Remembering Anco

Michael Fitzgerald had only ever wanted to be an engineer, and succeeded in that role with a leading company in Wales in the 1950s and with Bord na Mona in the Irish midlands in the 1960s. However the real success in his life came when Athlone became a base for his working and family life in the early 1970s, through his employment with Anco. Teaching, engineering and business was in his genes when he was growing up in the rural parish of Burnchurch in Kilkenny. His father was the principal in the national school; Michael went to school in Burnchurch, and then the future Athlone resident, studied with the Christian Brothers in St James Street, Kilkenny. Michael's mother was from Wales, and her family owned the Curran engineering works in Cardiff, which was made up of several factories which were very successful during the war years, employing 13,000 people, making tanks, armaments and mining equipment. Michael did his Leaving Cert in 1958, and did the Civil Service exams and Cadetship one, but he really only wanted to go to Wales, to serve his time as a fitter with his uncles in the family business. Michael met his future wife, Doreen, in Cardiff, and the couple married while in their early 20s. They met while at her sister's wedding where Michael was best man. He continued working for Curran Engineering, and had upskilled himself, by getting a first class Diploma in Engineering. "Doreen and I were looking at a future and my mother used to exchange letters with me, and wanted us to move to Ireland, and while I considered going to Australia, I went to Galway for an interview with an industrial company," he said. Michael worked for about three or four months in Galway in 1963, at the beginning of the development of industrial estates. "I was making good money there, and had my own car at the time, and in that short time I worked up to making £78 net per week," he said. However Michael was still only 23 years old, and wanted to move on, and headed to Bord na Mona to work as a fitter in Co. Meath. By this time, Doreen had come over to live in Ireland with Michael, and the couple never returned to live in Wales again. "We knew we were now settled in Ireland, and as a shift supervisor with Bord Na Mona, I made briquettes for the next four years, in Mount Lucas, near Daingean, Co. Offaly," he said. "At the time in the mid-1960's, I lived in Bord Na Mona houses in Rochfortbridge, but overall I owned a total of five houses, and rented six others that I lived in, throughout my working years in Ireland." Michael was one of eight engineering instructors appointed by Anco to be trained in the British government training centre in Feldon House, Belfast in April 1968. It was at this time that the new Irish training body, Anco, was set up, and Michael had been head-hunted by them, and became one of the people who built up the body in its early days. "I had considered at the time going to Waterford to live, because my father was still there teaching, and I did buy a house there, and lived there from 1968 to 72, and during that time I was promoted to Senior Instructor with Anco, over that time," he said. He was later made a manager of Anco, and continued to be based in Dublin. Michael was a work colleague of Rory Doyle - father of Booker Prize-winning author, Roddy Doyle. A network of Anco training centres were being built at the time, because the idea of training people for employment was taking hold in Ireland. Throughout the early 1970s, Anco never stopped expanding, and there was one building based beside Liberty Hall, Dublin, one in Cabra, and one beside Athlone Castle near the old Weirside Mill near the docks. From about 1972 onwards, Michael, who was now Project Manager for Anco, became semi-based in Athlone. He came down here for a few days every week, and stayed overnight in the Prince of Wales hotel, and went to work with Anco in the Weirside, and then drove back home to Dublin in the evening. "The Weirside mill was an ad hoc training centre, so from early on we were looking for a new training centre in Athlone, which would be purpose built, for the future," he said. Michael continued to divide his time between Dublin and Athlone throughout the early 1970s, up until he finally moved with his family to live in the midlands in 1977. Anco was planning seven more training centres, and had applied for £19 million, and Michael was responsible for supervising architects of the various new premises. He was also responsible for organising instructors, before the new training centre opened in Garrycastle in November 1978. The IDA had already a site there which had been bought for a company that never took up residence, and Michael figured that it would be an ideal place for a training centre. However Michael negotiated to have the funds secured, and he fought for Athlone to have the site over other midland areas. "I fought for it, because I regarded Athlone as the genuine centre of the midlands, because we are a transport hub here, and would be more so, over time, and it was a great achievement," he said. In the early 1970s, Anco was also aware of promising indications of offshore oil along the South East coast around Co. Wexford. "There were definitely oil resources there, and I was part of a four man working team, tasked with examining the manpower implications and job potential for Irish workers in offshore oil," he said. "The oil is there, but at this junction, the reserves that are there would not pay for themselves if brought ashore." Overall, Michael had 45 years public service, before his retirement in 2002 and today his hobbies include what he called, "The three Gs" - gardening, golf and grandchildren. "I play less and less golf now but I was a member of Hodson Bay golf club, and my father put a six iron in my hand and handed me four golf balls when I was young and asked me to go over and hit the green and today I am a member of the Gold Coast golf club in Dungarvan, which was the original golf club, where my father, a founding member, handed me a six iron and four golf balls," he said laughing. "One day the then captain of Athlone Golf Club walked into my office in Athlone and asked me had I joined the local golf club. When I told him, I hadn't, he signed me up." Michael was President of the Athlone Chamber of Commerce in the 1980s, and he was involved in the chamber for almost a decade. After Anco became FAS in the late 1980's, Michael was involved, through the company, in putting a new roof on the Athlone Boat Club, and with the building of the community centre in the Batteries, and he was on the board of the Athlone Community Taskforce (ACT). Michael was instrumental in setting up St Jude's Training Centre, which was later signed over to the VEC. In the mid-1980s, Michael oversaw the mammoth project that involved the cleaning up of the old Abbey Graveyard, and converting it into a park and combining it with genealogical research and the history of the graveyard. He was Chairperson of Parents Committee in the Marist College, in Centenary year, 1984, and was a Chairperson of the Athlone St. Patrick's Day Committee, for about five years, and was Chairperson of the three major Athlone festivals in the early 1990s. Michael and Doreen are the only married couple in the Athlone Choral Group, and he is now 11 years a bass singer with the group and nearly a decade with St. Anthony's Friary choir. Today, Michael and Doreen continue to live in their adopted town of Athlone, and have five grown up children, Jane, Louise, Eoin, Michael and Niall.