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Press Releasesback to main Press Release section May 2005 27th May 2005 - Action Group Call for Local Jobs to be included in Plans for Strategic Management of Woodstown SAVE VIKING WATERFORD CALL FOR LOCAL JOBS TO BE INCLUDED IN PLANS FOR STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF WOODSTOWN The Save Viking Waterford Action Group have called for potential job creation to be included in any report on the long term strategy for the Woodstown Viking Site. On May 11th, Minister Dick Roche announced that an advisory group of Waterford City Councillors would be set up to put forward proposals on the strategic management of the Viking site at Woodstown, in conjunction with officials from the National Museum and the Department of the Environment. In the light of recent job losses in Waterford City and county, SVWAG is calling for any such proposals to include specific recommendations for the creation of local employment. SVWAG spokesman, Dr Catherine Swift, said: "In the context of globalisation, employment in any multi-national is always going to be at the mercy of outsourcing, the whims of the free market and a ‘race to the bottom’ in the search for cheaper labour. In contrast, jobs based around the cultural and tourist potential of Woodstown are, by their very nature, unique to Waterford and cannot be exported elsewhere. It’s important that when we’re planning for the future, we make sure that local people can play a significant role in the development of this site." "Waterford has one of the worst records on unemployment in the country, a legacy of decades of neglect from the central government. Even short-term jobs on an excavation would help to tide people over while they’re thinking of new careers and training and give them the time and space to make decisions.. With proper on-site training and management, a research dig at Woodstown could provide employment while people are working through that period." "The City Square excavations in the 1980s are recognised as one of the best digs which ever took place in Ireland and they provide the standard to which archaeology students are taught to aspire. They were largely manned by FÁS personnel, many of whom are still living in the Waterford area. A wealth of experience and expertise lies untapped from the these excavations. This, combined with the enthusiasm and interest shown locally in Woodstown since its discovery can be utilised in the eventual excavation of Woodstown." "There is also the tourist potential. Any excavation can, of its very nature, be marketed as a tourist attraction as was done very successfully at Whithorn in south-west Scotland in the late1980s and early 90s. That dig brought hundreds of thousands of visitors into the unemployment blackspot of rural Galloway; an area which, apart from the Larne/Stranraer ferry, had almost no through traffic or important communication routes. In Waterford, we’re on the main southern route through Ireland and we should be thinking of methods of making sure our tourists spend longer stays in the county, rather than simply rushing through on their way to Blarney and the Ring of Kerry". If anybody has ideas or suggestions about the proper methods of exploitation of Woodstown’s potential for the benefit of Waterford citizens, we would urge them to get in contact with their local City Councillor. Alternatively, we will post all suggestions made to us via save@vikingwaterford.com on the SVWAG website at www.vikingwaterford.com. Action Group Welcome Minister's Announcement The Save Viking Waterford Action Group have welcomed the fact
that Minister Roche has finally confirmed his decision to re-route
the Waterford bypass in order to protect the Woodstown Viking Site.
Action Group ANNOUNCES LECTURE ON ARCHAEOLOGY AND INSTITUTES OF TECHNOLOGY SVWAG is presenting a lecture on archaeological careers and training on Thursday next, 5th May at 8pm at Dooley’s Hotel. The lecturer is Paul Gosling, Director of the Heritage Studies Programmes at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology. This is run by the Humanities Department at GMIT and courses cover Irish and European archaeology, heritage tourism, European languages, information technology, human resources and marketing management. SVWAG chair, Dr Catherine Swift, announcing the lecture, said: “Traditionally in Ireland, archaeology was taught in the universities as a branch of Celtic studies and it concentrated on identifying a sequence of past cultures and societies. This sort of education continues to be useful and enjoyable as a branch of the historical sciences but it lacks the vocational and technical training which the modern archaeological firms are calling for. If you look at the website of the Institute of Archaeologists of Ireland, there’s a huge need for new archaeologists with the sort of skills which GMIT are offering them. The road-development programme will be employing large numbers of archaeologists into the future and there’s a real gap in the current training provision.” “We already have courses on tourism on offer in Waterford but we also have enormous resources here in the city which could be deployed in practical training for archaeology students. The excavations directed by Maurice Hurley in the late 1980s produced a vast corpus of material, most of which is stored in the Granary Museum. The publication of the finds in 1997 by Waterford City Council is still hailed as the standard to which all other Irish excavation reports should aspire. Without sticking a spade in the ground, we already have the means to offer extremely innovative and progressive courses, dealing with real archaeological material. When you put that together with the business, tourism and information technology courses already on offer in WIT, there is real potential for such courses in Waterford.” “Of course, the other thing which Waterford has is the important site at Woodstown, right beside the new campus of WIT. The minimal information which we have to date suggests that this enormous fort, the same size as tenth-century Dublin, was first defended in the fifth century. Most of what we know, however, belongs to the very earliest Viking period, with many hundreds of metal finds having been found by the sieving process that was used on the JCB spoil in 2004. Those finds are being conserved but they will still require analysis and research and that’s a very long and pain-staking process. If we’re going to see the results in a reasonable time frame, we’ve got to put provision into place for their investigation. At a conference at Wexford a month ago, it was pointed out that there was no trained personnel available to process the material from the major Viking site of Bride Street in Wexford town and that dig took place eighteen years ago. Most of what was found there is still in boxes in the storehouses of the National Museum and the classification has barely begun. We’ve got to make sure that the same thing doesn’t happen at Woodstown. For further information on the Save Viking Waterford Action Group, please contact save@vikingwaterford.com. Updates are available on the website www.vikingwaterford.com |