St. Patrick’s Day has been met with silent streets for the past two years, but that will all change at 2.30pm today when Mallow’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade makes a triumphant return. The parade will start at 2.30pm and spectators are asked to congregate along the Main Street between St. Mary’s Church and the Town Hall. Before the parade arrives, there will be traditional Irish music from Johnny ‘Bongos’ Horgan and the Swan Sessions on the Main Street, and members of the Mallow-Charleville Unit of the Irish Red Cross will also be taking up a collection in aid of Ukraine.
The theme of this year’s parade is ‘Honouring our Frontline Workers’. In line with this theme, the parade’s Grand Marshals will be representatives of the different frontline professions. These are: Alan Casey and Loretta Bohan (on behalf of local nurses, doctors and other hospital staff), Vivienne O’Shea (on behalf of nursing home staff), Inspector Miriam Maguire (on behalf of local Gardaí), Tina O’Connor (on behalf of local retail workers), Ted Noonan (on behalf of the Irish Red Cross), Mary Magner (on behalf of primary school teachers), and Aoife Foley and Ann Piggott (on behalf of secondary school teachers). The Defence Forces, the Cork County Fire Service and the Civil Defence will also be represented and honoured in the parade.
Cllr. Gearóid Murphy said this week: “I would like to give my sincere gratitude to my fellow committee members, to the volunteers for the day, and to Cork County Council, Mallow Men’s Shed, Mallow Chamber and Mallow Tidy Towns for their wonderful help in organising the parade. I would also like to thank the many businesses in Mallow who donated most generously to the committee, both in terms of money and donations in kind. Finally, I would like to thank the parti-cipants. Without all of these contributions, this year’s parade would quite simply not have happened. The very last contribution we are awaiting is the weather, which we hope will deliver for us and make the parade a wonderful occasion for all!”