YESTERYEARS: Election landslide in Tipperary for Healy; great sadness in Cashel
“Landslide for Healy” roared our front page lead headline on the issue of June 18, 1994. It reported on the result of the local elections the previous week in which Seamus Healy topped the poll in Clonmel and was over 800 votes ahead of the quota on the first count.
He was joined on the Corporation by fellow WUAG candidates Brian O’Donnell, Phil Prendergast and Alison Byrne.
According to Michael Heverin’s report, it was expected also that Seamus Healy would be elected the Town’s mayor for the first time, having previously lost out twice when co-opted councillors got the chain of office ahead of him - Fine Gael’s Dominick O’Hara in 1992 and Fianna Fáil’s Michael O’Brien in 1993.
Eamon Lacey had a story that week about a 52-year-old Tipperary Town man, Peter Moore, who was rushed to the Mater Hospital in Dublin the previous Sunday morning for an eight-hour heart transplant operation. The operation was a success and according to a family friend, Peter was now “improving steadily” after his ordeal, the report said.
We also recorded that Cashel community was stunned and deeply shocked to learn of the sudden and unexpected death of Very Rev Dean David Woodworth, Dean of Cashel, who lived at the Deanery on Boherclough Street, and who ministered from the Cathedral Church on John Street.
Dean Woodworth, who first arrived in Cashel in 1984, was a person who did an enormous amount of work bringing integration amongst different religious traditions in the community.