From the pages of the Down Recorder, October 17, 1978

From the pages of the Down Recorder, October 17, 1978

17 October 2018

DOWNPATRICK — A massive employment and investment drive to beat the “hopelessness” of the rising flow of school leavers on the dole queue in the Downpatrick area was urged yesterday by a local parish priest.

Dr Joseph Maguire, in a hard-hitting speech to 200 teachers, warned that unless Downpatrick’s “particular problems” were tackled soon, even more local teenagers will be “leaving our schools with less and less and prospects of work.”

He said there was an urgent need for industrial employment and proposed the development of small factories to provide jobs for school leavers and trainees.

“We must all lose no opportunity to urge the development of this area — in the first place to hold on to the jobs that are there and then to expand the economic base,” Dr Maguire said.

“We need the sort of jobs that have been traditionally associated with Downpatrick, such as hospitals and administration.”

He said more must be done to make use of the area’s high agricultural reputation and praised the policy of the local technical college in providing courses of agricultural education in the curriculum.

“But we should not leave it to the State,” he continued. “Self-help local enterprise could force the state agencies to support us.

“The main employers of labour, apart from the public services, are firms founded by enterprising local men and there must be more of these. Therefore I appeal to those who have money to invest it in creating jobs for our youth.”

Dr Maguire said economists were painting “gloomy pictures” of the economic system and were warning that levels of unemployment had become “endemic.”

“In particular the level of youth unemployment is rising rapidly and it seems certain that growing numbers of our school leavers are destined to move directly to the dole queue,” he stressed.

NEWCASTLE — Newcastle receptionist Dolores Malone is the top hotel receptionist in Co Down and now she has the chance to prove that she is also the best in Northern Ireland when she takes place in the Coca-Cola Receptionist of the Year finals night in the Culloden Hotel next month.

Dolores, receptionist at the Brook Cottage Hotel, won her way through to the finals by beating receptionists from hotels in Co Down and Co Armagh in the regional heat at the White Gables Hotel in Hillsborough.

Dolores goes forward to compete for a £200 holiday cheque, a specially engraved Tyrone Crystal vase and specially designed winner’s badge and a framed certificate.

CASTLEWELLAN — Castlewellan councillor Mrs Ethel Smyth has won her fight to have a five year-old girl transported to school in Dundrum.

The girl, who lives near Castlewellan, began her first year of education at Dundrum Primary School on Monday and special transport arrangements have been laid on for her.

“The girl is now being lifted by minibus at her front door each day and is also brought back home. This is very pleasing,” Mrs Smyth said.

A dispute over the provision of transport arose when the girl’s father demanded his daughter should be allowed to attended a state controlled school in Dundrum or Castlewellan.

But according to Mrs Smyth the South Eastern Educationand Library Board said that the child would have to go to a maintained school in Annsborough which would exclude the need for transport arrangements.

Mrs Smyth, who took up the girl’s case, said this week: “I am very glad that I was successful in this matter because it has clearly established the right of the parent.”

ARDGLASS — More than five thousand bales of hay and a wide range of farm equipment were destroyed in a blaze near Ardglass in the early hours of Sunday.

Fire broke out in a large hay shed owned by Mr James Crangle, of Ardtole, and Downpatrick firemen spent more than eight hours containing it.

Among the machinery which was destroyed were two tractors, a trailer, a threshing machine and several potato sorters. Police are treating the blaze as malicious.

DUNDRUM BAY — Anyone in the vicinity of Dundrum Bay or the Ardglass coast over the past two days would have been treated to a rare sight — an aircraft carrier slowly sailing by.

The carrier was HMS Eagle, the huge ship launched from Belfast shipyard 32 years ago — and it was on its way the scrapyard at Cairnryan in Scotland.

The carrier began its last voyage from Devonport, the Royal Navy base in the south of England, and stopped overnight on Monday in Dundrum Bay to shelter from force eight gales. It continued on Tuesday, being towed by a tug at a pace of three knots, and made its way past Ardglass and Ballyhornan.

Several local people were reported to have served on HMS Eagle. In its prime the ship was manned by a crew of 2,700 and carried five squadrons of aircraft. It was 800 feet long and had a full load tonnage of 50,000.

The carrier was built in Belfast and was launched by the then Princess Elizabeth in 1946. However, when it made its last trip along the coast yesterday towards the scrapyard it had already been stripped of most of its equipment.

BALLYNAHINCH — Detectives are trying to trace a man who attacked a girl in Ballynahinch on Sunday night. The girl had been walking into Carlisle Park at 8.30pm when she was approached by a stranger who started to attack her. When the girl started to scream the man made off.

Police believe the man is about 5 feet 10 inches tall and was wearing dark clothes. They are treating the matter very seriously and have appealed for anyone with information about the incident to contact them.

ANNALONG — An Annalong man who saved a six year-old boy from drowning has been presented with a bravery award from the Royal Humane Society.

Mr Robert George Gordon dived into Annalong harbour on July 11 last year after seeing the boy falling into the water. He managed to locate the child under the water and pulled him to the harbour wall where passers-by had lowered a rope.

BRIGHT — Father George McLaverty returned to his former parish of Bright on Friday at the request of many of his old parishioners. More than 300 assembled in Ballynoe Hall to honour Father McLaverty on his transfer from the parish of Bright to Newtownards.

Mr Pat McFarlane formally welcomed Father McLaverty on behalf of the parishioners and said he would be remembered “not primarily as the genial character that all had come to know, but as a devout priest who had the ability to preach in simple and practical terms.”

The chairman of the organising committee, Mr Dan Mageean, thanked all who had contributed to both the presentation and the success of the evening. He presented Father McLaverty with gifts from the parish — a solid silver chalice and a cheque.

PORTAFERRY — A plan for a new £150,000 sewerage scheme for Portaferry is ready to swing into operation and work is expected to be completed by December 1979.

The scheme will involved the installation of two disintegrating sewerage pumps and the construction of a sea outfall which will end near the Walter Rock in deep water for the discharging of waste.

HORSE RACING — Local punters turned Saturday’s race meeting at Naas into a bookmakers’ nightmare when a Downpatrick-trained horse romped past the winning post.

The McGrady Brothers-owned Some Argument recorded his first major success at the lucrative odds of 7/4. A leading national newspaper claimed that over £50,000 was won at the Naas track alone and local bookies were reported to be still paying out well after 6pm.

Some Argument was bought by his present trainer, Mr Jeremy Maxwell, for the McGrady brothers last May.