Letterkenny Shines at Entente Florale
October 4th, 2008A quick note to highlight a major recent achievement for Letterkenny - the town has been awarded a Gold Medal at the Entente Florale awards - a Europe-wide competition similar to the Tidy Towns. Letterkenny was Ireland’s representative, following our success as last year’s winner of Ireland’s Tidiest Large Urban Centre at the Tidy Town awards.
Letterkenny was only notified around February that we were to be the representative this year, which meant an awful lot of work had to be undertaken in a very short time. This seems to have worked out well; there was no time for long-term plans, it was a case of “all hands on deck” to get things sorted. The Tidy Towns committee (under Chairman Jim McCormick and Denis Doyle), the Town Council and various groups throughout the town spent six months working on a wide variety of projects, all of which will have a long term impact for the town.
We had hoped that this would also help with the Tidy Towns competition, giving Letterkenny the three points we’d need to win not just our category, but also the overall national award. It didn’t happen like that; we were one point behind Ennis in the Category, and four points behind Westport overall (out of 400 points). I’m immensely proud of the achievement - getting within one percent of Ireland’s tidiest town, and beating them in key categories like planting - but still hugely disappointed. We’ve still got lots of work to do, and will continue the massive investments of time, money and resources that have seen Letterkenny come from a non-runner to a Tidy Towns Gold winner 8 years in a row. The report from the Tidy Towns judges have outlined what we need to work on, including street signage, unfinished developments and (of course) the Mart site. The council is now acquiring the Mart site, and it will be gone by next year’s judging. When we’re talking about the importance of single points, this will hopefully give us the boost to put Letterkenny over the line.
Cllr. Victor Fisher, Mayor of Letterkenny with Jim McCormick, Chairman of Letterkenny Tidy Towns Committee
I’d like to pay tribute to everyone involved in both the Tidy Towns and the Entente Florale committees. They are too many to mention all, but I really saw first hand this year the massive amount of effort that Jim McCormick and his family, Denis Doyle and all those volunteers in the residents associations and Tidy Towns committee put in. I was also really impressed with the Town Council staff, from Town Clerk Paddy Doherty who put the funding and resources in place, to Litter Warden John McCandless, Town Foreman John Buchanan and all the team who put in a lot of early mornings, late nights and long days in the run up to the campaign. That work continues all year, and will be there for years to come.
Budgets may be tighter next year, but these kind of environmental programmes are vital to ensuring that Letterkenny is the best place to live that it can possibly be.