Louise Manifold
Phantom

Tense conversations continue about what forms of infrastructure should get built in Ireland. How about more motorways? Fix up the trains perhaps? Get an electric car? Varied opinion abounds on these subjects, and the decisions to be made will shape life for generations to come.

There are, of course, ghosts and anomalies in all of those machines. Not everything runs to schedule. Many consider Italian-Irish entrepreneur Charles Bianconi’s early nineteenth century network of horse drawn coaches as Ireland’s first regular public transport system. Made in 2009, Louise Manifold’s Phantom, dramatically revives accounts of spectral or phantom coaches, said to have haunted the old roads of Limerick, featuring Askeaton man Michael McCarthy and stories handed down to him through the generations.