Winterfest and Mullingar on Ice now cancelled

First the Fleadh, and now the news that both Winterfest and the Mullingar On Ice are the latest events to be cancelled due to Covid-19 restrictions.

Attracting up to 100,000 people into the town in the weeks leading up to Christmas, the market which was originally held in Mount Street and more recently moved to the town park, provided a much needed boost to the local economy.

It is undoubtedly a major blow for retailers, but the president of Mullingar Chamber, John Geoghegan, says the organisation is working hard to identify a project that will bring an alternative lift to the town’s business life this year.

“It’s impossible to hold an actual event, and we’ve been thinking long and hard about what we can do.

"Winterfest is the biggest initiative the Chamber has: not many people realise that it brought 100,000 visitors to the town over an eight to 10-week period, that's an awful lot of people and an awful lot of spend to be missing out on this year.

"Mullingar on Ice itself would have had 30-40,000 clients at the skating rink in the town park, and this has a knock-on effect for the local economy."

The newly elected Chamber president said the board is working together with local businesses to identify something that would be 'Covid-friendly'.

"As we approach Christmas 2020, we're trying to identify what we could do that would be sensitive to the current environment and support footfall at this time because without Winterfest, that's a loss of 50,000 - 100,000 who would be coming into the town and spending money in our restaurants, cafes, bars and shopping outlets.

"So if we can pull in an extra 10,000 to 20,000 in footfall, I think that would be a huge help to the retailers on the street who have had an unbelievably difficult year of it," he says.

"To that end, we are devising an event as we speak to promote retail this Christmas and we're hoping to get support from the council to finance it and run it between now and Christmas, and drive it on.

"The council were extremely supportive of the initiative over the last number of years: they gave over the Town Park, and the town benefited a lot from it.

"With Winterfest gone, we've a huge gap in our events calendar and we're making a plan around that, that should support retail over the winter we think. We hope that it would attract national coverage and thereby help the town."

But for the moment, John is remaining tight-lipped on what that initiative might be, but states it "will be something that will give back to the retailers because they’ve spent a lot on making their business Covid-friendly".

"I can't give too much away yet, but we'll be aiming to get feet on the street and support our retailers."