Ballyshannon Set To Invite British PM

By Zoe Tunney

Thursday 26th January 2006

(by kind permission of the Donegal Democrat)

Ballyshannon Town Council has supported a motion to extend another invitation to British Prime Minister Tony Blair to visit the town despite some opposition.


Fine Gael Councillor Phonsie Travers made the motion at the monthly meeting on Tuesday night.

He asked the council to formally invite Tony Blair over to Ballyshannon despite the fact the PM declined a similar offer last year.
Clr. Travers accepted the reply sent back from Downing Street last year was a "standard, stock refusal" that the "Prime Minister's schedule would not allow it" but insisted it wouldbe good for the town if the council pursued it.

Fianna Fail Councillor, Sean Og Kane did not share the sentiments and said he was opposed to the idea on the grounds of the British Prime Minister's foreign policy. "He has already turned us down. I don't see why we should beg anybody to come to our good town."

Criticising British policy in Iraq, Northern Ireland and internationally, Clr. Kane said "I have reservations about such a visit because of Mr Blair's foreign policy here and other countries. Their foreign policy over Iraq and Ireland is in the news at the moment."

Clr. Brendan Travers said although Mr Blair turned down a previous offer he might consider going to Ballyshannon if he was on a routine visit to the North.

"The climate and circumstances have changed so much for the better he could easily come to Ballyshannon from the north," Brendan Travers said.

Afterwards, Phonsie Travers accused Sean Og Kane of hypocrisy. "It is hypocritical in this day and age for Clr. Kane to object to this when his own party leader has embraced Tony Blair on many occasions," he said. "Since the ceasefires, Good Friday Agreement and other political steps, Tony Blair would be warmly welcomed by the rest of the council and vast majority of the people of Ballyshannon," he added. "This invite would be a token - we are no longer living in the past."

Tony Blair's mother, Hazel Curscadden was born above her grandmother's hardware shop on the Main Street in Ballyshannon. His grandfather was from Cashelard.
When her father died Hazel's family moved to Glasgow where she met and later married Tony Blair's father, Leo.
In the historical speech made by Tony Blair as the first ever British Prime Minister to address the Dail in 1998, he recollected childhood memories of summer's spent in and around Ballyshannon.

"We would travel in the beautiful countryside of Donegal," he told Dail Eireann.
"It was there in the seas off the Irish coast that I learned to swim, there that my father took me to my first pub, a remote little house in the country, for a Guinness, a taste I've never forgotten and which is always a pleasure to repeat." He was referring to the Traveller's Rest Pub in Cashelard.

Leo Blair still visits regularly and is said to enjoy a pint in the Sandhouse Hotel in Rossnowlagh.



This article has been produced here by the kind permission of The Donegal Democrat