At the Limerick Local Heroes town hall meeting on January 30th, Helen O’Donnell, the chairperson of the Limerick City Business Association spoke about her initiative of entering Limerick in to the Tidy Towns competition. Helen showed how the initiative was received with scepticism in the beginning, and how people’s attitude changed after that – yes, we could do that!

During the Ideas Summit in Thomond Park, Helen reiterated the idea at her table, but judging by the feedback that came from various other tables, the citizens of Limerick had already embraced the initiative, and Tidy Towns was pretty much on everybody’s mind.

On Wednesday this week, Helen O’Donnell called a meeting that brought together members of the Limerick City Business Association, several members of the Limerick Local Heroes initiative group and other interested parties.

Helen spoke about the origins of the idea, and how a few first steps had already happened: an outdated phone boot was taken away, a boarded facade got some new paint – with the support of Limerick City Council that is now supporting the initiative. Before anything else, a thorough street audit has to be done. Several participants volunteered to take a street around their premises or homes and templates were shared, but there’s still need for more people to work on this. If you are interested in helping, you can get in touch with Helen .

The plan is to start with the area between Patrick Street, the Shannon, the Crescent and Parnell Street for the first year. An action plan is being devised at the moment, and a public launch of the initiative will happen in the near future, involving the authorities, the media, the schools and universities and so on. The judges will visit Limerick sometimes in June and if we make it through the first selection again in August.

Frank Hanley, who is a member of the National Adjudicating panel of the Tidy Towns competition was present at the meeting and spoke about the difficult mission we have in front of us, but also about the huge potential that Limerick has. What’s important is that people would become proud of the place and would turn Limerick into a better place to live in.

Frank offered to give a presentation on the Tidy Towns competition on Wednesday, March 7th 2012 at 6pm. The meeting will take place at the Hunt Museum.