Busy months ahead for festival chair Mary

Mary Dunne doesn’t do things by halves. Currently the chairperson of the Ballina Salmon Festival, she has been involved with various voluntary committees all of her life. Mary also served as President of Swim Ireland, and during that term, brought the organisation's prestigious national awards to her beloved Ballina.

Mary doesn’t believe in just getting involved for the sake of it, she wants to make a real change wherever she goes. She is brimming with energy when we sit down to chat over a coffee in Ballina.

Angelina: Mary, thanks for talking to me. Tell me a little about yourself.

Mary: I'm from Ballina. I wasn't born and bred here actually - my parents lived in Chicago for a few years and two of us were born there, but they came back to Ballina. One of my parents was from Crossmolina and one was from Ballycroy, so it was central. I went to Behy National School, which was just up the road from us. After that, I went to the Convent in Ballina for five years.

Angelina: So what did you do after secondary school?

Mary: I did a commercial course. I was 17 when I finished school. I've always worked. I remember asking Mum and Dad one day when I was 12 years old after seeing a sign in a window looking for glass collectors, if I could work at that part-time and they said, off you go! We were encouraged to do whatever we thought as long as it was safe, then they were happy enough with it. 

I worked in the lab in Asahi for a number of years. I was 21 when I got married. We didn't have any children for a few years after we got married, so we did a lot of travelling and lots of different things. When my children were born, they defined where I went after that, in a sense. After nine years of marriage, Tara was born. Four years later, Shane was born. I had them in every sport because they wanted to be involved. 

Tara was doing swimming, she was doing dancing. One day she came home, and she said, 'Mum, I'm giving up the dancing. I want to go swimming an extra day.' So I said, 'Fine, off you go.' Then I became involved in the swimming club.

Angelina: That's where the association with swimming started Mary, but you were also involved in various other organisations too?

Mary: I started off helping out in the club, helping out in the committee. Then I did a teacher's course. But I was also helping out with football because my son Shane played. He played rugby and also swam. I was on the board of management of Behy National School for eight years. I was working all the time. 

As my daughter moved on in swimming and went to the Connacht squad, I started going to Connacht meetings. There were two people I used to sit with at the back of the room - Peter Brennan and Patricia Cleary. They used to encourage me, and Father O'Boyle used to say, 'Go on, say it out loud there whatever you're saying.' 

Suddenly, they were looking for somebody on the committee of the Connacht executive, and I was there, and then I was chairperson of the Connacht region for a while. Things were progressing further, and they were looking for a rep from Connacht for Swim Ireland - two people from the region. So I went onto the board. At that stage, there weren't many things that I wasn't doing in swimming. Tara was representing Ireland as a junior athlete, and I was very, very much involved. I was national team manager. Then I became President for a year in 2016 and thoroughly enjoyed it. 

When you are President, the National Awards go to your town. You had delegates coming from across the country, and that was the one highlight that I felt I wanted to be a focal point of my presidency. If you live in the west of Ireland, if you have to go to anything, you have to travel for it.

Angelina: So you got to host the awards in Ballina?

Mary: We hosted the awards night in the Great National Hotel, and we had about 200 people from across the swimming community. To me, that was the highlight of my presidency role, to see everybody there for such an event and for the club and everybody in the community that came on board and helped us, it was amazing to have such a great night in Ballina, to equal what you'd have anywhere else.

Angelina: You have so much passion for Ballina and where you are from?

Mary: I've always been very proud of where I come from. I'm very proud of the west of Ireland. Sometimes we feel because we're here from the West, that we don't have that same influence but we do. In sport, in swimming, I've always been passionate about Connacht and everything to do with Connacht, but never forget where it all started, Ballina Dolphin Swimming Club. 

But it isn't only swimming. With anything I get involved in, I get involved to be active and not just to sit in a talking shop. My attitude is to try out the ideas brought to the table because how else will you know if they are going to work or not? 

