Our village can't be most untidy - it's not a village
Thursday September 13 2007
A TINY rural community was bewildered yesterday after emerging as Ireland's untidiest village -- despite not being a village at all.
The townland of Mullaghroe, 4km east of Gurteen, Co Sligo, scored a modest 166 out of 400 marks in the national Tidy Towns competition, ranking alongside Dublin's Sallynoggin, Ronanstown and Kimmage.
But locals in the spotlessly kept south Sligo townland insisted that they did not deserve the title of Ireland's untidiest location. They had not entered the competition and they stressed they would not even have considered entering. "We are in a beautiful scenic area on the shores of Lough Gara and while there is a community spirit here, there is no village to enter in the Tidy Town's competition. There is nothing to mark Mullaghroe expect a country road going through it," said retired school teacher, Eilish Shannon.
Other nearby villages and townlands -- including Culfadda, Cloonloo and Ballinfad -- found themselves in the same boat receiving points of 182, 183 and 173 respectively without even knowing they were in the national competition.
A spokesperson for SuperValu last night acknowledged that, in hindsight, the results of the towns selected by them should have been listed separately with a full explanation of their score in 2007 and the future plan for those areas.
"SuperValu is planning to engage with these towns by setting up Tidy Towns committees as we move towards next year's competition," the spokesperson added.
A spokesperson for the Department of the Environment said: "As a possible means of boosting long-term involvement in the competition, SuperValu the sponsor, undertook to identify towns and villages where there was a SuperValu store but no active Tidy Towns' committee."
He added that Mullaghroe had been assessed by one of the most experienced Tidy Towns' adjudicators, a qualified town planner.
