Ray,
Thanks for the help with this. You were right the memo field value could only be passed once and due to the fact that I was using a text field above my iRite box to display the contents of the memo field, the iRite box wasn't able to display the value.
Although I've no need to change the cursor type for my web app I believe that if you change it to adOpenDynamic then you can display the contents of a memo field more than once in a page. Thought this may help other people.