My first involvement in the community was the school in Behy. I went on the board of management. Myself and a group of individuals raised €30,000 through a golf classic, through race nights, as a local contribution for a building that was put onto the school. Any of these committees isn't about one person. If you haven't everybody on that committee willing to go that extra mile, then there's no point.

Angelina: Mary, that journey of being involved in your community has continued - tell us how you became chairperson of the Ballina Salmon Festival.

Mary: That came about by accident, like a lot of things! Becoming chairperson of the festival came about through swimming in 2019. Eamon Walkin approached me. They were trying to get River Moy Swim back up and running, but they couldn't get insurance. Somebody told them to talk to Mary Dunne because of the Swim Ireland connection. I told them I'd look into it and managed to get a one-day licence sorted through Swim Ireland. 

So I got involved in the Moy Swim in 2019. I remember seeing that we had only 30 people entered that year because it clashed with a big Mayo game. I said to my two children that I had roped in to help, 'If we ever get 100 people down that Moy, I'll jump in.' We've had 220 people down that Moy since. I've never jumped in, and I cannot see myself ever jumping in Angelina! I hope I won't be held to that! 

Then I got involved in that in a big way and wanted to make it as good as possible. The following year, Covid hit, of course, and nothing could happen festival-wise but the River Moy Swim went ahead for two years because it was outdoors, and we had about 220 people in it. The festival committee said we have a festival in Ballina because we have the River Moy Swim!

With that, I went and joined the festival committee. I was delighted because there were two amazing women on the committee - Tracey Glacken and Mags Downey. Paul Regan was the chairperson at that time. I worked closely with Mags and Tracey and the rest of the committee. Then it came to Paul resigning and Mags and Tracey were trying to encourage me to take the role. I said, 'No, I can't take on any more'. They had mentioned it few times and one evening I travelled from Dublin to a Chamber dinner and they told me they had to announce someone at the dinner that night, and so I gave in!

Angelina: And that was that?

Mary: That's how I took on the festival role. Tracey, Mags and Marion Browne were brilliant. Marion Brown is a stalwart at the festival. The committee were brilliant. Paul Regan stayed on and helped with the business part. And this is our 60th year, so it's a true honour to be chairperson. We want it to be bigger and better. We have a lot of things planned. We haven't our final night, the Saturday night, finalised yet. There's a few ideas there. We're still working on them. But we have two music nights this year. Our beautiful military barracks will host Mike Denver there one night, and we're going to have Ceol there another night. We're going to have Midwest Radio on the Tuesday night at the Great National where Tommy Marren will talk to the heroes of Ballina, those who are there to ensure Ballina keeps running. And, of course, we have the Moy Swim.

Angelina: The festival wouldn't happen year in, year out, without volunteers?

Mary: The festivals need those people. You can have a handful of people sitting around the table, but that's no good on Heritage morning for example. That's no good on the morning of the Moy Swim when we're trying to get people organised. That's no good the night we have Mike Denver, unless we have people there taking tickets, picking up the bottles, sweeping up.

Angelina: Funding is an issue though, isn't it Mary?

Mary: We're desperately looking for somebody to come out of the woodwork and say they're going to sponsor our last night. The funding element is extremely hard. It is the hardest part of the festival, if I were really and truly honest. I said to one person I was talking to there last week, we'd need a person designated solely to try and source funding. There's so much money out there in places, but we just don't know where to go and how to get it. 

We have brilliant sponsors every year in and around Ballina. But everything has gone up. We have to adhere to everything in terms of insurance etc, which we do. We need people to believe in us, to believe that we can deliver as good as anywhere else, in any other part of Ireland. It is seven days of entertainment, where we try our utmost to ensure that there isn't a cost on the people that are coming to us. There are reduced door charges on the likes of the music but much cheaper than you'd expect to pay for gigs like that. So we need funding and volunteers and we’d love to hear from people.