“The brochure is beautifully written and produced and obviously a lot of hard work has gone into it. However, it almost completely ignores the town of Edenderry and all of the surrounding areas of North Offaly,” she said.

Councillor Hogan is disappointed that such an obvious opportunity to promote North Offaly has been missed.

“Unbelievably there are only three brief references to Edenderry town despite the fact that other towns have at least a full page dedicated to them. There is only one photograph taken in Edenderry which is of a postbox in the town. It is my understanding that this brochure will be distributed both nationally and internationally and it is an opportunity which has been totally squandered for Edenderry and the surrounding villages,” she said.

The Fine Gael councillor said north Offaly has many attractions to appeal to tourists such as the Grand Canal, beautiful golf clubs, numerous sports clubs, a wide variety of shops, restaurants, pubs, guest houses and heritage features, yet these have all been forgotten by Failte Ireland.

“It is bad enough that north Offaly has been abandoned economically and politically, but now we have been wiped from the tourist trail in Offaly as well. I believe that the members of Offaly County Council must think long and hard as to whether to continue its annual funding to Failte Ireland when it is willing to ignore the whole of North Offaly in its publication,” she concluded.