Bellacorick - before and after

Tommy walsh is one of a small number of ESB retirees who can actually say, 'I was there before it was born, I saw it through its extended lifetime and I've seen it after its demise!'

What Tommy is referring to is Bellacorick Power Station, located in windswept North Mayo and Tommy remembers life well before prosperity came to the area with the building of the peat-fired plant by ESB. We visited Tommy recently in his cosy home under the shadow of the Nephin Mountains where you experience a hospitality and a lifestyle that is now largely gone in Celtic tiger Ireland.

Tommy's youth growing up in a remote rural area was spent with good neighbours who helped and looked out for one another and who shared the benefits from their small holdings with the families around them. If a pig was killed, then the meat was divided amongst the neighbours, apple tarts and bread were sent in various directions on baking day; turf and hay was cut with the help of good friends and neighbours. Celebratory nights were held in one another's houses where the 'drop of poiteen' would mysteriously be produced from under a stack of hay or a reek of turf!

Tommy's mother passed away when he was only 12 years of age. Growing up in a family of five and with no hope of work, Tommy 'headed for the boat' like so many of his age at the time. He got a job in Glasgow on the buildings and it was there that he met and married his wife Dolores, a Donegal woman and an exile like himself. Tommy and Dolores can boast of the fact that they married in Marlborough House outside Glasgow on Sept. 14th, 1953, a house associated with the Royal Family and visited by the present Queen Elizabeth. Sadly, Dolores died suddenly in 1987.

With his father in poor health, Tommy was requested to return home to Keenagh but things were not good on the job front. He eventually got a seasonal job with Mayo County Council but this wasn't enough to keep his young family and despite a number of approaches, he failed to get into the new and much talked about power station that was breathing life and money into the local area.

Eventually Tommy's star shone and he was taken on in a temporary capacity in 1965. According to colleagues, Tommy was quickly noticed as a hardworking and dedicated man and it was only a very short time before he was given a permanent position.

Tommy explained how life changed in the area with the coming of ESB. Not alone did it bring much-needed regular income to the staff but businesses and the wider community felt the benefit of such a big investment in this remote corner of Mayo. In those dark years, with unemployment high throughout the country, places like Crossmolina and Bangor Erris, which were far removed from good road infrastructure, suffered badly.

With the end of many cottage industries people were barely scratching out a living from their small holdings. Tommy's income brought much-needed benefits to his young family and he was able to purchase his first car, a Morris Minor. Things were looking up with a weekly wage of around £12.00 to £13.00 and overtime bringing it up to £16.00! Tommy now remembers fondly the good friends and colleagues, the craic and the friendship, but most of all the lifeline to the local community that was Bellacorick in those years.