By Claire Corrigan
Mullingar has been nominated for the Bank of Ireland National Enterprise Town Awards for a second year running after scooping the prize for the most Enterprising Town in Leinster last year. This year, Mullingar have been nominated again for most Enterprising Town, as well as for the Rising Start Award.
During a lively and informative presentation at Market House on Monday, 3 September, Ian Kerr, Deputy President of Mullingar Chamber of Commerce and managing director of Westmeath company Idaso’s, said he wanted to highlight the town’s credentials as a place of enterprise and entrepreneurial spirit.
Research and
Development
In terms of research and development, he said the town was ideally located just 90 minutes from ten universities and was also the home of research and technology organisation, Irish Manufacturing Research. “With limited office space and high rent costs in the city, companies are now looking at satellite towns like Mullingar for office solutions.
In Mullingar, we are blessed with fantastic amenities and some of the local businesses have put together a marketing promotional fund to produce videos to articulate this,” he added before playing a video clip for the attendees.
He continued that the town had many interest groups and local companies who are leading the way in terms of innovation, such as “Mullingar Employment Action Group, who operate two enterprise centres over 19 business units and employ 150 people. There is also the Sustainable Energy Communities group and Mullingar IT, which is a collective of 200 people who have affiliation to the IT sector.”
Mr. Kerr also spoke about one of the most recent additions to the town – the impressive new National Science Park on the Dublin Road, which was established on the site of the former Imperial Tobacco factory. “The Irish Manufacturing Research centre is based there, which means 100 skilled jobs.”
He added that earlier this year, the Chamber had carried out a strategic review in order to regroup. “We want to stimulate economic development and make Mullingar a better place to live and work.”
Events in Mullingar
Mr. Kerr then listed the successful events organised by the Chamber in the last number of years. “Chief among them is our Christmas market attracting around 40,000 people. This year, it has been expanded to a six-week festival and there will be an ice rink in the centre of that. We see that attracting around 200,000 people to the town over that time. We will also host the National Life Sciences and Engineering Industrial Expo, which brings companies in this sector together. This year we had 80 companies and 650 attendees.”
Fleadh Bid
Declan Connolly, who is a member of the Mullingar 2020 committee, said: “We are putting in a bid in a few weeks to bring the Fleadh Ceoil to Mullingar in 2020 and are bringing voluntary groups, business groups and local Comhaltas groups together and have had support from Mullingar Chamber, Mullingar Town Team, an Garda Síochanna, and the local authority have been very very proactive with this. We also have the support of the GAA and other local sporting organisations and we will make this a success. Comhaltas was formed here in Mullingar and it now has 400 branches throughout the world. We are the home of music, both traditional and contemporary, such as Joe Dolan and The Blizzards. We hope to have the bid ready in the next four weeks.”
Judges speak about Mullingar
After the presentation, three judges had some of words of encouragement for attendees. Eddie Green, who was Wexford County Manager for a number of years and chaired the County Enterprise Board for ten years, thanked the chamber for what he described as an “excellent” presentation, adding that he was delighted to be back in Mullingar. “This town is certainly being driven forward. We had the privilege of being here last year and already I can see that this town hasn’t stood still and has advanced many of the projects we saw this time last year.”
Maeve Lalor, who resides in Delvin, remarked that Mullingar had been awarded the title of Leinster’s most enterprising town. “What would it mean this year to win the award?” she inquired. “It’s a validation of the work that we have done to date and helps build that reputation.”
Judge John Fitzgerald said the presentation was “powerful” and the town had changed immensely.
