Letterkenny Cathedral Quarter: Looking ahead to the presidential election

With every election, whether it is local, national or European, our committee sends out an invitation to all the candidates, regardless of their political beliefs, to come and visit the Cathedral Quarter.

This is done to raise awareness of our project, inform them of the challenges we face, and ask if they plan to assist us in achieving our goals.

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With the Irish Presidential Election happening next month, we have invited the different candidates whom we know who is going to be on the ballot paper. There are only three candidates – the Independent Galway Deputy, Catherine Connolly, Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys and the former Dublin GAA manager, Jim Galvin, representing Fianna Fail.

Catherine Connolly has accepted our offer of a visit, and our committee had a brief meeting with the Left Unity candidate, during which he raised the biggest obstacles facing our organisation. We are fully aware that the President has limited powers, but we were glad that Deputy Connolly promised to revisit our Cathedral Quarter if elected to the highest office in the land. I was also impressed that in an interview with Greg Hughes of Highland Radio, Mrs Connolly stated that community groups have identified the problems and they know the solutions.

Quills and the Quarter
We are delighted to announce that the second series of the podcast Quills and the Quarter with Philip O’Kennedy, which accompanies our Literary Festival, drops today. A new development for the podcast is that Philip is joined by co-presenters Denise Blake and Phil Dalton for different episodes.

This is the tenth anniversary of our Literary Festival and runs from Thursday, 16th October to Sunday, 19th October. The guests for this year’s podcasts include Maura Logue, Celine McGlynn, Frank Galligan, Kieran Kelly and Kathy Donaghy. We are extremely grateful to O’Gorman Cunningham & Co Solicitors LLP, Letterkenny Credit Union and the Kernan Retail Group for continuing to sponsor episodes of the podcast this year.

Meanwhile, we are in the process of dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s for the festival and we will be ramping up the publicity surrounding the different events from here on. It isn’t easy putting on a festival, especially as we are only a small committee and our resources are very limited.

High Praise
As many people know, Donegal Tourism got a massive boost recently with the Travel Bloggers Exchange (TBEX) hosting their European Conference at the ATU Donegal. For our part, the Elusive Theatre hosted the Cathedral Quarter Experience in association with Letterkenny CDP as TBEX Extra event.

A number of the bloggers went on the experience and we were absolutely thrilled with their response. Leslie Walker, who was one of the main organisers of the conference and is the TBEX Marketing and Social Media manager, thoroughly enjoyed the Experience.

Leslie wrote on her own personal LinkedIn page:
“Just back from a week in Ireland exploring centuries-old heritage and promoting tourism through TBEX; a reminder that even in places where tourism has been thriving for hundreds of years, innovation never stops.

If you ever feel like you’ve “done it all” in tourism, remember: there are always untold stories waiting to be shared and fresh audiences eager to be inspired.

Leslie added: “My favourite little discovery was the Cathedral Quarter Project Letterkenny. It’s a local volunteer group looking to revitalise the historic core of Letterkenny.

You can see their walking tour in some of these pics where they talk about the layered history of past residents and highlight their responsibility for taking care of the historic area while it’s in their hands.”

We are absolutely thrilled with Leslie’s ringing endorsement. But it does leave you scratching your head, if the professionals can see what we are doing and what we want to achieve, why the hell does the Government make it so bloody difficult for us to accomplish our aims?