Former TD to give history talk at Tallafest
By Aideen O'Flaherty
LOCAL historian and former TD Eamonn Maloney will be giving a history talk at Tallafest, highlighting the life of the colourful former Tallaght publican Mick McCarthy, whose legendary Embankment pub brought a host of Irish traditional music greats to the area.
Eamonn’s talk, entitled ‘Remembering Mick McCarthy: Tallaght’s favourite Kerryman, who made The Embankment the Home of the Ballad’, focuses on the man who brought famed trad musicians and singers like The Dubliners, Clannad and Luke Kelly to a pub on the edge of Tallaght, that enraptured the local community and had a dedicated audience who went to the pub week after week.
A talk will be highlighting the life of colourful former Tallaght publican Mick McCarthy
Mick, who died in 2004 when he was 86-years-old, came to Tallaght in the mid-60s and bought a small pub on the Blessington Road called The Embankment, which gave him ample opportunity to indulge in his passion for music and theatre by playing host to a variety of performers.
Eamonn told The Echo: “Mick turned the pub into what some people have described as being ‘a mecca of trad and folk music’.
“I only knew Mick for a short while but he was very interesting, intelligent and cultured.
“The people of Tallaght sort of adopted him, and he was privately very generous to people within the community.”
Mick sold The Embankment, which is now a derelict site, in the 1980s and then ran a pub in the city centre for several years.
Eamonn’s talk will give an enriching insight into Mick’s storied life, which was recorded in the publican’s autobiography which was written in two volumes, and will delve more deeply into the impact The Embankment had on the community of Tallaght.
Tallafest will be held in Tallaght Village on Saturday, June 30, and Eamonn’s talk will be held in St Maelruain’s Church at 2pm.
