WHAT is it about Mayo that attracts royalty? Whatever it is, the county briefly became a focal point for an aristocratic presence when Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, made his first visit to the Republic last year. He went fishing at Delphi Lodge in the Doolough Valley and even though he caught nothing, found himself entranced by some of the loveliest scenery in the world.
Then last week the younger brother, Prince Edward, appeared in Castlebar for a couple of hours to chat with a group of Mayo boys and girls who had taken part in the high achievement Gaisce award programmes.
The prince was chaperoned throughout the visit by the Minister for Tourism, Enda Kenny, himself a Castlebar man, who took justifiable pride in the venue for the occasion. This was the Castlebar Regional Technical College campus, an extension of the long established Galway RTC.
Dr Richard Thorn, the head of the Castlebar RTC (which opened only in 1994), has described it as perhaps the most graceful and striking of any of the RTC campuses in the State, and there's little doubt that he's absolutely right.
Enda Kenny tells me that some £3 million has been spent on refurbishing the cutstone Victorian building which was part of St Mary's psychiatric hospital the services of which are gradually being phased out into a community centred system for treating the mentally ill.
Eventually, the entire hospital will be given over to the academic pursuits of Castlebar's new RTC, and the additional space will be needed as the college continues to grow.
There are now some 200 students enrolled at Castlebar and the numbers are expected to grow to 400 or 500 in the next couple of years. Student enrolment may reach the 1,000 mark by the end of the century - by which time Castlebar RTC may have become independent of its Galway big brother.
The campaign to have an RTC established in Castlebar went on for more than 20 years and its success was in no small measure due to the energy and efforts of local businessman, Mr Paddy McGuinness. More than anything, it was Mr McGuinness's decision to run independently on the college issue in the 1994 Mayo West by election that caused the government finally to approve the Castlebar RTC.
If nearby Kiltimagh realises its ambitious plan to set up a music college for the west, the Castlebar campus could become part of that enterprise and a full music faculty might emerge. As mentioned here before, the Ulster School of Music is encouraging the Kiltimagh initiative, for which £450,000 is being sought from the Minister for Arts and Culture, Michael D. Higgins, under the EU's operational programme for tourism.