A flag worth flying, but few know from where!

Last weekend, Waterford City hosted the annual 1848 Tricolour Celebration. A weekend event which commemorates the first ever raising of the Irish Flag, by Thomas Francis Meagher, at 33 The Mall. The actual date that TF Meagher raised the tricolour was the 7^th March 1848.

Meagher had a colourful history which is well documented in our Bishop’s Palace museum. He was born in what is now the Granville Hotel, educated in England, sent to Tasmania by the “Empire”, fought on the winning side in the American Civil War and is attributed with “Founding” the 69^th Brigade, a Pallbearer at Lincoln’s funeral, involved in politics in Montana. He mysteriously disappeared after “Falling off” a steamboat into the Missouri River and his body was never recovered.

It is these International connections, which the 1848 Celebrations have worked so diligently to maintain over the past number of years.

Annually, we see representatives from the US, Canadian, French and Australian Embassies attending the event. Significant numbers of US soldiers, from the 69^th Infantry Division New York, who come to Waterford City, to celebrate their Waterford and Irish connections. This year eleven US military personnel, including the commanding officer Lt Col Don Makay, came to Waterford City to acknowledge the TF Meagher connection with today’s modern military machine - the US Defence Forces. Thirteen guests came all the way from Montana, bringing a traditional folk band called The Montana Shamrockers, who played at packed venues around the City. Four guests came from Massachusetts, three from Rochester and one travelled all the way from Tasmania! 

This “International Brigade”, really does hold Mr Thomas Francis Meagher in very highest esteem. I would go so far as to say, that many revere this Waterford born native, who went on to do so much for these countries he adopted as his own. He was after all, prepared to give his life to the Union, under the leadership of Lincoln.

There can be no mistaking that Meagher has placed an indelible mark on Irish history. Whilst many others may claim to have first flown the tricolour, the simple fact is that the “Green, White and Orange” was conceived, created and designed by Meagher in Waterford. Obviously, there are French influences from the “Vive la revolution”.

33 The Mall

Little did Meagher know, that the flag he hoisted at 33 The Mall, would become such a recognisable symbol of all things Irish. Next week we will see just how wide that sphere of influence reaches, as all around the globe, the world will be turned green for St. Patrick’s Day. Incidentally, another event whose origins can be traced directly back to a Waterford man, Franciscan friar Luke Wadding.

Meagher went on to raise his new Irish flag in Dublin, in April 1848. This is commemorated by a rather unkempt plaque, on a hidden wall, in Abbey Street, next to the National Lottery HQ!

The Irish tricolour which epitomises Ireland and all that is good about this wee island, on the far western fringes of Europe, is “Born of Waterford”. Yet for some reason, we do not seem to be able to capitalise on our historic ties to the very flag, so proudly waved around the world, on the 17^th March each year.

The value of Waterford’s connection to Meagher and the Irish Tricolour, could be seen last weekend, by the large numbers of international visitors to the City. We have a real opportunity to build excellent international relationships with some not insignificant G7 counties. Yet, time and time again we appear not to be able to foster an Entente Cordiale with organisations and groups that have literally shown Waterford an open door.

Abbey Street plaque.

This event, around the first weekend of March, should be a state event. With so much pomp and ceremony, that our Taoiseach and or President attend on an annual basis. If a son of Dublin could lay claim to the flag, guaranteed there would be national, if not international, celebrations.

Waterford must build on connections from our past, if we are to build a future. Maybe next year this will start with our own citizens supporting this event!

Thanks to photographer Noel Browne for the re-enactment picture.

There is much to look forward to, in the coming weeks and months!

This unseasonably warm, dry weather, does not alter the fact that we are still in Winter! Whilst you may well have the odd Daffodil and Crocus, poking their colourful heads above ground to say “Hello”, there is every chance that we will shortly return to colder weather. Not by all accounts, such cold weather that marks February 2017 as the coldest since records began, but colder weather all the same.

Not that I wish to be too grumpy an old man, as Spring will be with us very shortly and there is much to look forward to, in the City and wider afield.

The City Council, as previously written about, have given their support to nearly 80 festivals and events. This is in addition to some excellent initiatives, such as the one that has currently been encouraging people to visit our museums on Sundays for free, up to the end of February. If this has been successful, in terms of drawing the crowds, then it might well be considered worthwhile to run again, later in the year.

