It would be 'a scandal' if there are no Christmas lights in Clonmel's town centre

It would be “a scandal” if there are no Christmas lights in Clonmel’s town centre this year, a local politician has stated.
Cllr Richie Molloy told a meeting of Clonmel Borough District that his gut reaction was that the county council is responsible for providing the festive season lights, in the same way it funded the library service and tourist office.
There were certain initiatives in which the council, along with the Chamber of Commerce, had to be the leaders.
He said that a lot of the bigger chain stores in the town weren’t interested in making a contribution towards the cost of the lights.
Instead it was the local business owners who were putting the money into the provision of the lights every year, and they went up and down O’Connell Street and Gladstone Street collecting small sums of money from other businesses.
If the council wasn’t responsible for the lights who would do it, Cllr Molloy asked.
District Manager Sinead Carr said the difficulty with Clonmel’s Christmas lights was that there were three to four business people who were doing it all on their own and trying to collect contributions from a small portion of the town’s other businesses.
This core group was carrying a lot of “the grief” themselves and the rest of the traders weren’t making a significant contribution.
The traders who were organising the lights for decades needed a hand at this stage.
Ms Carr said that the council worked in a collaborative manner with all community groups, be they the traders, heritage groups or Tidy Towns.
However it wasn’t down to the council to do everything in relation to the lights and it wouldn’t be providing 100 per cent funding.
The council wouldn’t be found wanting if a proper structure was put in place and if there were additional fundraising initiatives.
In recent years the council had covered the vast majority of the capital costs for the lights and had also made a very significant contribution to their operational costs.
Sinead Carr said that some of the costs for the lights were “extraordinary”.
The lights had been initiated by the traders as a thank you gesture to the people of the town for their support throughout the year.
District Administrator Carol Creighton said she had been in touch with the traders and they were to come back with further costings.
The council wouldn’t be able to fund the amount of money sought by the traders but would support any fundraising ventures and initiatives. She was aware that in order to make savings, other districts were planning to have the lights switched on nearer Christmas, and to have them switched off at midnight each night.

Cllr John FitzGerald said that the people who had spearheaded the organisation of the lights on the various streets had all but thrown in the towel because of the escalating costs.
The lights benefitted the entire population and the traders were already contributing substantially to the running costs of the town through the payment of rates.
Cllr FitzGerald said the question of the Christmas lights had become bigger than the traders, and they couldn’t leave it to them to try and run their businesses while collecting money from their colleagues. 
They were talking about the celebration of the biggest Christian festival, and it wasn’t the same as the council helping out other festivals in the town.
He agreed with Carol Creighton that they had to be operated as economically as possible, and everything that Sinead Carr had stated made sense.
Cllr Siobhán Ambrose said that a lot of the larger companies in Clonmel could come on board and support the provision of the lights for a nominal amount.