St Patrick’s Day parade committees across Ireland are warning that escalating insurance costs and reduced availability of public liability cover are placing community celebrations under severe strain, raising the risk of cancellations, scaled-back routes and last-minute uncertainty for towns and villages.
Hereunder, Video of the Thurles, Co. Tipperary, St Patrick’s Day Parade Held 2025.
Volunteer-led committees say public liability insurance has become a barrier to participation, not just a safety requirement, with higher premiums, stricter conditions and growing administrative demands landing on groups that rely entirely on fundraising and unpaid work.
Public liability insurance, covering injury to spectators and participants, as well as third-party property damage, has become increasingly difficult to secure for volunteer-led events, with committees reporting that quotes are higher, conditions are tighter and the administrative burden has grown significantly.
Recent media reporting has highlighted the scale of the challenge, with one Wicklow parade committee facing insurance estimates in the €5,000–€10,000 range (with €6,500 cited), a cost that can exceed the entire fundraising capacity of smaller communities.
At the same time, local-authority event permissions typically require proof of insurance in advance, often at high indemnity limits and with specific policy wording, adding pressure to secure cover early and at a price communities can afford.
A spokesperson associated with the Thurles town St Patrick’s Day Parade Committee, has stated that;- “Insurance has always been a problem and ever since Covid it has doubled. This is a volunteer-run event. We’re proud of the work that goes into making it safe and welcoming, but the cost and complexity of insurance is now the single biggest threat to Irish parades. Without a workable solution, communities will lose events that bring people together and support local businesses. We’re told to produce more and more documentation and pay for more and more controls, which we do, but the quotes still rise and the uncertainty remains. At some point, towns are simply being priced out of their own national day. St Patrick’s Day shouldn’t become a luxury product available only to the biggest centres. If we don’t act, we’ll sleepwalk into a future where local parades quietly disappear, and once they’re gone, they’re hard to bring back.”
Committees stress that risk management standards have risen sharply in recent years. Organisers are now expected to produce robust event management plans, crowd control measures, stewarding and traffic management arrangements, important steps for safety, but often costly to implement.
National claims data shows improvements in the wider public-liability landscape, with the Injuries Resolution Board reporting a 40% reduction in public-liability claim volumes, between 2019 and 2023. Parade organisers are asking that progress be reflected in affordability and availability for well-managed community events.
Calls for action. Community parade organising committees are urging:
A dedicated community events insurance support mechanism, aligned with documented safety standards and transparent pricing.
Clear engagement from Government, insurers and local authorities to protect the viability of community parades, not just flagship events.
A simplified national template for parade risk management and event documentation to reduce administrative burden and improve consistency.
Engagement with insurers, brokers and Government to increase capacity for community events and prevent avoidable cancellations.
St Patrick’s Day belongs to every community and participants are asking for the implementation of practical measures, so that smaller towns and villages can continue to celebrate safely without being priced out of total existence.
Lyrics and Vocals: American singer and songwriter, the late John Lester Nash Jr.(1940-2020).
Johnny Nash.
Released in 1972, “I Can See Clearly Now” is the bright, reggae-laced, pop-soul single that became Johnny Nash’s signature recording; written and produced by Nash, it pairs an easy, sun-after-storm groove, with a simple message of resilience, moving from setback and confusion to renewed confidence and perspective.
I Can See Clearly Now.
I Can See Clearly Now.
I can see clearly now, the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way. Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind, It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright), Sun-shiny day. It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright), Sun-shiny day. I think I can make it now, the pain is gone. All of the bad feelings have disappeared. Here is the rainbow I’ve been prayin’ for, It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright), Sun-shiny day. Look all around, there’s nothin’ but blue skies. Look straight ahead, nothin’ but blue skies. I can see clearly now, the rain is gone, I can see all obstacles in my way. Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind. It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright), Sun-shiny day. It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright), Sun-shiny day. Gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright), Sun-shiny day. Oh, what a bright (bright), bright (bright), Sun-shiny day…
Lyrics And Vocals: American singer, songwriter and guitarist Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen rightly named the “Boss”.
I personally welcome and strongly supports Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Minneapolis”, released as an urgent act of witness and solidarity with Minneapolis, a city now in distress, and with immigrant neighbours who have been left feeling exposed and afraid.
In his accompanying statement, Mr Springsteen dedicated the song to the people of Minneapolis and to “our innocent immigrant neighbors,” and to the memory of Mr Alex Jeffrey Pretti and Mrs Renée Nicole Macklin Good.
This song release matters not only for what it condemns, but also for what it protects; the idea that a community is more than its sirens and headlines, it is families, friendships, small kindnesses, and the ordinary love that holds a place together when the temperature drops and the pressure rises.
In that sense, “Streets of Minneapolis” lands like a fierce kind of love letter: not romantic in the shallow sense, but a vow that people are worth defending, and that grief should never be met with total indifference.
Bruce Springsteen.