Our next big City event, is of course the 1848 Tricolour Celebration, which takes place over the weekend of 3^rd to 5^th March. The event culminates on Sunday 5^th, with the now traditional Flag Raising Ceremony on The Mall. In attendance will be a significant military presence, with accompaniment from some of our very best local Waterford musicians. But, prior to this happening, there are plenty for other themed events to look forward to.

An exhibition on Thomas Francis Meagher in the Central Library, combined with an Irish Defence Forces recruitment day. A comprehensive schools’ educational programme, which will bring TF Meagher to quite literally thousands of school children, focusing on the true meaning of the Green, White and Orange colours of the Flag. A Gala Dinner taking place in The Granville Hotel on Saturday 4^th, with a not insignificant representation of overseas guests to the City. Perhaps the “Main event” will take place early, on the afternoon of Saturday 4^th. Nearly 100 re-enactors will participate, in probably, the largest period re-enactment, circa 1916, taking place in Ireland this year. During the 20 minute choreographed performance, there are sure to be many hundreds of blank rounds being fired!!!

Following rather rapidly on the back of the 1848, will be the City and County’s St. Patrick’s Day parades. The largest of these processions will snake its way through the streetscape of the City Centre and finish on The Mall. We will once again see all manner of clubs, social enterprises, commercial floats etc on display, on what I always remember, as being a rather cold day of the year. It is just such a pity that the crazy, nutty world of Health and Safety has prevented the “Madder floats” from swelling the conga line, due to incomprehensible third party public liability costs!

Guaranteed, our St. Patrick’s Day parade will take our minds of the soon to be FG leadership challenges. Which one assumes will happen, after all the Ministers have had one last jolly. A jolly to pastures green, monuments green, in fact everything green, in some far flung foreign land.

Once St. Patrick or St. Patty, as they call him in the US (why do our Yank cousins insist on calling him this I have no idea!), has gone to bed for another year, we can start to look forward to many of our tourists arriving in Waterford. They in turn can look forward to exploring and discovering Ireland’s Oldest City, The Greenway and Comeraghs.

From the end of March onwards, we can get stuck into a full programme of Festivals and Events. Then there will of course be your own favourites. I am looking forward to the likes of Sproai, West Waterford Festival of Food, Harvest and of course my particular favourite The Sean Kelly 160km Tour of Pain, Suffering, Mental Torture, Agony.......and FUN!

So, if the political rumblings of a FG Leadership challenge send you to sleep, there are so many more events on the horizon to keep you awake in the coming year.

Thanks to Kevin Pim for the video footage which is from the 1848 facebook page; www.facebook.com/1848Tricolour/videos/1340576525985437/ 

Cinderella’s ugly sister!

Well that’s what it feels like!

Like the story of Cinderella we in Waterford, once again feel like one the ugly sisters, unwanted, having lost out on the judging for the 2020 European Capital of Culture. Galway will go to the ball having put her best foot forward and by all accounts her glass slipper, on judgement day last week, was worn with panache and style. Of course the fact that the judging took place at the very start of the Galway Arts Festival, must have given them a significant start in the race for the top step of the podium.

However, the judging dates would have been well know in advance and our Three Sisters Team would have been aware, that we were competing against the gale force wind that ultimately turned around at halftime to become a hurricane force for the second half.

We all witnessed the live streamed pictures of the people of Galway, watching on a big screen, in Mainguard Street, in real time. Celebrating wildly, as the announcement was made from The National Concert Hall, in Dublin. The City of Tribes came out in their hordes to support the bid process. They celebrated as if Galway’s was being announced as a World Cup or Olympic Games host!

There was so much passion and joy openly displayed after the announcement. You got a sense that having gone to ALL the trouble of setting up a big screen, for the live stream, they ALL believed that they would NOT lose.

Maybe that is the crux of Galway’s many success stories. Maybe they just believe deep down that they are the best City in Ireland. Maybe, just maybe, they will, collectively, move hell or high water to do what it takes to succeed.

Well, Friday 15^th July 2016 just proved all of the above.

What of our Three Sisters bid?

I note once again the many knockers and key board warriors, commenting across the many social media platforms. Where were you when the “call to arms” was made to put your shoulder to the wheel to help the bid?

Therein lies our problem. We will never be able to compete with a Galway, as there is not a sense of togetherness across our City, never mind the whole County. As for across the three counties who formed our bid – don’t start me on this. Just measure the fallout from the ongoing Boundary Commission looking at Ferrybank! The arguments over who should have influence over our Port and so on!

