Tidy towns competition - Achievement that builds communities

IT IS 50 years since Bord Fáilte — now Fáilte Ireland — built the national Tidy Towns initiative on foundations laid by the National Spring Clean Campaign, which ran between 1953 and 1957. In the competition’s first year there were a mere 52 entrants.

Since then the competition, and, most of all, the communities who participate in it, have made a huge contribution to the betterment of this country.

This year 712 communities, a huge number for a small country, came together to express their love of their home place by doing the tremendous work necessary to be a contender in this competition.

It sustains, and, where there is none, creates a community spirit that forges a loyalty to neighbour and place that might otherwise be absent. It can bring strangers together — especially in the new dormitory belts — with the common objective of improving their world.

And, in a time when environmental concerns have become ever more urgent and unavoidable, the competition rewards an appreciation of the environment we all live in and share.

It moves concerns about the world around us to the centre of our activities, it is a catalyst for a greater appreciation of our impact for good or ill on the world around us.

This has been recognised by changes in the competition as new criteria such as sustainable development, biodiversity and waste minimisation having been added in recent years. It also depends on that great force that has done so much to shape and improve this country: volunteerism.

Each of the 712 groups who entered this year depends on time freely given by people who value community and community development in a practical way. They give of their time to realise a worthy ambition.

Speaking at last night’s awards ceremony, where Westport was named national winner for the third time, Environment Minister John Gormley said that Tidy Towns “has played a major role... in helping communities to engage with the national, and indeed international, issues... because it is has the inherent capacity to turn overarching policy objectives into concrete actions on the ground”.

Those are substantial achievements and point the way towards doing so much more in the future.

Almost 50 years ago, when Tidy Towns was beginning its wonderful journey and Barack Obama and Sarah Palin were just learning to walk, an American president challenged his fellow citizens with the immortal phrase “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”.

A very slight variation of John Kennedy’s inspiring call to arms — “ask not what your community can do for you, ask what you can do for your community” — is the essence of the Tidy Towns competition. If for no other reason it should be honoured and sustained.

But of course it is much more. It enhances the lives of all to participate, and is a wonderful, tangible foil to the cynicism of our time.