Mr Springsteen’s words and the song in its framing are explicit about the moral claim he is making and we stand with that claim, and with the principle behind it. Artists should/must be free to respond to public events, to challenge authority, and to stand visibly with those they believe are being harmed. There are moments when politics becomes personal; when a city’s name is spoken like a prayer; when strangers hold the line for one another; when a song becomes that “comforting hand on a shoulder”.
Streets of Minneapolis.
Streets Of Minneapolis.
Through the winter’s ice and cold, Down Nicollet Avenue, A city aflame fought fire and ice, ‘Neath an occupier’s boots. King Trump’s private army from the DHS, Guns belted to their coats, Came to Minneapolis to enforce the law, Or so their story goes. Against smoke and rubber bullets, In dawn’s early light, Citizens stood for justice, Their voices ringing through the night. And there were bloody footprints, Where mercy should have stood, And two dead left to die on snow-filled streets, Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice, Singing through the bloody mist. We’ll take our stand for this land, And the stranger in our midst. Here in our home they killed and roamed, In the winter of ’26. We’ll remember the names of those who died, On the streets of Minneapolis.
Trump’s federal thugs beat up on, His face and his chest, Then we heard the gunshots, And Alex Pretti lay in the snow, dead. Their claim was self defense, sir, Just don’t believe your eyes, It’s our blood and bones, And these whistles and phones, Against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies.
Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice, Crying through the bloody mist, We’ll remember the names of those who died, On the streets of Minneapolis.
Now they say they’re here to uphold the law, But they trample on our rights, If your skin is black or brown my friend, You can be questioned or deported on sight.
In a chant of ICE out now, Our city’s heart and soul persists, Through broken glass and bloody tears, On the streets of Minneapolis.
Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice, Singing through the bloody mist. Here in our home they killed and roamed, In the winter of ’26. We’ll take our stand for this land, And the stranger in our midst. We’ll remember the names of those who died, On the streets of Minneapolis. We’ll remember the names of those who died On the streets of Minneapolis.
END.
Let compassion be stubborn, to let dignity be non-negotiable, and to let love for neighbour outrun fear.
Donovan’s ‘Hitchhiking Song’ – “To Try for the Sun“.
Donovan’s “To Try for the Sun” doesn’t come roaring in with big declarations, rather it arrives quietly, carrying the kind of determination you only really notice when it stays with you.
Released in the US in January 1966, the single backed with “Turquoise,” gives us a song that feels like a soft-spoken pledge, “Keep moving, even when there’s no proof the road will lead you anywhere”.
To Try for the Sun.
Donovan Phillips Leitch.
Lyrics and Vocals: Scottish musician, songwriter and record producer, Donovan Phillips Leitch, known mononymously as Donovan.
To Try for the Sun.
We stood in the windy city, the gypsy boy and I. We slept on the breeze in the midnight with the raindrops and tears in our eyes. And who’s going to be the one they say it was no good what we done? I dare a man to say I’m too young for I’m going to try for the sun. We huddled in a derelict building and when he thought I was asleep, He laid his poor coat round my shoulder, and shivered there beside me in a heap. And who’s going to be the one, that says it was no good what we done? I dare a man to say I’m too young for I’m going to try for the sun. We sang and cracked the sky with laughter, our breath turned to mist in the cold. Our years put together count to thirty, but our eyes told the dawn we were old. And who’s going to be the one that says it was no good what we done ? I dare a man to say I’m too young for I’m going to try for the sun. Mirror, mirror, hanging in the sky, won’t you look down what’s happening here below? I stand here singing to the flowers, so very few people really know. And who’s going to be the one they says it was no good what we done? I dare a man to say I’m too young, for I’m going to try for the sun. We stood in the windy city, the gypsy boy and I. We slept on the breeze in the midnight, with the raindrops and tears in our eyes. And who’s going to be the one, they say it was no good what we done? I dare a man to say I’m too young for I’m going to try for the sun.
END.
The song is tied to Donovan’s early, uncertain years, around Hatfield, Hertfordshire, U.K., his busking, hitchhiking, sleeping rough at times, and learning how to persist before anything “works out”. Alongside him was close friend and fellow traveller David “Gypsy Dave” Mills, part of the shoestring, unconventional arty style life that fed directly into his earliest writing.
Donovan later described “To Try for the Sun” as essentially a hitchhiking song, and even clarified that its “windy city” isn’t Chicago, it’s Manchester. That detail keeps the track grounded: real roads, real cold air, real miles.
The hitchhiking of the 1970’s for the most part here in Ireland has faded, shaped by reported safety fears, a culture of distrust, and the sheer availibility and convenience of cars and modern travel.
The song’s message still lands, hope without hype, and a simple decision to always keep trying, anyway.
Switzerland didn’t “get lucky” with clean rivers. It decided, in law, in funding, and in enforcement, that clean water is basic infrastructure. After decades when wastewater and industrial pollution badly damaged waterways, Switzerland eventually hard-wired wastewater treatment into national policy. By 2005, some 97% of the population was connected to a central sewage treatment plant.
