Word: drogheda
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...large shopping mall that opened in Drogheda four years ago at the height of Ireland's economic boom, Aaron Hodgins' menswear store is completely empty. The 34-year-old manager recently laid off two staff members and is worried he may lose his own job soon if sales don't pick up. He'll be voting no for the second time on Oct. 2. "There are too many countries [in the E.U.] now, and we'd just be sucked into it. Ireland won't have a voice in Europe and we'll be right down the pecking order," he says...
Seamus Daly has stiff competition on his hands. In the front window of his small wine store on the main road from Drogheda to Dublin are blackboards with handwritten messages extolling the virtues of his rosés and reds. But passing motorists can barely see them with all the brightly colored posters and banners crowding them on either side. "Ireland Needs Europe," reads one. "Lisbon = Lower Wages," warns another...
Others in Drogheda believe that a more fully integrated E.U. can only help stem Ireland's economic malaise. The unemployment rate sits at over 11% - more than twice the figure at this time last year - and is expected to reach 15% by 2010. In addition, the country's Central Statistics Office said last week that more people are leaving Ireland than arriving for the first time in 14 years...
...Europe has been very good to Ireland," says Daly, the wine-store owner, who says he'll vote yes for a second time this week. Daly supplies wines to Drogheda's hotels and restaurants and says business has been "very tough" in the past year. "People may be unhappy with the government, but to punish them in the Lisbon vote would be the wrong thing to do. Being a member of the euro [currency zone] is what's got us through the crisis so far. I can't see Ireland surviving alone." (See 10 things you didn't know about...
...scraped patches off his own Titian and Rubens, and was known to have destroyed a Watteau, in search of the "secrets" of the old masters. But his own paintings cooked themselves down to blistered wrecks, sometimes within the lifetime of the sitters. An elderly Irish rake, the Earl of Drogheda, returned to his native land after 30 years abroad, with a shattered constitution. He found that his youthful portrait by Reynolds was even more poxed, corrupt and wrinkled than he had become. One might say it is to Joshua Reynolds, rather than Oscar Wilde, that / the portrait of Dorian Gray...