Tipperary festival praised for restoring town’s reputation after last year’s anti-social behaviour
A Halloween festival has helped to restore one Tipperary town’s reputation and kept anti-social behaviour to a minimum, according to a local councillor, who said that the local authority needs to see Halloween as a major event.
The Samhain Festival was held in Tipperary town for the first time this Halloween, featuring amusements, food stalls, face painting, mask-making, and a DJ, as well as a haunted trail and a firework display light up the skies.
At the November meeting of the Tipperary-Cahir-Cashel Municipal District, independent councillor Liam Browne said that the festival was a credit to everybody who worked on it, and it helped to restore the town’s reputation following incidents of anti-social behaviour the year before.
"Everything I heard about it was positive, what I saw about it was positive, but I think we now, as a council, have to start looking at Halloween similar to how we do St Patrick’s Day,” Cllr Browne said.
"There’s probably even an argument to be made that for the next couple of years that we need to make sure Halloween is even funded a little bit better, because it doesn’t just have economic effects. When you compare what happened in Tipperary town last year to what happened this year, it’s worth the money because of all the money you save in the long term,” he added.
Last Halloween, gardaí dealt with a number of rock-throwing incidents in the James Connolly Park area of Tipperary town, with a number of car windscreens broken, while a couch was set on fire in the middle of the road.
Halloween is just as much an Irish festival as St Patrick’s Day is, and should be celebrated more, Cllr Browne said.
"We don’t look at Halloween the same way, it’s just as much of an Irish festival, and it’s also the backend of the tourism year so if we can get people into our towns at that time of year, it would be an extra boost for the pubs, the B&Bs, the hotels and any other accommodation.
“I think we’ve looked at it as an ‘add-on’ in the past, and I think we should now bring it front and centre of what we should be spending money on. Kids love Halloween and we can save money by making sure criminal elements don’t get involved in it, anti-social behaviour is taken away out of it,” Cllr Browne said.
Sinn Féin councillor for Tipperary town Annemarie Ryan said the festival was a huge success.
"It was a massive resounding success, it was huge work but we got great support from the council, but I do think Liam is right, we need to look at it as an event every year because apart from the positive, the safe environment we created, it did save money on clean-up afterwards.
“It has also restored a lot of good-will and confidence in certain areas of Tipperary town, which was needed,” Cllr Ryan added.
In response to the councillors calls, representatives from Tipperary County Council said that if councillors wanted to continue spending money on events like Halloween, they would need to make sure to raise the money to cover it elsewhere.