Trim's Swift Festival scaled back due to funds shortfall

Trim’s Swift Satire Festival, which will take place over the weekend of 12th-13th July, has been forced to scale back its programme of events due to a shortage of funding.
This year’s festival, the seventh, will take place over two days, Saturday and Sunday, rather than the four days, Thursday to Sunday, of previous years.
“Despite our best efforts,” said a festival spokesperson, “we simply couldn’t raise the funding to continue with events such as the very popular comedy day and political satire night. But with vital sponsorship received from Meath County Council, we are able to continue with most of the core events of the festival.”
The centrepiece of this year’s festival will be Sunday’s Bite of Satire lunch, which will feature The Swift Lecture – delivered last year by President Michael D Higgins – as well as a professional one-man show on the satirist Flann O’Brien. The organisers are in the final stages of negotiations with the person delivering this year’s lecture and will be in a position to release the name shortly.
The festival celebrates the life and works of the writer Jonathan Swift, who has strong links with Trim and lived just outside the town at Laracor, where he was Church of Ireland vicar to a small congregation.