IT is the only Clare town to have elected a Sinn Féin councillor in a generation, but it seems that Shannon also has a huge interest in the House of Windsor.
With Prince Harry in the news this week due to the release of his memoir Spare, search engine specialists Digital Funnel examined Google Search data from around the Republic of Ireland, to find out where was Ireland’s most Royal obsessed town over the past year.
According to their research Shannon was in tenth place for royal searches, scoring particularly high in terms of searches for Prince Philip.
Ennis showed a little bit less interest in British royalty, finishing 13 places behind Shannon. It did score particularly high in searches for the Queen, well ahead of Shannon in that category.
The results are weighted to take account of populations in the various towns around Ireland.
JJ Lee of digitalfunnel.ie said they were a little surprising.
“The first thing is having a town in Cork, the Rebel County, at number one. I’m surprised that there is so much Munster representation.
“In the top five you have Mallow and Carrick-on-Suir, Cork and Tipperary, and it might have been expected to be more around Dublin and the east of the country.”
Galway was the county with least royal interest, with Kildare having the most.
The list of top ten royal obsessed towns in Ireland is
1 Mallow, Co. Cork; 2. Portlaoise, Co. Laois; 3. Clonroche, Co. Wexford; 4. Carrick-On-Suir, Co. Tipperary; 5. Navan, Co. Meath; 6. Tullamore, Co. Offaly; 7. Carrigaline, Co. Cork; 8. Greystones, Co. Wicklow; 9. Kildare Town, Co. Kildare; 10. Shannon, Co. Clare.
Owen Ryan has been a journalist with the Clare Champion since 2007, having previously worked with a number of other publications in Limerick, Cork and Galway. His first book will be published in December 2024.