Yes, we could very well argue that we did not do enough on the judging day. We should have had FREE car parking ALL day to flood the City with mums, dads and children. Summerval should have identified Wednesday 13^th July as a key date and the City streets should have been buzzing to the sound of street music, street entertainers and spontaneous shows. All our annual festivals, should have been represented in John Robert’s Square. The City should have had a world display of tricolour flags. After all are we not the home of the Irish Tricolour? Much, much more engagement should have been made. But above all we, the people, did not do enough to support this bid.

The powers that be also need to be brave enough to pick the right people, if we are to bid for future projects like the 2020 European Capital of Culture. All too often we see glimpses and signs of cronyism that will ultimately hold us back. Seek out our talented people, engage them and work with them.

Do we always want to continually be the nearly City? No one wants that.

Galway celebrates the 2020 hosting.

So, let us make the changes. Let us get the right people, to do the appropriate jobs, from the very start. Galway is not unique in getting this part of the process correct – it is just they have been doing it for years! They seem to have managed to find a way, to reach the very hearts of their citizens. But I know that here in Waterford, we have beating hearts also.

This Ugly Sister will one day go to the ball, wearing both glass slippers. We just need to find pair of slippers that fit!

“It’s the way we tell ‘em!”

In business it is how you tell your business' story that makes the most impact and the honesty to which you are prepared to open up to your client or potential client that will make all the difference in securing new business.

“I wanna tell you a story” was a phrase used by Max Bygraves, an English comedian, singer, stage performer and sometimes actor. Max had his own TV shows when I was growing up as a wee boy in Glenrothes, Scotland and I also remember him on a very successful TV programme called Family Fortunes as well. He would always start a comedic section of any TV show with his well know catchphrase. It was almost like he was inviting you to sit down with him in a familiar place to listen to a bedtime story, it really was that familiar. As a result he tended to get his audience's attention and thus people became accustomed to knowing exactly when to listen.

“It’s the way I tell ‘em!” was another catchphrase I remember from my dim distant youth that was used by the larger than life Northern Irish comedian Frank Carson. He would tell very short punchy jokes and add his catchphrase to the end of the punch line to reinforce that fact that he had finished telling his story and it was now time to laugh and appreciate his joke or series of jokes. Frank would use his catchphrase as, I suppose, a call to action in that the audience had become so accustomed to him rolling out this phrase that they were almost conditioned to laugh at the catchphrase rather than the punch line of his jokes.

There was something about the need for comedians to attach themselves to a catchphrase during the heady days of variety TV that blanketed our screens during the 1970’s and 1980’s. Perhaps it was a way for the many comedians to distinguish themselves from other comedians or was it just another way of them selling you their own USP (unique selling point or ultimate selling proposition).

This tradition continued throughout the early nineties. But as programmes and audiences matured and changed we have seen a move away from catchphrases altogether and we now have comedians who are simply brilliant at telling funny stories. And it is the way that they can tell these funny stories that allow our modern day comedians to fill venues that accommodate 10,000 to 15,000 seat arenas around the world.

To play to such large audiences and yet make each and every audience member feel that the comedian is literally in their living room, speaking to them in an extremely intimate way, is testament to the skill of the individual and their storytelling prowess of our most successful comedians that tour Ireland and the UK.

People like Billy Connolly, Lee Evans, Michael McIntyre, Brendan O’Carroll, Brendan Grace, Bill Murray and his Pub Landlord, to name but a few, are some of the very best storytellers around – fact.

But can our businesses learn from these comedic storytellers? Yes of course businesses can. In fact I would go much further and say that if a business is not telling its own story, through its staff members, then a business is not operating correctly and that business will find it very hard to survive and prosper.

Like a modern day storyteller your businesses' promoters must be delivering every single message with honesty, integrity, passion, openness, enthusiasm and most important of all a SMILE.

This mantra can also be replicated by villages, towns, cities and regions and over the last two or three weeks it would appear that Waterford has a better story to tell than most. What with TF Meagher the creator of the Irish Tricolour, the first Tricolour being raised at 33 The Mall and with Luke Wadding “inventing” St. Patrick’s Day.

To make Waterford appeal to a much wider audience maybe we just need a better catchphrase!

A flag worth waving.

