Town pushed hard to achieve development hub status

CAVAN TD Brendan Smith was always confident his home town would be named as one of the development hubs, despite the announcement being greeted by a certain amount of surprise.

The Fianna Fáil deputy said: “We always put forward a strong case. We pushed it very hard, along with the local authority.”

That case centres on Cavan being a crossroads between Dublin and Donegal and the two gateway towns of Sligo and Dundalk.