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NATIONWIDE – Week 3

RTÉ Nationwide presenters Mary Kennedy and Anne Cassin Image Name: RTÉ Nationwide presenters Mary Kennedy and Anne Cassin Copyright: RTÉ

Monday 14th January, 7.00pm, RTÉ One.

Tonight’s Nationwide is a special programme about communities and people who have an appointment with Uachtaráin na hEireann. The team meet with communities in Roscommon and Leitrim to see how they welcomed the President when he came to visit and goes to Áras an Uachtaráin in the Phoenix Park in Dublin which is both home to the President and the official venue for formal state occasions with over 11,000 guests attending events there each year.   Keeping up with the long tradition at Áras an Uachtaráin, President Michael D. Higgins and his wife Sabina are hosting a series of themed garden parties and Nationwide goes along for the festivities focusing  on Ireland’s cultural heritage with a celebration of Bloomsday.

 

 

Wednesday 16th January, 7.00pm, RTÉ One.

This evening, Nationwide focuses on Coollattin House near the village of Shillelagh in South West Wicklow which was once at the centre of one of the biggest estates in Ireland.  Owned by Earl Fitzwilliam, the 90,000 acre estate covered a fifth of County Wicklow and had over 20,000 tenants. Many of the villages in this area were planned and built by the local landlord but in the 1800s, before and during the Famine times, thousands of tenants left the Fitzwilliam Estate for Canada.  Now their descendants are returning to search for their ancestral roots.  On this evening’s programme, Nationwide is in South West Wicklow to speak to these returned emigrants, visiting Shillelagh and Tinahely.  The team go on a tour of Coollattin Estate and House and visit a restored estate cottage.  The programme also features an exploration of the history of The Shillelagh Stick and a demonstration of it being made.

 

 

Friday 18th January, 7.00pm, RTÉ One.

Nationwide looks back on an ambush in County Tipperary that is often seen as the first engagement of the War of Independence.  Soloheadbeg is a village located in the South West of Tipperary on the County Limerick border.  On the 21st of January 1919, RIC officers who were transporting explosives were ambushed by Irish Volunteers. Two of  the police officers were killed and the explosives were seized.  Nationwide looks  back at the events leading up to this ambush and what followed.

Also on the programme, a look at ‘One Hundred Men Who Give a Damn’ –  a group of businessmen who come together four times a year to donate money to local charities.  Nationwide goes along to the Galway chapter to hear the individual pitches from three local charities looking for much needed funding.