At our very best - Tidy towns competition

IN a world where it is not always easy to counterbalance the dismal with the uplifting, the harrowing with the cheering, the annual tidy towns carnival offers a reliable, worthwhile chance to celebrate all that is good about community life in this country. It shows us, and encourages us to be, at our very best.

A community-based, civic-minded challenge it unites, uplifts and, most of all, confirms that through concerted effort most anything can be achieved.

Towns or villages once decrepit and soul-drainingly shabby have been rejuvenated by tidy towns volunteers more often than not enhancing the quality of life for everyone in that community. This year’s overall winner is Skerries, the pretty and busy north Dublin seaside village but many, many other communities’ efforts have been recognised. It may take several years of hard work and planning to get to the standard required to win an award but any community that makes the effort is likely to find that all of a sudden it lives in brighter, happier place.