The sad decline of a very proud Mayo parish
by Caoimhín Rowland
The death knell bell of rural Ireland must toll twice a week, whether it’s a Healy Rae looking to score points against the Green Party, a TV broadcaster suddenly pretending to care about the west after a weekend session in Lahinch or, more cynically, multi-millionaire euro agri-business lobbies attempting to divert blame from their greed over ensuing climate chaos.
North Mayo was dealt a true hammer blow this month in as true an indicator of our struggling small parishes lesser known to town folk comfortable in their urban surroundings.
Mitchell’s of Moygownagh, a pub, petrol station and supermarket, shuttered its doors, leaving a great chasm in its wake.
The reasons why businesses close are myriad but the one defining impact on the customers and people living in the locality are consistent in its sadness.
The land of Larry Finnerty and Liam Alex Heffron are feeling it, their relations surely called with the news as the worldwide of descendants from the Moygownagh, Kilfian and Crossmolina.
The family business started after the Mitchells returned from London in the 1970s. In a more simpler time they answered an advertisement for a small shop in the village of Moygownagh.
The convenience store started off with a travelling shop. Mitchell's of Moygownagh grew over time to include a hardware store, pub, farm suppliers, home heating suppliers, a petrol station and convenience store.
Fianna Fáil Councillor Annie May Reape said following the passing of Sean Mitchell in January, if it wasn’t in Mitchell’s it wasn’t to be got anywhere.
Shops like that are the lifeblood of rural parishes and villages but their increasing scarcity proves a wider malaise - less small farmers, minimal local development and the continuing trauma of emigration.
When small farms disappear, the need for local stores decreases too.
Former farmers who go into factory work in Ballina or abroad have less need for supplies even if they stay at home.
Parishes like Moygownagh don’t have industry local to them. Besides farming or forestry it’s just a few teachers and a local shop.
What’s most ironic is that we live in a county that has never known it so good. The population has grown as per the 2022 census and grown considerably more since then due to humanitarian reasons and remote workers choosing Mayo to settle down in.
But the population isn’t growing in north Mayo, it’s not happening in our rural parishes and villages. Mayo is becoming urbanised, the major towns may soon swallow whole all of the populace.
Moygownagh is on the edge of wilderness, it’s comfortable there.
Forest walks and archaeological sites litter the plains of Tirawley and thanks to local efforts QR codes can inform and guide you along the breathtaking Blanemore Forest Walks.
Ultimately, it will be part of the ever growing Wild Nephin National Park, a park that is officially as yet defined.
There is no beginning and end to the growing expanse of wilderness that is the Yosemite linked park. Will the people of Moygownagh, Kilfian and down south into Eskeragh and Keenagh become like their ancestors to the north in Sheskin?
A mere footnote in history books, a place somewhere where people came from once, like Sheskin used as a seasonal shooting lodge by the Jameson family and allow modernity sign it off to oblivion.
We need a national park, of course we do, but the people of north Mayo deserve to be consulted about where it begins and ends, to who will the wilderness benefit besides the fattening invasive deer population and RTÉ Nationwide television segments.
Moygownagh once had a councillor, in fact it had a cathaoirleach - the late Eddie Staunton.
Moygownagh struggles for numbers on the GAA field but still show up, determined to not allow their parish to be consigned to the history books.
In 1990 RTÉ travelled to Moygownagh to follow the plight of the then 500 inhabitants around the time the CAP was being introduced. Father Seamus Heverin said world policies, European policies are geared towards the elimination of parishes like Moygownagh.
Now, 34 years later, those words have never been more prescient.
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