And Switzerland didn’t stop at “good enough”. A revised waters protection law took effect on January 1st 2016, requiring many treatment plants to add extra purification stages to tackle trace pollutants. Today, Switzerland’s own federal assessment says bathing water in lakes and rivers is generally very good, with more than 97% of assessed bathing waters at least “sufficient”.
That’s the core lesson; clean rivers don’t come from speeches. They come from a system that measures, funds, upgrades, and insists on outcomes.
Now let us look at the Suir in Thurles. A river described as “disgraceful” in a town that should be proud of a God given assett. Indeed, the positioning of the River Suir should be one of Thurles’s defining assets. Instead, the public record reads like a running argument, frustration, photos, political rows, and a river that locals and officials say is fast “slipping away”.
Video hereunder shows one area of River Suir in the heart of Thurles town.
At a Tipperary County Council meeting, one councillor described the Suir running through Thurles as “disgraceful, embarrassing and shocking”, alleging rubbish, trolleys and “raw sewerage”. Local radio carried similar comments in 2024, calling the river an “eyesore” and “an embarrassment to the town”. This is not just “bad optics”, it’s a signal to the people on the ground that local government, charged with keeping essential infrastructure working and keeping the environment protected, is now seriously broken.
Tipperary County Council says it has a remit. Residents are asking, “Where are the results?” A national newspaper reported that EPA sampling, at Thurles Bridge in 2023, found the river “poor”, and quoted the council saying it has “a statutory remit to maintain and protect the water quality status of rivers” and works with the Local Authority Waters Programme (LAWPRO). Fine, but “remit” isn’t recovery. LAWPRO’s own reporting at a public meeting in Templemore captured what many locals believe is happening in the Suir catchment around Thurles; declines in water quality, impacts on fish and aquatic life, and “river weed growth” and “general neglect”, much of it linked to excessive nutrients. So the public isn’t imagining that something is wrong. Multiple sources, local reporting, stakeholder meetings, and the council’s own statements about responsibility, all point back to the same uncomfortable truth; the river needs a plan that delivers measurable improvement.
The wastewater system is a known pressure point, and the utility admits it Here’s the part that should end the “who’s to blame” merry-go-round. Uisce Éireann’s own project page for Thurles states plainly that “the current wastewater infrastructure in the town is inadequate” and that upgrades are required to meet environmental compliance and “alleviate flooding issues”. When your own infrastructure provider says the network is inadequate, it’s no longer credible to treat river decline as a mystery. It becomes a delivery question, what is being done, by when, and how will the river show improvement?
Robert Emmet Street, Thurles, closed today due to flooding for the second time in past 3 months.
Flooding, when the river rises, the same arguments return. This week, Tipperary County Council issued an operational update noting elevated levels on the Suir and overtopping in parts of the catchment area. Local press also reported flood scenes in South Tipperary, with the council saying water levels had risen and overtopping had occurred at several points. Thurles residents are familiar with what follows: the river rises, pinch points show up fast, and the anger sharpens around a simple claim, basic river management and preventative maintenance are not being done consistently enough.
A Thurles.Info article (November 2025) illustrates the Emmet Street riverside walkway and describes it as unserviceable due to flooding, arguing that repeated warnings over a 13-year period have not been matched by the maintenance needed to prevent blockages and overflow. To be clear, the precise causes of any single flooding incident, whether reeds, silt, debris, undersized drainage, or all of the above, require engineering assessment. But the political point is unavoidable, if people can’t see routine, transparent upkeep and enforcement, they assume it isn’t happening.
And here’s the paragraph Ireland can’t ignore: we have the money What turns this from local frustration into national hypocrisy is the scale of spending Ireland is willing to contemplate elsewhere. The Irish Government has backed the Water Supply Project for the Eastern and Midlands region, intended to bring a new long-term water source from the Shannon system towards the greater leaking Dublin area. RTÉ reported the proposal would take about 2% of the average flow and was estimated to cost €4–€6 billion. The Department’s own press release gives a preliminary cost estimate of €4.58bn to €5.96bn (verified through an expert review process).
So yes: Ireland can mobilise billions for water infrastructure for Dublin when it chooses. Which makes the Suir question harder to dodge: how can we plan to move vast volumes of water across Ireland while towns like Thurles are still fighting over basics; river health, monitoring, enforcement, and routine maintenance?
Switzerland vs Thurles: the difference is measurable accountability Switzerland’s lesson isn’t “be rich” or “buy better technology”. It’s this, treat water quality as a deliverable.
If Thurles wants a Suir that supports biodiversity, recreation, tourism, and doesn’t become a recurring source of anger, then the county needs to stop treating the river like a PR problem and start treating it like infrastructure with a public scoreboard:
Quarterly updates on the Thurles stretch (water quality trend points, incident reporting, actions taken).
A clear, named lead for publishing progress locally, one place the public can check.
Transparent milestones for the wastewater upgrades already acknowledged as necessary.
A preventative maintenance programme that is visible, scheduled, and publicly reported, so people aren’t left guessing until the next flood.
Switzerland didn’t fix its rivers by talking. It fixed them by building a system that delivers, and proving it, year after year. Thurles deserves the same axtion and seriousness.
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