County Councillor and
former employee of Irish Sugar Joe McDonald
describes his
experiences of the Sugar Company's 'utility housing societies'
I was a sugar factory man
all my life, and I'm an elected representative on the County Council now
for Fianna Fail. I retired in 1986. I myself served my time as a fitter,
at that time; you had to do six years. I started off in 1957.
And I was very involved
with the Social Club at the sugar factory. A Coset - a small sugar beet
- was the name of our club. 1 was secretary for ten years. We had a
Gaelic football team, hurling, soccer, meggars,
(horse shoe throwing
competition) question time, a weekly
draw. Cosets club was nearly like a government! You couldn't spend
without permission and you had to present a case to the Committee at the
monthly meeting and they allocated the funding.
The Social Club, back in
1961, we commissioned a firm to put the rubbers on the kneelers on the
cathedral. There was a Christmas thing too, it was top secret, no one
would know except the person that received it -maybe a hamper and a
small cheque. Later we discovered we were totally wrong, we were giving
out chickens and things to people that had no way of cooking them, so we
devised a new system of getting everything cooked in the canteen and
delivered on the day.
Sport
We had a kind of an
Olympics too, inter-factory between the four factories, and head office
- full-scale competition. You'd bring your football team, hurling team,
meggar team, draughts team, quiz team, athletics. And then there'd be
the dinner and dance after it all, make a weekend of it. I'm just
wondering if anyone will write the history of it again.
Inter Branch Competition
The first organised competition for Gaelic hurling within the company
commenced in 1935. This competition was for the “Directors
Cup” and games were played on the home and away system
between Carlow, Mallow, Thurles and Tuam. These games aroused great
interest and enthusiasm amongst the employees in the ….y? game,
members of the 1935 team are as follows:
Back Row left to right: Dinny Byrne, John Rafferty, Ned Long, Joe
Walshe, William Scouts, Jim Muldowney, Paddy Whelan, Michael
Comerford, Jack Lyons. Front Row left to right: Jim Bryan, Charlie
Timmons, William Ryan, John McDarby, Percy McDarby, Joe Geoghegan.
We wrote the
history of the social club in 1975 believe it or not, Cosets was twenty
five years old, and the funny thing - the last few things I wrote was I
wondered who would write the history of the next twenty five years. Then
it was all finished in 2000. It just shows you the way the years go.
Unless someone resurrects a kind of an annual get together or something,
there's only the name of it now.
1972 Sugar Factory R & D team v Thurles.
-
- Back: Tom Phelan, David
Cambell, Frank Corden, Paddy Clancy, Paul Lyons, Frank Conroy,
Jim McGarry, Michael Broderick, Danny Mullins, Dinny Dunne,
Enda Smyth, Pat Maher, Frank O'Mahony, Eugene McAree, Harry
Ardill, John Flanagan. Front: Martin Byrne, Noel Hughes,
Eamonn Gleeson, Jim MCHugh, Mick O'Sullivan, Roy REgan, Dave
Twomey, Willie Murphy, Gerry Loughnane, Dinny Shaw, Pat Leane,
Ray Shannon.
Source of football photo: Dermot O'Brien Old
Carlow Photos
Cosets
Sugar Factory
team who defeated Purcell Exports (Sallins) in the Leinster Inter Firms
J.F.C. in November 1985.
Some names listed: Leo Gordon. Pa Murphy in front row, Martin Keating
& Eamon Kelly.
Source: Sandra James Facebook.
In
the different estates that were built: Larkfield was 22 houses;
Springfield 30; Pinewood 16 plus one (the plus one was there for a man
that joined our group but there was only room for sixteen houses so his
had to be built somewhere else). The people that are there now, out of
sixteen houses in our street - Pinewood - only three of the people are
no longer sugar factory people, number 4 and 5 and another one have been
sold since day one, thirty eight years ago. Now in the other estates,
Springfield with thirty houses, two storey ones, it would have been a
bit of a higher sale rate, I'd say maybe ten or twelve houses.
In the early fifties they
built Larkfield, and the labour for this came totally from the people
that were going to live in them. The men worked on them themselves. They
would have had skilled carpenters
that "worked in the factory” that gave a hand. In 1964 they started on
Springfield and they had a different system; they built the houses as
well, did the work themselves, their own labour. And if you were on
shift work or anything like that you had to supply a sub and pay him the
going rate, but you still had a cheap house. In Pinewood, we started in
1968 and we were the first to go totally on a contract basis. We signed
the contract in October or the end of September, and by the following
May they were finished. It was a crowd called Bellcord that built them.
They built the Hanover Council scheme as well.
Riverside then was last, it could have been the early seventies that
they were started. There was 12 houses there. Then up Greenpark there
were company houses that they sold on to different people, high up, at
different times. The houses facing the sugar factory, they called them
'the villas', there were six of them and they were very much in the
Belgian style, cellars under them and everything. They were for the top
brass.
There
was a fitter around 1961 who bought a house and brought us all over to
look at one of the houses he'd bought, saying we should all buy one. We
all thought it was a great idea but the repayments were 35 shillings a
week, and being an apprentice, finishing with about seven quid a week, I
just couldn't afford to have the two! When you look back, and think, if
I had to have the guts, take the chance, maybe it was the thing to do.
Isn't it the very same today?
The
County Council is doing; co-op housing schemes now, where you have
shared owners. The Co-op is where the council provides a serviced site
and a group of people come together, maybe ten or twelve. They might be
earning too much to qualify for a Council house, but they're not earning
enough to buy a big, dear house. So they're in-between. And what they do
is they go and get the very best bargains with contractors, supervise it
closely and provide their houses. So there were five or six of these
done by Carlow Town and County Council, and I kind of pushed most of
them based on my experience on our own scheme. Now when we were
building, they were called a 'utility housing society', they've now
changed to 'co-op'.
I got a
loan of £2,100 and a council grant, and had saved £400 after years of
struggling! I had to make a major decision on my house,-the little
garage was a hundred and fifty quid and I couldn't afford it so I had to
leave it
out.
But I built it a few years afterwards. I suppose everything is relative
when you think about it. I had twelve pounds ten shillings (£12 .10s)a week in
wages, and that was good wages, and then it went up to about seventeen
pounds about the time the houses were finished. But the rent was four
pound half crown so that was a quarter of my wages. £3,000 looks cheap
for a house but it was a lot of money for me then. I suppose it's a bit
like a €250,000 house now.
We drew
for the houses, thirty two little matchboxes with one to sixteen in half
and the names in the other sixteen of them. The 14th of May 1969. I came
out with matchbox number two, and as it was it worked out it was one I
liked. It was in a lovely part.
Reproduced as
printed in the 'Sweet Future' June 2007
