NEWS VOICES: Recap on Scranton's connection to Ballina

A version of this conversation aired during Morning Edition on WVIA Radio.

Scranton has a special connection to a particular town in Ireland - Ballina, County Mayo.

The connection grows stronger now that arts organizations on both sides of the pond are becoming intertwined. Scranton Fringe, a local performing arts organization that has hosted the festival for 10 years, announced a cultural exchange with an arts facility in Ballina.

The local group will present “Ulysses of Scranton” at the Ballina Arts Centre in October 2025, after its debut at the Scranton Fringe Festival earlier that month. Scranton will host a musical group to perform here in March 2026. The organizations hope the exchange will continue for years to come.

* Below is an extended version of the conversation.

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LYDIA: Good morning. You are tuned to WVIA Radio. I'm WVIA's Lydia McFarlane. This region has a large Irish population that is very proud of their heritage. Here to talk about it. More is WVIA's most Irish reporter, Haley O'Brien. Haley, welcome.

HALEY: Good morning, Lydia, thanks for having me and sláinte, as the Irish say. That is Gaelic for the word cheers.

LYDIA: Haley, you spent a few weeks digging into Scranton's relationship with a sister city in Ireland. Ballina. Can you tell us about how the two cities became linked? Or, as they say on a sign in Ballina, twinned?

HALEY: So it has long been known that a large number of people here in Scranton with Irish Heritage can actually trace their ancestry to this one town in County Mayo called Ballina ... a lot of people moved from Ireland after the famine in the late 1800s and they found work in this region in Northeast Pennsylvania, working in the mines or in the on the railroads.

In 1990 Jimmy Connors was mayor at the time. Unfortunately, he just passed away last year, but I did talk to his wife and some people from the Scranton Ballina Sister City Committee, and they typically invite people from Ballina to come march in our St. Patrick's Day Parade and vice versa. The City of Scranton, city officials, of course, get an invite to visit Ballina just about every year. Both cities were interested in creating this partnership after Mayor Jimmy Connors had traveled there with his family. He met the mayor of Ballina at the time, his name was Lord Mayor P.J. Downey. P.J. Downey also has passed away, but I talked to his daughter, but the connection remains strong in the next generation.

LYDIA: So in your reporting for this story, what did you learn about the city of Ballina, and are there any parallels to Scranton?

HALEY: It's funny, most people I talk to would say that the two places are similar, but on paper, they're very different. Ballina's population is about 10,000 people, and it's in the northwest of Ireland, a very countryside type area. Rural. Scranton is a city with a population of about 80,000. But, you know, a lot of people mentioned the cathedral in Ballina is similar to ... St Peter's Cathedral here. And we have a river running through the city, much like Ballina does.
But really it was all about the people. I interviewed a couple people from Scranton who had been to Ballina, and they say people in Ballina were turning their heads because they looked so familiar to them.
That was something that really stood out to me as they said that ... there's a similar sense of humor, but similar looks. You know, a fair Irish look, of course. But the fact that people are able to see people in Scranton and connect them, not only to say that they're Irish, but say 'I think I know what part of Ireland your family comes from', that's pretty fascinating.
So it was really fun to just hear stories about people who have traveled over there over the years, and how they've been able to connect with their families, and how they've been ... welcomed with open arms.
Commissioner Bill Gaughan, is the commissioner here in Lackawanna County. He said that Ballina is connected with its history the same way Scranton is. People in Ballina know Scranton, is what I've been told. And so hopefully this story will help more people in Scranton know about Ballina.

LYDIA: So Haley, as we mentioned before, you are Irish. Do you think that reporting on this story helped you connect to your Irish roots?

HALEY: My upbringing was interesting because my family is from Tipperary in central Ireland, and so I didn't really hear about Mayo. I've been to Ireland. I haven't been to County Mayo yet, although Ballina is on my list for the next time I'm over there. So it was interesting, because my upbringing was to learn about Ireland in general and where my family is from, and I didn't even know about this special connection that the City of Scranton had, because it's just not where my family's from.

LYDIA: Lastly, to wrap this up, I know that you found that Scranton Fringe plays a role in this relationship between the twin cities. So can you talk a little bit about, you know, what Scranton Fringe's role is in all of this?

HALEY: Scranton Fringe made an announcement early this year that they will be traveling to Ireland in October of 2025. So the way it started was Conor Kelly O'Brien. He's the co-founder and the executive director of Scranton Fringe. They host a festival, an arts festival, ever fall here in Scranton. By the way, I'm not related to him. But anyway, Conor had personally reached out to the County Mayo and and the Ballina Arts Center and they were interested in creating a cultural exchange. A group from Ballina will come over here and perform in ... March of 2026. It's an interesting way for an American theater company to bring a piece of work overseas and how it translates to a different audience and vice versa.

LYDIA: Thank you so much, Haley, for your time and for sharing your wealth of knowledge about Ballina, Scranton's sister city. To celebrate St. Patrick's Day you can read, watch and listen to Haley's full story on our website at wvia.org.

HALEY: Thanks for having me, Lydia.

READ MORE ON THE TWINNED CITIES: On the Fringe of Ireland: Cultural exchange to strengthen Scranton’s relationship with Irish sister city