The St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Dungarvan for 2022 has been cancelled following a decision made on Tuesday night by the organising committee.

In a statement on their Facebook page, the organisers stated that having reviewed their preparations, the decision was taken to postpone this year’s offering on account of ‘factors beyond their control’. Funding was already in place for the 2022 offering, with Waterford City & County Council also engaged on a logistical basis regarding road closures etc. 

“This evening, after a lot of thought and reviewing our preparation, we have sadly decided to cancel the Parade this year, and come back next year bigger and better. We know a lot of people will be sorry not to see the parade happening but it really was beyond our control.”

Speaking on Deise Today, committee member Ann-Marie Rossiter, who is a former Fianna Fail Councillor in Dungarvan, said they were ‘gutted’ and the decision was ‘not taken lightly’.

“It was very disappointing to have to cancel it. A lot of thought went into it. Sleepless nights went into it. Everything was just stacked against us. Time, I suppose was one of the big things. I just felt that we were kind of short of everything. We were short of volunteers. Short of stewards. We didn’t have a band, time really was the thing.”

Ann-Marie was aware that the decision had attracted some negative commentary on social media and people were frustrated upon hearing the news. She says she hopes this will inspire people to volunteer for the 2023 edition.

“It was such a short time frame. We would have normally been planning straight away the minute the other parades were over. There has been a lot of negative comments put up on our social media page. Hopefully, from that – we’ll get a lot of volunteers for next year. We would’ve been planning after the last parade. Like a lot of people, we didn’t expect that restrictions would be taken away so fast.”

Mrs. Rossiter says that Dungarvan is not unique in its’ cancellation, with many parades across the country cancelled with similar reasoning.

“I can tell you that it was a decision that was not taken easily. I’m gutted over it, you know. I’ve been involved with the parade for over seventeen years or more. It would’ve been our 44th parade. We were the first to cancel in 2020, we hit the headlines then – and we’re obviously hitting the headlines now. We said that we were going ahead this year because we thought that we were going to be able to do it. There are quite a lot of parades cancelled throughout Ireland, and a lot are for the same reasons that we are coming up against.”

Waterford Council had no involvement in the decision – which was made entirely by the voluntary committee.

It means there will be no parade in the town for the third consecutive year, after two years of Covid-based cancellations. The theme of this year’s parade was proposed to be in tribute to the emergency services and healthcare workers. 

Plans still remain in place for parades to go ahead in Waterford City, Tramore. The parade in Cappoquin will not go ahead this year either. 

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