The Moynalty Horse Chase in north Meath is the leading fundraiser every year for the local football club Castle Villa whose home ground is known as Villa Park.
The club house is 5km outside Moynalty village and is something of a footballing oasis surrounded by stubbled fields of harvested barley and good pasture land.
By the appointed time of 2pm, as horses and riders gathered for the off, the wind was gusting so loudly that it was hard to hear above the noise. The organisers were going to call it off if the yellow wind warning locally was upgraded to an orange one, but it wasn’t.
Some 48 horses and riders turned up to participate in what was in effect a horse fun run. The chase was across 15km of Meath countryside and through a willow forest. They hoped to raise €6,000-€7,000 for Castle Villa and its junior club, Borora Juniors.
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Route organiser Joe Tobin said they were all “hardy horse people” who weren’t going to be put off by a gust of wind.
He said he was worried the economy was overheating and there were signs of the boom of the Celtic Tiger before the bust of the crash. “I’m worried there is a crash not far away.” The “nonsense” over the €9 million spent on mobile phone pouches annoyed him as did other examples of reported overspending.
Nevertheless, he hoped the present Government would be re-elected because they had done “good within reason but I think they could do better”.
Who would he not vote for? “I couldn’t vote for Sinn Féin.” Why? “I think they are too extreme and I think they are not forward thinking.”
Evidence of Government largesse is obvious. The club has two floodlit pitches, three astro-pitches and a spacious clubhouse which was opened in 2019 by local TD and Minister for Justice Helen McEntee along with former Ireland international, Richard Dunne.
Club chairman Pat Bennett acknowledged that these things happened because of the sports capital grant, one of the more tangible examples of Government spending.
Club treasurer Thomas Collins predicted Independents would do very well in the election. He was not a “staunch follower” of either Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil, he said, but “things aren’t going too bad at the moment for people around here. The budget was very good, but it might be too good. I hope we don’t have to pay for it in the coming years. We all remember the years when USC was introduced and everyone’s pockets were emptied.”
Having two Ministers locally, the other being Minister for Sport Thomas Byrne, was good for the constituency, he said. The third sitting TD is Johnny Quirke.
Local farrier Brian Black always considered himself “as republican as the next man you’d meet. I’d love to see a 32-county Ireland all ran by Dublin”, but he sees Sinn Féin as anti-blood sport.
He said he was not party political and voted for individual candidates and in this case it would be Helen McEntee who was, he said, “a top class lady around here. She’s done a very good job.”
He is contemptuous of the Greens. “They think Ireland stops at the M50. The Green Party has a lot of homework to do to talk to rural people.”
Ann Marie Lynam is an office manager for the Irish Institute of Radiography and Radiation Therapy. Her daughter Holly (15) is riding in the chase.
Health, she said, was not getting the attention it did in previous elections. “There are incredible staffing issues,” she said. “I know from my own work for radiologists that they are in a staffing crisis at the moment. The nurses are struggling as well. Staffing is a huge issue for them.”
She was, she said, a Fine Gael supporter but was “on the fence” as whether or not to vote for them. She sees Taoiseach Simon Harris as a popular figure, though, and likes his stance on Gaza.
Would she vote for Sinn Féin? “I wouldn’t vote for Sinn Féin. I just think they are too inexperienced. It is very easy to be in Opposition and tell everyone how bad the other parties are doing. I don’t think they are pro-corporation and we need that investment in Ireland.”
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