As Christmas Day and even New Year’s Day now become a dim distant memory our thoughts should turn to two major events that will take place in the first quarter of 2016 – namely Election Day and of course the Commemoration of the 1916 Easter Rising.

Both of these very important events will soon be upon us and whilst there is no set date for the election, we are lead to believe that a date will be set shortly after the delivery of the Banking Enquiry that is due, at present, to report by the end of January.

We can already witness the political jockeying that has started and despite the devastation of the recent storms, Clodagh, Des et al, we are seeing more and more of our TD’s out and about “doing their bit” to help flood sufferers. Rest assured they are also out with a keen eye on the PR opportunities that these situations bring, and as we know there is no bad PR and even the sinking of a canoe in County Kilkenny brought laughter and PR opportunities for those concerned.

We will therefore literally have a few of weeks to make up our minds on how the country will be run over the next number of years and we should ALL engage in that process.

Edinburgh born James Connolly.

The 1916 Easter Rising Commemoration will follow hotfoot on the back of E-Day and we should be looking forward to seeing how these events materialise, as after all the Government and TD Committees have, reportedly, been working on these celebrations for months and years. So we should be wowed by what is in store and above all we should at the very least be proud of the Commemoration that in many people’s eyes celebrates the birth of a nation.

Both of the above events should stir emotions and stir a sense of pride, no matter what side of the political fence you may sit on.

The election and the Commemoration will spark debate and ignite the fire in our bellies that define who we are. No doubt there will be much fevered patriotism and perhaps even some jingoism, but above all there will be much flag waving and a lot of symbolism around both events.

Every time an Irish tricolour is waved, we in Waterford should be proud of the fact that Thomas Francis Meagher, born in what is now the Granville Hotel, is credited with “inventing” the flag so widely identified with Ireland around the world. As the first modern nation that voted for same sex marriage we must be mature enough to know what this tricolour flag represents in today’s Ireland.

But how many in Waterford, Ireland and the rest of the world know, that the flag so proudly flown by Ireland and the Irish Diaspora around the globe, was first flown in Waterford City, at 33 The Mall, in March 1848?

I would hazard a guess that very few know of the origin of the Irish Tricolour and the connection with Waterford City. In fact I would say more people associate Waterford with crystal than this nation’s national flag.

Waterford born Thomas Francis Meagher.

It is very sad to think that we have such a great opportunity to promote Waterford City, around the world, through our connection with Thomas Francis Meagher and the tricolour, and we clearly do not utilise the vast potential for tourism and economic development that this might bring.

Other towns and cities in Ireland have identified connections and the strong economic possibilities, particularly in the USA, that being associated with the foundation of the state and the foundation of the national flag might bring. If we are not careful our claim to the tricolour and it first being raised in Waterford City could become another faded memory of Waterford’s historic past, like so many of our current economic pillars.

As we rapidly run towards E-Day and the 1916 Commemorations we should proudly remind everyone of Waterford’s connection to the birth of this modern nation.

Flying the flag for Waterford.

I often have people asking me “What is going on in Waterford City?” and I also tend to get asked the following supplementary, “How come you know so much about what is happening in the City?”

The simple fact is that due to the nature of my own business, bizBoost, and the various groups and committees I am involved with I need to “have my finger on the pulse” to coin a well worn phrase. I go out of my way to read ALL the local newspapers, listen to the local radio stations, attend as many Council meetings as I can, keep an eye on the social media traffic and of course I make take time to meet and network with a huge volume of people. And it is when I have the opportunity to meet with people that I take time to listen first and then answer the many questions I inevitably get asked.

Today is Thursday the 19^th March and the last two weeks have shown Waterford City as a beacon of positivity and a series of one good news story after another. These stories have been covered by ALL our local media and across the various social networking platforms. But just in case you missed these here as some of my highlights of the last two weeks (in no particular order):

1848 Tricolour Celebration, covering the 6^th to 9^th March; over 110 guests attended a Gala Dinner on Saturday 7^th March in the presence of the Mayor, Minister Coffey, Ambassadorial representation from the US, Canadian and French Embassies, and members of the 69^th Infantry Division (New York). Sunday 8^th March 1500 people attended the flag raising ceremony on The Mall with musical accompaniment from the Thomas Francis Meagher Fife & Drum, Barrack Street Band and the Island of Ireland Peace Choir. All of these events were organised by the voluntary 1848 Tricolour Celebration Committee.

