West Longford town has many false dawns littered with false promises

Back in the first August edition of the Mayo weekly paper The Western People, Edwin McGreal wrote a very thought provoking article ‘We're sleepwalking into rural decimation’.

Another article on similar lines “We’re sleepwalking into something that is going to be catastrophic” by P.J. Browne appeared in the Irish Examiner. The latter, specifically describing the problems facing GAA clubs with rural depopulation.
The articles resonated with me and brought me back to Lanesboro and Ballyleague that has been the fulcrum for workers since the early 1950’s.

Not only did it make our community richer financially and educationally, it also widened our culture with so many people from so many counties and indeed countries coming to work here. We were the true cosmopolitan community. We benefited greatly from all that the new people brought to us but it spread further afield into other communities.

Joe O'Brien

ESB and Bord na Móna brought a richness of people, cultures and finance to the entire area and many a business and family to this very day have both companies to thank for the creation of work, education and a way of life that gave so much to Lanesboro/Ballyleague and beyond. The arrivals added to our own cohort of local people working in both companies and created lasting memories.

Gratitude is something that has always been bestowed on both companies for the great generations of people that we have benefitted so greatly from their arrival.
Now that we are in a different time zone with ESB gone and Bord na Móna only a dying ember, we are noticing a tremendous downturn in our community and in particular the richness of our now departing youth.

We are very quickly becoming an old community left with nothing but memories of times past. We have nothing to bestow on our youth; hence we are seeing the brain drain of our youth gathering pace at an alarming rate and depriving us of the next generation of bright and vibrant young people living and working locally.

For our sporting clubs we are beginning to see numbers declining at an alarming rate. A prime example is that neither of our two football clubs Rathcline or St Faithleach’s on either side of the bridge can put our their own individual team in almost every one of the underage competitions hence our youngsters have to go and amalgamate together or with other clubs.
As we all know you can get lots of support from the Just Transition for Feasibility Studies, you can get Government funding for infrastructure development at clubs and playgrounds and we have seen all those developments.

In recent days I was told of an exciting Feasibility Study being proposed but it cannot happen as the funding from Just Transition leaves a major shortfall to a small group trying (as it seems in vain) to create a new, creative and better way forward.
The Just Transition was set up by the Government with the specific purpose ‘The funding programme in Ireland will support the areas in the wider Midlands where communities have been negatively affected by the closure of peat production and peat-fired energy generation facilities’. This ambition is where they are failing our community miserably.

At the opening of the Access for All facility the Just Transition Commissioner, Kieran Mulvey, made an appeal that all Feasibility Studies be funded to 100% so that those excellent proposals can see the light of day. This proposal was made in the presence of the then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and unfortunately to this day it has fallen deaf ears and his party is still a part of Government.

We have seen absolutely no development for the creation of jobs or tourism projects that for a long time we have been told were coming. This community has seen many false dawns littered with false promises and unfortunately the trend is continuing to create blight on our community.

We have a creative and bright and intelligent community that continues to make enlightened proposals to improve our community, only recently John Hanley completed his Feasibility Study and he published a wonderful inspired proposal for the community.

Unless we see Government and Council support for hugely worthwhile proposals we are going to be led into rural catastrophic decimation for what was once an attractive, vibrant and energetic employment hub.

With three parties in Government we are being seriously let down by each of them individually and as a collective.
No doubt with the General Election just around the corner we will once again be promised the sun, moon and stars but we now know we cannot believe not trust them as it will be the same old story as was promised at the last election.
Imaginative and creative politicians are a rare thing and we really do need one.