Tom's treasured memories of the Celt over four decades

The great bulk of my life as a journalist has been here with The Anglo-Celt. My late wife, Mary, was eager that I apply for the job in the Celt which was advertised in the Sunday papers. I joined the Celt on June 11, 1973. One of my first duties when I arrived in the Celt was being sent to cover an unfortunate tragedy at Swellan Lake. It was the evening on which the paper went to press, I think it was a Thursday. It was a very warm, sunny evening and there was a good crowd of people sunbathing along the shore of the lake. A young boy named Sexton, a brother of Paddy Sexton the former Mayor of Cavan, was on a lilo, not far from the water's edge. The lilo then drifted further out into the lake and the boy tumbled off it. About nine years old he was a non swimmer and went underneath the water. A huge rescue attempt was mounted by local people and the Gardai but despite the best efforts of all involved they couldn't save him. A quite deep and treacherous lake it was several hours before his body was located. It was a sad event that resonated with me over the years - and I felt for the Sexton family that particular evening on their great personal loss. There was an equally tragic event a few years later involving two young children who were out playing at the rear of their homes at Drumnavannagh when they fell into the Cavan river which was in flood at the time. The young children were swept away in the torrent and again a huge local search was mounted that continued throughout the day before the young bodies were located a considerable distance downstream not far from Coal Pit lake. I recall both of the above events because of the spontaneous response by the local community who with the emergency services mounted a massive search in each case. Joe McGovern was a colourful member of Cavan Urban Council for many years. There was a bulging wall at Bullock Lane, a small side street leading from Upper Main street to the Gallows Hill. Joe described this bulging wall as a pregnant wall and when it came up time and again at council meetings it was referred to as Joe's pregnant wall. Fondly described as Cavan's first agnostic (a term not fully understood at the time) Joe was a very well read man who was a fountain of knowledge and could enlighten any gathering. It would be very interesting to hear his take on the bankers and those responsible for our present economic woes if he was alive today. The Celt was close to all of the events that happened over those 40 odd years. It profiled many of the great changes that took place in this region such as the campaign to get the new hospital in Cavan. The old surgical hospital was condemned as a building as far back as 1932. Cavan's location right on the border meant that the Northern troubles were never far away. I believe that the Celt was one of the few papers which accurately predicted the election of H Block hunger striker, Kieran Doherty, in the 1981 general election. Indeed it would have been one of a number of accurate electoral predictions that the paper has been fortunate to engage in since then. Covering courts and council meetings might appear mundane but looking back at those days there were many amazing stories - such as the case at Dowra Court that sparked off what became known as the Dowra affair. There was a case at the court involving a man named Tom Nangle who was charged with assaulting James McGovern from Marlbank, Co. Fermanagh, in the Bush Bar, Blacklion, on a night near to closing time. The case was called and when the main prosecution witness, Mr. McGovern, failed to appear the District Justice, Jack Barry, dismissed the case against Mr. Nangle. I didn't pass much remarks on the particular case until I got back to Cavan and the phones started hopping from Dublin. Michael O'Kane, the news editor of the Evening Press demanded the story immediately - because he said that Tom Nangle, (who was in fact a Garda himself) was a brother-in-law of Minister for Justice, Sean Doherty. It transpired that James McGovern did not turn up in court because he was arrested by the RUC earlier that morning and taken off to Belfast for questioning as a suspected subversive. However, the RUC Special Branch said that they had nothing to question Mr. McGovern about and were baffled as to why he should have been taken in. He was immediately released and when he got back home he contacted his solicitor. The story dominated the national headlines because of the allegations of conspiracy in Mr. McGovern's arrest that prevented him from going to court to present his evidence. The issue dogged the Haughey government and severely damaged the political standing of Sean Doherty. There was nothing dramatic in my presence at Dowra court on the day - I just happened to be there when a case came before the court that had much wider consequences than I was aware of at the time. County Cavan has been transformed over the past 20/30 years. The level of infrastructure that has been provided is quite staggering. When I came to Cavan first the water in the town had to be boiled because both the supply from Shantamon and the waterworks themselves weren't up to standard. However, Cavan County Council in fairness to them, back in difficult times, set about providing the Cavan Regional Water Scheme. It was a major undertaking at the time with the water being sourced from Lough Acanon in Clifferna and fed by gravity flow into Cavan town. It also supplied a large tract of the rural area and paved the way for the expansion of the county town. A major step forward the Cavan Regional Scheme became the prototype for regional schemes in other areas of the county. Local authority meetings can often appear dull and boring but the meetings of Monaghan County Council during the 80s and early 90s could never be described as that. No meeting would get further than the minutes when a battle royal would ensue - mainly between the two big parties on the council (Fianna Fail and Fine Gael) and the small number of Sinn Fein councillors elected at that time. Usually prompted by a motion to condemn some killing or attack immediately north of the border these meetings are remembered for their level of acrimony with one Sinn Fein councillor later remarking that the bitterness was comparable to that experienced on Belfast City Council at that time. Cavan County Council were always business like in their approach to meetings. However, there was one particular hiccup that I recall. The council were meeting out in the Kilmore hotel because the courthouse was condemned as a safety hazard. Meeting in a large room the acoustics weren't great and it was often hard to hear what was said. Anyway Councillor Eamonn Dolan, a normally quiet man, launched a quite critical attack on an aspect of Fianna Fail government policy. During the heated exchanges Mr. Dolan was heard making a remark which came across as "Fianna Fail's rotten representatives" - or at least that's what this reporter believed he heard and it appeared as such in the Celt's report of the council meeting. The Fianna Fail reps at subsequent meetings demanded an apology for what they saw as Mr. Dolan's insult. However, Mr. Dolan failed to yield. He said that he hadn't used the word "rotten" but had used the word "Roctus" - meaning Oireachtas. With a local election coming up in a few months knives were being sharpened for the poll. There was a belief that Fianna Fail wanted to get a bit of mileage out of the issue and meetings kept being adjourned - because as each meeting was convened Fianna Fail demanded an apology and Mr. Dolan refuse to give it. As this dispute was rumbling on Fine Gael sought to get the Celt to "correct their report" from "rotten" to "roctus". I would have been called in by Edward to check my notes. I said that I had the shorthand outline for rotten - I felt sure that was what was said. Fianna Fail councillors were also now claiming that they heard it as rotten. There was no correction. In hindsight it is one time I would dearly love to have had the back up of a tape recorder in support of my shorthand. I know that I was sitting quite close to Eamonn Dolan and I heard it as "rotten" but who knows. Eamonn Dolan has since sadly passed away. He was a quiet spoken man not given to verbosity but he was being barracked at the time and the exchanges became quite intense as members shouted across the room at each other. In his fascinating, wide ranging speech, Tom also spoke of the paper's correct prediction of the election of H Block hunger striker, Kieran Doherty, in the 1981 general election; the battle for the soul of the co-operative movement in this region back in the late 1980s, Hughie McElvaney's intervention to halt the transfer of Monaghan County Library from Clones; the sheer electricity that was evident at Barry McGuigan's homecoming to Clones after he won the world title; and an industrial dispute in Clones company, Container Pressure Vessels Ltd.