Clare mayor to head to China

Clare County Council was told last night that it must deliver on its planned twinning arrangement with the 46m-strong Yunnan province in China.

At the council’s January meeting, Cllr PJ Kelly (FF) said the public will not be happy if the planned delegation to Yunnan comes back empty-handed.

At the meeting, the council took a major step in the unlikely twinning arrangement after councillors approved that Clare mayor John Crowe (FG) will lead a council delegation and make the 16,000km round trip in April or May.

The council approved the trip in spite of Mr Kelly asking that a cost-benefit analysis be carried out. “I wouldn’t like to be seen to stand in the way of progress, but I do believe that we should move with phenomenal caution,” he said.

“We must ask ourselves, what is our mission? If it is tourism, do we know the travelling habits of the Chinese? Will they appreciate the great assets we have here?”

The former mayor added:

“We don’t want to be coming back with people saying, ‘you spent x thousand of euro, what have you in return?’ If we go, we have to come back and say, ‘We delivered”.

He said: “I don’t think the public will be one bit happy if a group goes out from here and comes back with nothing.”

Mr Crowe will be making the trip in response to an invitation from the vice-president of the Yunnan province, Cheng Yunchaun.

Council director of service Ger Dollard told the meeting, “it is an opportunity that we should take and it is an invitation that should be accepted”