Buncrana Tidy Towns delighted with top spot in Donegal
Buncrana Tidy Towns Initiative and its supporters are this week celebrating becoming Donegal's tidiest town following the results announced at last Friday's national SuperValu Tidy Towns competition award ceremony at the RDS in Dublin.
The committee secured an impressive 357 points to secure a county first spot, a gold medal and winner of the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan in a large town category.
In doing so the committee has moved up the rankings to seventh in the North West and West regional table that includes counties Cavan, Leitrim, Monaghan, Sligo, Galway, Mayo and only six points off the top town in this category, Keadue, Roscommon.
This success also puts them ahead of former winners, Letterkenny who scored 355 points on this occasion and Carrigart who scored an impressive 352. Other notable scores went to Glenties (351), Raphoe (347) and Moville (346). Gola Island on (309) picked up an Endeavour Award.
Other Donegal winners were Dungloe who picked up the youth prize in the Sustainable Development Goals award category and Castlefinn were a special award winner, sponsored by Bat Conservation Ireland.
Over 750 TidyTowns volunteers were present at the SuperValu TidyTowns awards ceremony in Dublin. Trim, Co Meath, was named Ireland’s Tidiest Large Town for 2022, an award previously won by Donegal towns Glenties - in 1958, 1959, 1960, 1962 and 1995 - Malin in 1970 and 1991 and Letterkenny in 2015.
Chairman of the Buncrana Tidy Towns committee William McKinney said they are “over the moon” at last Friday's results. He was joined for the occasion by committee members Cllr Rena Donaghey, Simba Garwe and Seamus McLaughlin.
“We had great points and not before time. We have gone up from 342 to 357, 15 points. We were four behind Letterkenny going into the competition from last year so we're two ahead of them now, that's a six-point swing. They got plus nine and we got plus 15.”
He agreed a lot of hard work went in over the past 12 months to reach this new level and praised everyone who came out to help in different ways.
“We think the adjudicators came on July 8 this year but we did a lot of work after that. I think they only visited towns once this year due to a shortage of adjudicators but at least it bodes well for next year.”
He added they had a core committee of 15 but were able to delegate different tasks around the town to groups and schools.
He praised Denise Dowds from Scoil Mhuire for inspiring pupils and added the mural on the pier wall certainly brightened up that area of the town this year.
Mr McKinney added that a measure of the success this year was the fact they scored in all eight categories. Some of the toughest were in areas like sustainability but the hard work paid off.
“Getting the county award for the first time was great but we have to keep up the momentum for 2023,” he added.
The success was also welcomed by Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine and Donegal TD Charlie McConalogue.
“Tidy Towns is a tremendous initiative and amplifies the sense of community in our towns and villages,” he said.
“Huge congratulations to all Donegal winners including Buncrana which was crowned as Donegal's tidiest town and winner of the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan in a large town category and to Castlefin for claiming the Bat Conservation Ireland Award.
Congrats to all groups that received funding today too, Donegal received one of the highest allocations and this is a testament to the hard work and dedication of all our volunteers. A special thanks to SuperValu for its ongoing support of the initiative."
Donegal is one of the highest-funded counties under a special allocation of €1.4 million nationally in funding to support the work of individual Tidy Towns groups. The funding of over €60,000 for Donegal will assist Donegal groups in their continued efforts to enhance their towns and villages. This is the sixth consecutive year that funding has been provided.
The next Tidy Towns committee meeting takes place next Tuesday, November 8 in The Exchange at 7pm.