Ballinahown named as Ireland’s Tidiest Village
The community of Ballinahown, Co. Westmeath, is today celebrating being named as Ireland’s Tidiest Village at this year’s SuperValu TidyTowns competition.
The village also picked up the Midlands & East Regional Award, retained its gold medal, which it won for the first time last year, and has once again been named as the Westmeath County winner.
Ballinahown was Highly Commended in the Water & Communities Award category.
Ballinahown Community Development, the community group behind the village’s entry into the TidyTowns competition, was well represented at the awards ceremony in Dublin today.
Chairperson of Ballinahown Community Development, Helen Conneely, said: “We are thrilled with today’s results. It is an honour for us to be named as Ireland’s Tidiest Village and to receive this award on behalf of the community. It is the culmination of over three decades of work and we are delighted that the efforts of our community have been recognised at a national level.”
“We have tremendous CE workers in the village at the moment, a hardworking committee and an army of volunteers – both young and old. During those 30 years the huge number of projects were completed with the support of earlier committee members and Trojan work from RSS, Tus and CE schemes. We have had the best local people working on the schemes and on the committee and we wouldn’t be here without them or our funders. They include Westmeath County Council, Westmeath Community Development and Offaly Local Development, in the main,” she added.
“Fundraising within our community – with support from all – ensured we kept our vision for a sustainable village that worked for all clearly in our sights. Our school children have been our best supporters, as have the teachers in our national school down through the years.
“The achievement of the gold medal in Entente Florale this year and today’s result highlight all this work. We look forward to meeting all the previous and present community people at our celebration on November 15th,” added Helen Conneely, referring to an event planned to mark the many achievements of the community.
Vice-chairperson of Ballinahown Community Development, Cllr John Dolan, said it has been a fantastic year for Ballinahown and joked that after today’s win the village will need to install a trophy cabinet!
“It is just fabulous to be named as Ireland’s Tidiest Village 2024. We’ve had a great year, winning gold at Entente Florale Europe and being named Club of the Year at the Westmeath Independent Sports and Community Awards, where we picked up the Overall Community Award also,” he said.
“This hasn’t happened overnight and we’ve had a lot of support over the years. We’ve always had great help from Westmeath County Council and they really pulled out all the stops this year to ensure we were ready for Entente Florale and it paid off,” added Cllr Dolan.
He also thanked the CE workers, past and present, and all of the volunteers and local businesses for their support down through the years.
“Today’s success is the result of a real community effort and we will be celebrating that with a community event in Ballinahown Hall on November 15th. We are hoping the whole community will join us to celebrate and we know many of our past CE workers will be in attendance and we are thrilled that so many can make it to the event,” he concluded.
The community celebration will be held in Ballinahown Hall on Friday, November 15th, from 7-10pm.