Naming the Thomas Francis Meagher Bridge; on Thursday 12^th March, in the presence of President Michael D Higgins, the Suir River crossing was formally named The Thomas Francis Meagher Bridge in a closed ceremony, in horrible weather conditions, in an area just off the toll plaza. This really was a mammoth team effort on behalf of the 1848 Tricolour Committee, and the Councils of both Waterford and Kilkenny.

Lions Club National Conference; over the weekend of 6^th to 9^th March the Tower Hotel hosted the National Conference of the Lions Clubs of Ireland. Over 400 delegates from all over Ireland and further afield attended this national event.

 

VLM announce flights from Waterford Airport; on Monday 27^th April direct flights from Waterford Airport to London Luton will resume. The new Belgium based airline will fly 12 times in each direction every week from April. These flights replace the FlyBe routes.

President Michael D Higgins is greeted by 1500 school children; on Thursday 12^th March President Michael D Higgins presides over the launch of Flag Week. A programme by the Thomas Francis Meagher Foundation to educate the Irish school children around the history of the Irish Tricolour and the connection with Meagher and Waterford City. Over 250 schools attended this event and each school received a Tricolour flag that was flown at 33 The Mall, Waterford City. This event was attended by a whole host of dignitaries and perhaps my abiding memory will be everyone, and I mean everyone, participating in a Mexican Wave!

St.Patrick’s Day on Tuesday 17^th March; we were once again witness to a magnificent parade on St.Patrick’s Day and full credit must be given to those who organised the event and more importantly a big thank you to those who marched in the parade. The Waterford influence was not confined to the City as members of Spraoi also provide costumes and support for parades in Dublin and Cork.

Glanbia opens €180 million facility in Belview Port; the opening of the state-of-the-art facility by Glanbia should contribute around €400 million to the Irish economy and will create around 75 directly related jobs and 1,600 indirect jobs. Currently Ireland produces around 10% of the world’s infant milk formula but the future hope is that this will rise to over 60% with plants such as the one in Belview coming on stream.

Ballybeg Brick by Brick Appeal gathers strength; over the last two weeks we have seen an increasing number of local events raising money for the Brick by Brick Appeal and money is starting to come in to fund for many projects that will rise out of the ashes. There is so much local support for the Appeal that it you cannot fail to notice the momentum this is gathering.

 

Waterford United hosted the Irish Football Manager Martin O’Neill and Assistant Manager Roy Keane on Thursday 12^th March for a club fundraiser with John Delaney also present. Over 200 people supported this event and efforts of the fundraising committee.

These are just some of my own memories of the last two weeks and I know that there are so many more good news stories out there as well.

Sometime we have to actively look for the good news and it is just such a pity that we cannot lead with good news stories ALL the time. As they say in the newspaper world “Bad News Sells Newspapers” but the good news stories make us feel much much better in ourselves and in our communities.

Waterford as a good news story had unprecedented local, regional and national news coverage over the last fortnight and just imaging if we could replicate that over the 52 weeks of a whole year. Attitudes to this City would change instantaneously and investment would flood the City, County and Region.

Good news stories do so much more for the moral fibre of the City we live in than the bad press we seem to always focus on. We are ALL responsible for finding those good news stories and promoting the good in our City, County and Region.

If we ALL ensured that we could regularly replicating the last two weeks of positive press coverage the City and County has received then Waterford City would in no time at all get back its rightful place as Ireland’s fourth City of the Republic. This in turn would lead to lower unemployment, better third level attainment, higher wages and so on. It really is a win win!

It is all about OUR positive attitude to make Waterford the very best that it can be and looking forward with a positive mindset is something we all need to do.

“Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose” (Lyndon B Johnson).

Thank you to Paul Dower for his photographs.

Everyone must be a brand Waterford Ambassador!

I attended the decommissioning ceremony for the Irish Naval vessel La Aoife. This vessel is in fact twinned with Waterford City. The ceremony took place at 15:00 on Saturday 31^st January, at Forde Wharf, in the presence of the Minister of State at the Department of Defence Paul Kehoe TD, Rear Admiral Mark Mellett DSM, friends and family of the many crew members (past and present of the La Aoife) and many other dignitaries too numerous to mention.

I also spotted representation from the 1848 Tricolour Celebration Committee, Waterford Business Group, Waterford In Your Pocket as well as many of our very supportive local media.

