Council and horse fair organisers at odds over newspaper advertisement

ONE of the oldest fairs in Ireland will be going ahead in Westport this year, despite Mayo County Council refusing to pay for a newspaper advertisement.

Mayo County Council has been accused of ‘sending out a wrong message’ by refusing to fund an €800 newspaper advertisement informing the public of a road closure to facilitate the Westport Horse Fair. 

The organisers and the local authority had a long-standing arrangement which involved the council paying for a newspaper advertisement prior to the event.

Raising the matter at the monthly meeting of Westport-Belmullet Municipal District, Cllr John O’Malley insisted that the fair would be going ahead ‘ad or no ad’.

Cllr O’Malley’s remarks were supported by Cllr Brendan Mulroy, who said that the regulations surrounding council-funded advertising had ‘gone too far’.

Cllr Mulroy called for a ‘common-sense approach’ to the issue and accused the local authority of ‘sending out the wrong message’.

The first Westport Horse Fair dates back to 1741 and is one of the longest-running such events in the country.

The volunteer-run fair is mainly funded through local sponsorship and donations from local county councillors.

Cllr O’Malley insisted that it was ‘not fair’ to ask the organisers to pay for the advertisement and said they would not be funding the cost.

“They have enough to do, there will be a lot of people in town that day,” he said.

“It’s a great tradition, it’s a tradition that shouldn’t be lost. Because, believe it or not, there is more interest in horses now than there was ten years ago.”

Jim Power, Acting Head of Westport-Belmullet Municipal District, said the council had met the Westport Horse Fair committee earlier in the month and said they would welcome ‘any further engagement’ on the issue.

Mr Power told The Mayo News after the meeting that he was confident that the event would still go ahead.

“We had met with the Horse Fair organising committee during June and have future meetings scheduled,” he wrote in an email.

“There are administration costs to the Local Authority when a local group wish to organise an event that involves closing a road . At one of our meetings with the Horse Fair group we highlighted this to them.

“As I say, we have future meetings with the group scheduled, as we have done in previous years, and I’m confident that the issue of the cost of the advert won’t prevent the event taking place in 2024.”