Rose of Tralee: Long running Kerry festival has made a few changes
The launch of ‘Féile Trá Lí’ last month. Picture: Domnick Walsh
As the summer draws to a close, heralding the return to school and before it the annual tradition of the Rose of Tralee competition, punters may notice one of the Kingdom’s longest-running festivals has made a few changes.
When the Rose of Tralee returned after the covid-19 hiatus of 2020 and 2021, in 2022 it had moved its main televised event from the custom-built Dome into Kerry Sports Academy at Munster Technological University (MTU).
This year, gone too is the Rose Ball, the evening event attended by Roses in their finery alongside their Rose Escorts.
And what had been the five-day extravaganza of the Rose of Tralee Festival has now become Féile Thrá Lí, taking place from August 18-22, which is being run, and partly financed, by Kerry County Council.
But the message from organisers is that a Rose of Tralee by any other name is just as sweet.
Annual favourites such as the Rose parades, including Tuesday’s “Midnight Madness” parade, fireworks, street performances and children’s entertainments are all still on the cards, and organisers are expecting a crowd of up to 15,000 at the Midnight Madness parade, and the street festivities are still being organised by the same crew they always were.
The only difference, this year, is in how it is being funded, Féile Thrá Lí organiser Bryan Carr tells the .
Mr Carr worked for the Rose of Tralee festival from 2007 and his company, Shannonstar entertainment, is partnering with Kerry County Council to present and run the festival for the first time this year.
“Coming back from covid last year was a struggle financially and I think the Rose of Tralee just felt it was no longer sustainable to run all the tours and everything that they have to do and also run the festival,” Mr Carr said.
“There was a meeting with Kerry County Council and Tralee Chamber Alliance and Tralee Vintners and other organisations, and they came together to produce this festival.”
While many of the offerings are the same as in previous years, there is an emphasis in the programme of Féile Thrá Lí on wellness events, including morning yoga and sound baths that Mr Carr says is a part of a move towards a more general arts festival.
“I suppose the remit of Kerry County Council was to start looking at more of an arts festival and, even though there have always been family friendly events, to move away from the late nights and introduce more yoga and wellness events, not only locals but for all the tourists that will be in Tralee and all the Roses and their families,” he says.
“We also have a new Irish Zone with a large Marquee in the town centre where all the activities are as Gaeilge. Tralee is a satellite town for the Gaeltacht so we’re running a whole bunch of events in Irish and we’re really excited about that too.”
In previous years, the Rose of Tralee festival has drawn in more than 200,000 visitors over the course of the event. Mr Carr is hoping for a good turnout this year, and the festival team of 70 volunteers and 16 staff are geared up for a busy week.
“There’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes and a lot of it is the same team of people who have been doing it for years,” he said.
“With Féile Thrá Lí it’s just a slightly newer version, a summer festival in Tralee to coincide with the Rose of Tralee and support each other.”
Chief executive of the Rose of Tralee competition Anthony O’Gara has been on tour with the 32 international Roses this week, visiting Wexford, Kildare, Longford and Limerick before arriving in Tralee on Friday.
“We have 32 Roses who are into their fourth day on tour and they are having the best time,” Mr O’Gara said.
“The whole point of the tour, in a sense, is for them to get to know each other, but because of social media they already know each other and they are having a great time.”
When Mr O’Gara discussed the decision to dispense with the Dome in local press last year, he said the decision had been made prior to covid to find an alternative location. He cited a cost of almost €250,000 creating “unsustainable pressure” for the festival.
He said MTU’s Kerry Sports Academy was a perfect pre-existing venue to host the competition and the annual Rose Ball.
When the news that the Rose Ball was being discontinued and that Kerry County Council was taking over the street festival was announced in May, a public statement on the website cited increasing costs and sponsorship that had not increased correspondingly.
But Mr O’Gara insisted the Rose of Tralee company is “very stable financially” and said Kerry County Council’s takeover of the street festival has been based on the organisation being overstretched in terms of organising capacity, instead of just on financial grounds.
“It’s just to rebalance the workload, really,” he said. “We spend seven days visiting different parts of the country with the Roses and the stress of organising a street festival at the same time is just a little bit difficult so we’ve been in discussions for the past year with council and the chamber and we eventually handed the streets programme over to them.”
“Nothing has changed about the street festival: we still have the parades and the fireworks and everything else but we’re handing the street festival over to the local business community and the local council and I think that’s a wonderful development.”
When the Rose of Tralee resumed after covid in 2022, the Dome was not the only change: the rules changed too. The age requirement for entrants was raised from 28 to 29, and married contestants and transgender contestants were also included.
The competition has increasingly faced commentary in both social media and the press questioning it as an outdated and potentially sexist idea, with bookies running betting odds on contestants, and with much social media reference to Father Ted’s “Lovely Girls” competition.
Has the whole concept of a Rose of Tralee competition just become a relic of a different era, alongside other competitions that see young women compete for a title based on their looks, personalities and talents?
Mr O’Gara responded vehemently to the notion. He pointed out the Rose of Tralee was not a beauty pageant and had always celebrated women rather than objectified them.
“The central theme of the Rose of Tralee has always been celebrating Irish communities around the worlds, from New Zealand to Canada to everywhere in between,” he said.
“We’re very proud to celebrate great women, real women, from their Irish communities all over the world. There’s nothing irrelevant about that now, any more than 20 years ago.
"The Rose of Tralee is very proud to celebrate the fact that it was scattered around the world long before it was fashionable to celebrate Irishness or Irish people. So it’s not a formula that particularly needs to be refreshed and updated in my opinion.”
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