Maybe due to the absolutely bitterly cold wind blowing right down the Suir Estuary, making my eyes run constantly and preventing me from wearing my kilt, that I failed to notice any significant representation from our 32 Councillors. I did see the City and County Mayors (we have two Mayors in Waterford) and two additional Councillors, but very few others. I understand that there was Mayoral Civic Reception held the night before but surely the decommissioning ceremony, in the presence of a Minister of State, with national TV coverage should have been attended by a significant number of Councillors and not the scattering I and many others noticed and commented on?

It was also great to see RTE South East, with Damien Tiernan and his dedicated crew fighting the elements, filming the decommissioning ceremony and managing to get the whole service from the cutting room floor to being broadcast on RTE Six One News only a few hours later. Well done to all.

You simply cannot buy the sort of publicity and branding the La Aoife has generated for Waterford City. The La Aoife has been one of the City’s greatest ever ambassadors and we owe a great big thank you to her last Captain Marie Gleeson, and her dedicated crew, who worked extremely hard behind the scenes to ensure that the La Aoife was decommissioned in Waterford City and not Cork.

We must also acknowledge the work of Councillor Eddie Mulligan who in his capacity as a new public servant and in his role with the Naval Reserve (Waterford) also worked away in the background to bring this vessel eastwards, away from Cork, for her final official ceremony here in Waterford City.

Over the last number of years the La Aoife crew have raised in excess of €35,000 for our hospital and this has been done without fuss or ceremony or publicity. We owe a huge thank you to all those who raised funds over the past numbers of years.

But what of our future relationship with the Irish Navy now that the La Aoife is decommissioned? Will Waterford City be twinned with another of the Navy’s newer vessels or will we simply be forgotten?

I do know that a number of official requests have been lodged and submitted requesting that the new vessel, Le James Joyce, be twinned with Waterford City once the vessel is commissioned later in 2015.

As we are all too aware “the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray!”

So we ALL need to ensure that our relationship with the Irish Navy, as maritime City, continues and if readers are interested in continuing this relationship then please lobby your local TD’s and Councillors to ensure that the Le James Joyce does in fact become twinned with our wonderful City and we can continue to see the name of Waterford City promoted and literally carried around the vast seas that surround this island.

On Friday last I had the immense pleasure to spend some time with three Committee members of the Ballybeg Brick by Brick appeal. We got in touch with each other on the back of the Waterford Business Group organising its own fundraising night on the 28^th February, at Kilcohan dog track. The Waterford Business Group unanimously decided at our weekly group meeting to give part of the nights fundraising directly to this appeal. So coming along and support if you can.

The three committee members I met must also be considered as brand ambassadors for Waterford City. What happened in Ballybeg was nothing short of horrendous and yet only a few days later a committee was founded and action plans were being drawn up.

The appeal has been promised the earth, moon and stars by a vast number of political representatives and it will be the responsibility of those who have made these many promises to deliver and deliver within a timescale that is appropriate and suitable for Ballybeg. There are large numbers of community groups relying on a renaissance that must happen within a period of weeks and not over a period of months. The longer the rebirth of this area takes the longer it will simply be forgotten and the citizens of Waterford City cannot allow that to happen.

I saw a determination and drive in the three Committee members that tells me they will make sure Ballybeg rises from the ashes - just like the mythical Phoenix does. But this group will need help, encouragement, guidance, advice and much much more. It is everyone’s responsibility to be a part of the rebuilding process and I would urge that we make the regeneration of Ballybeg a good news story for the whole of Waterford.

In business every staff member is a brand ambassador for that business, whether they like it or not. Even when you are not at work you will always be associated with your company, business or place of work. Like the La Aoife, its crew, and the Ballybeg Brick by Brick Appeal committee we need to work very hard to create the right image and right impression if we are to flourish as businesses. This means being constantly aware how we act and more importantly how we deal with our customers.

There is absolutely no point in Waterford working hard creating a brand image of the City if once you come here you experiences something completely different. Good customer service builds your brand image and bad customer service destroys your brand image.

The businesses across Waterford need to be aware of their brand image and through better customer service we will build a better brand Waterford. In light of this the Waterford Business Group are providing FREE customer care workshops to members starting from Monday 9^th February and taking place in Lady Lane Library every Monday and Friday morning throughout the month of February. See www.waterfordbusinessgroup.com 

Finally, I often find that it is those who work hardest to make a project come to fruition that never seem to get the credit they deserve. Strange but true!