Around 250 people gathered in Kenmare Mart on Thursday evening last to celebrate the mart’s 30th anniversary.

Proceedings kicked off with Fr Seán Murphy celebrating Mass in the ring, and refreshments were supplied afterwards to mark the occasion.

The mart, situated at the northern end of the Beara peninsula, caters for farmers in Cork and Kerry and handles the sale of approximately 50,000 sheep and 7,000 cattle annually. The cross-border customer base was acknowledged in the mayor of Kerry, councillor Mikey Sheehy and mayor of the County of Cork, councillor Bernard Moynihan, both addressing the gathering.

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“We wanted to mark the 30 years of the mart and thank everyone for commitment and to show the appreciation for what was done and we see now what it means to have a mart in the area,” said manager Dan McCarthy, himself a Kerry county councillor.

A long road travelled

McCarthy has been managing the mart since 2004 and he recalled the early years:

“I suppose, Cahersiveen, Macroom and Milltown would have been the nearest marts before but there’s a big catchment down here.

“In the early 1990s a town development committee suggested that a mart would work in Kenmare and we’ve proved since that it can work. I’d like to mention Mike Kissane, too, for helping us out in the start, he brought his team from Cahersiveen Mart to help get things going once we had the mart built.

“We had a lot of our regular customers turn up on the night and we even had one man who came down from Clare after reading it in the Farmers Journal.”