| At first there will be employment for some 300 men and women, mostly young people, and when the planned expansion comes there will be room for an additional two hundred or so.
Local initiative has been responsible for this development and credit goes mainly to two prominent town figures — Senator J.T.McGee and Mr. J.F.Markey. Senator McGee is one of the best known men in the country for, apart from the farming business which he carries on, he also has his own auctioneering concern and a shop in the town's main street. To complete the picture we add that he is Chairman of the Louth Co. Council, Chairman of the Ardee Town Commissioners and Chairman of the new factory.
Mr. Markey, the second of the active partnership who has kept public interest alive for this development, is also a Town Commissioner and a former Co Councillor. When I met him in his shop, in which he carries on a general merchandise business, he referred to the work which had gone into the obtaining on the new industry. "Over the last 30 years, under the new industrialisation of the country, we never went any distance in getting a factory here" he told me. "It was through no fault of local initiative. |
