Yesteryears: County Tipperary grieves with loss of four young lives in road deaths

This week our YESTERYEARS feature goes back all of 30 years to our St Patrick’s Week issue dated March 20, 1993.

Sadly, however, for four Tipperary families that week was to be one they would end up never forgetting, as our main headline “County grieves for its youth” indicated.
Communities throughout the county were left grieving following a black weekend on the roads when four young people died in tragic accidents only days after Environment Minister Michael Smith had launched a new national road safety campaign. In one of the worst weekends on the county’s roads for some time, communites in Dualla, Thurles, Nenagh and Roscrea were left grief stricken mourning the deaths of four people, aged 18, 19, 20 and 25.

Elsewhere on the front page that week, a business story informed readers that sales by pharmaceutical company, Clonmel Chemicals, had reached the £10 million mark and that pre-tax profits had grown to almost £500,000, according to managing director Terry Sullivan. While reporting on the company’s annual result, Mr Sullivan stated that his company could double its 180-strong workforce overnight if health boards and doctors supported its products more.

Yesteryears: Tipperary's 'Third World' schools snubbed and a break-in at a parish church

Across the top of the front page the headline read “Residents want halt to travellers ‘abuse’.” The report stated that residents from the Lisronagh area of Clonmel wanted an end to the abuse, intimidation and aggression they claimed they had to suffer since a group of about 35 travellers moved into their area nearly two years previously. Written statements from 12 residents cataloguing a litany of crimes, terror and unsanitary conditions which they said they had to endure were handed into a meeting of South Tipperary County Council.

Also, that week, the then Gaeltacht Minister, now President, Michael D. Higgins was in Grants Hotel in Cashel to open the Dúchas Weekend School. While there the Minister announced his commitment to setting up an Irish language television service within a year.

We also carried a front page story about a Clonmel couple, Shirley and Billy Keane, who had won the trip of a lifetime to New York for St Patrick’s Day in a competition run by 7-Up. Shirley was one of 100 lucky winners in the national competition and the visit was to be her very first to the USA. The couple planned to stay on in the ‘Big Apple’ for an extra week to visit all her relations in the city.