Explosive Scenes At Wexford County Council Meeting

Councillors fear New Ross might trigger WW3

Somewhere between the potholes and the parish pump, Wexford County Council has decided to let the Irish Defence Forces import munitions through the Port of New Ross, a town better known for exporting unemployment than importing bullets, the ensuing debate that gave new meaning to boom or bust.

The council meeting began innocently enough. Wexford County Council, that august body of democrats who usually debate the vital issues of pothole repair and the correct level of pathos for a new monument to a dead poet. But today, the agenda was munitions. It seems the Irish Defence Forces, a group of soldiers so underfunded they use hurleys and hockey sticks for rifle practice, asked the Port of New Ross if they could bring in “certain specified classes of explosive materials.” Which is bureaucratese for “stuff that goes boom, but politely.” So the county, in its infinite wisdom, drafted the Explosives By-Laws 2025 — a title so dry it could spontaneously combust.

Director of Services Eamonn Hore assured everyone that such by-laws were standard procedure. Galway, Waterford, Foynes — all the cool ports are doing it. He also threw in the classic bromide for any failing enterprise: “It would bring additional business. “It’ll bring business to a port that’s struggled,” Hore said. Translation: if we can’t get container ships, we’ll settle for grenades. More cruel planning professionals might observe that blowing up New Ross and rebuilding it might actually improve the town.

Cue the councillors, taking turns at the microphone like bad poets at an open mic session. Fianna Fáil Cllr John Fleming, a local, was fully in favour. “The port needs every bit of help it can get,” looking forward to the potentially explosive “revitalisation”

Cllr Fleming, a New Ross native, was fully in favour. “The port needs every bit of help it can get,” he said, proving that nothing says “revitalisation” like a potential explosion of businesses.

Enter former Sinn Féin, now Independent Cllr John Dwyer, carrying enough doom to fuel a Sinn Féin fundraiser and the kind of geopolitical analysis usually found in a pub at 2 a.m. “The only industries New Ross has ever been given are dirty ones,” he declared, “fertiliser, cement, coal, and now one that could kill people.” Then came the philosophical part from Cllr Dwyer, Irish foreign policy, EU battle groups, sons and daughters marching off to other people’s wars. It was all very noble until someone pointed out that this was mostly about storing bullets, not annexing Poland.

Chaos, that great and glorious feature of local democracy, then took over. One councillor demanded more facts, apparently unaware that the documents had been available for months. It’s a request directly from the Defence Forces and we have based our by-laws on those implemented by other local authorities,” replied Mr Hore. “It’s a stretch to say this will support foreign wars.” The problem with civil servants is that they're like munitions themselves sometimes. They won’t work, and you can’t fire them.

There was something fishy about Aontú Cllr Jim Codds’ analogy. He worried aloud: “Munitions means bullets — not guns for shooting rabbits.” A fair point, though, given the state of Ireland’s rabbit overpopulation, maybe it wouldn’t hurt. Cllr Fleming interjected again with proud paternal flair: “I have two sons who would fight anybody.” As far as this publication is aware, none of his sons is in the Irish army, and there’s no army base in Cllr Flemming’s kitchen, and you’ve got the wonder is Cllr Flemming ok in himself.

Cllr Dwyer worried about a munitions warehouse “beside a halting site,” the council’s chief executive, Eddie Taaffe, assured him no such site existed — yet. But if it ever did, rest easy — the planning process and the Fire Service would sort it out. I know, right? A munitions warehouse besides a halting site has the makings of a Guy Ritchie movie. Nothing instils confidence quite like Irish local planning.

By this point, the room had all the calm of a pub fight five minutes before closing. One of the younger councillors, Fine Gaels Darragh McDonald, tried to interject a rare thing in Irish Politics, a bit of common sense. He said he’d “default to the expertise” of the Defence Forces and Gardaí — the radical notion that professionals might know more about safely handling explosives than a roomful of people who mostly argue over cycle lanes.

Well. You could have dropped a grenade in the room and gotten less of a reaction. Councillors were leaping to their feet, demanding retractions, their honour besmirched. Someone made a snide comment about McDonald’s age. It was a festival of high dudgeon and hurt feelings, a perfect symphony of Irish indignation.

And after all that local constitutional theatre, the result? Twenty-three councillors voted in favour. The bylaws were passed. The Defence Forces won their import route. New Ross got its headline. And the rest of the country, presumably, will wait to see if the town is “blown off the face of the earth,” as one councillor put it, or blown back onto the map. So, congratulations, New Ross. You’re open for business, let’s hope it gets booming.

This original story and reporting first appeared in the Wexford People

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