The man credited with developing Westport, Co Mayo, into one of Ireland’s top tourist spots has told a West Cork town that residents “must make Bandon a great place to live and everything else will follow”.

Repair work on an historic 600-year-old West Cork tower is now complete — and the ancient edifice and its surrounding Huguenot graveyard will soon be handed back into the care of local residents.

Local authorities are seeking to take control of a former GAA grounds that sold for €9m eight years ago but is now partly an “environmental eyesore” in a West Cork town centre.

Businesses in several Co Cork towns are likely to face a significant rise in their rates when town councils are abolished next year.

A village butcher has told how sales of calorie-laden rashers and sausages have plummeted due to the influence of TV reality show Operation Transformation.

IN what he described as one of the worst cases of overzealous prosecutions he had ever seen, a judge has ordered a county council to pay €750 to its local Tidy Towns committee.

CLONAKILTY has been named the tidiest town in West Cork, but its Tidy Towns Committee have been warned about overusing hanging baskets and window boxes.

CANDIDATES whose posters block road traffic signs in Kerry have been told by the county council to take them down.

A NORTH Tipperary lobby group yesterday took their campaign for a new commuter service between Nenagh and Limerick ‘on line’.

ENNIS, Co Clare, has emerged as the winner of the 2005 Tidy Towns competition - just two weeks after it was branded one of the State’s dirtiest places in an environmental study.

GREEN-FINGERED folk have gone blooming mad in a West Cork town in an attempt to win a prestigious international title.