

"Our newly formed committee really has a fantastic wide range of the skills required to pull it off and I have no doubt next year will be bigger and better than ever."

As the campaign grew and word got out the entry's kept coming in right up until the last day. Floats included vikings and fairies, classic cars, vintage tractors , American car club, the Green Knights Motorcycle club and many other dressed up floats with many leprechauns, inflatable chef and vegetable outfits to sports teams and dance schools.

A fantastic video of the parade was made by local film maker Darren Doyle of Studio 93. His video has gone viral with 11,000 views in just a few days.

To see photos and video footage from the parade visit St Patrick's Day Parade, Moate, 2023 on Facebook.