Racing punters who like to bet on coincidences may find it hard to ignore a horse called Goodly News in the 3 o'clock at Galway today.
The Jim Bolger-trained runner has a reasonable chance, according to his owner, Arklow-based independent councillor Nicky Kelly. And in the week in which Arklow learned of the announcement of 880 new jobs in a joint US-Irish credit card processing operation, Goodly News could hardly be better named.
Long in the economic doldrums, Arklow is again very much on the move, says Cllr Kelly, who recalls its fall from grace during the 1970s, 80s and early 90s.
"When I left here in the early 70s, Arklow was one of the most affluent towns in rural Ireland. But when I moved back 20 years later, it was a very depressed place, lacking in any community spirit or self-esteem."
Now, with the Euroconnex project coming on top of the announcement earlier this year by Mercury Holdings subject to planning permission, of a separate technology and business park promising 6,000 jobs over a five-year period, Kelly believes Arklow is close to achieving regional "hub" status in the Government's plans.
Town clerk, Sean Quirke, details the long list of closures which made Arklow a blot on the east coast in the recent past.
The decline of employment at the IFI fertiliser plant, from more than 1,200 jobs to under 200; the closure of the Noritake porcelain factory; of Arklow Pottery, Tyrells' shipyard and Brennan's Bakery; the closure also of the Armitage Shanks plant, albeit subsequently transformed by workers to become the major success story of Qualceram.
"With a very few exceptions, all the employment news of recent years has been bad," he says. The credit card operation is a dramatic breakthrough, but it also confirms a shift away from Arklow's traditional manufacturing base. The IDA park to be occupied by Euroconnex was originally envisaged for industrial use; now it will probably become a business park.
Either way, it's good news. "This is now the park's anchor client, and we would expect others to follow. Also, when you take into account the multiplier effect for businesses servicing the Euroconnex operation, the 880 jobs is only the start of the employment."
As it is, Arklow alone cannot fill the 880 jobs, but Tommy Hickson, president of the local Chamber of Commerce, predicts many people in the population centres of north Wicklow will now opt to reverse the direction of their daily commute.
"People from Bray and Greystones can get to Arklow a lot easier than Dublin, and have somewhere to park and no blood pressure problems when they arrive. And then there's the availability of housing - 1,200 units being built in the next year to 18 months. Expensive enough, but nothing like Dublin."
Michael Murray, who runs Christy's Pub on the town's Main Street, looks forward now to the return of some of his thirty-something contemporaries, who left in droves during the 1980s.
"All of my schoolmates emigrated. A lot of them came back to Ireland since but they're in Dublin mostly. This should stem the tide of people leaving and indeed turn it around."
The Euroconnex development is also justification of his own investment in the family business. "The town was seriously in the doldrums for 10 to 14 years. I saw the bad times and I hung on for the good times. Hopefully they're here now."