Another good year for Roscrea Tidy Towns

IT was back to work again for Roscrea Tidy Towns Volunteers on Saturday morning following a celebration on Friday night after the results announcement in the Hogan Suite of Croke Park earlier in the day.

There were 887 entrants to the National Competition this year. The entrants are divided into categories according to population – Roscrea is in category E for towns with a population between 5,001 and 10,000.

Roscrea Tidy Towns has been taking part in the SuperValu National Tidy Towns Competition since the early 1980s. The first reward they got for their efforts came in 1992 when they were awarded an Endeavour Award for the best percentage increase in marks in the county.

This was a most welcome recognition of the Trojan work completed by the group.

Year after year, Roscrea Tidy Towns Group has taken part in the national competition, but other than the Endeavour Award of 1992, no other award was received at national level until 2013 when they were awarded a Bronze Medal. A Gold, Silver or Bronze Medal is awarded to an entrant falling between 15, 20 or 30 marks respectively of the overall National Winner - this year Abbeyleix with 376 marks.

Since 2013 the Roscrea team have been delighted to have received a total of nine medals – all Bronze except for 2017 when we were awarded the higher Silver Medal. This is a great record – a medal for almost every year since 2013 – remember there was no competition in 2020 due to the pandemic.

This year they were delighted to receive a total of 349 marks and increase of 13 points over 2022. Of great significance was gaining marks in all categories except one - but also the fact they lost no marks in any category.

The adjudication was most complementary to Roscrea with the exception of the litter problem. While bins are provided, there is a great deal of illegal disposal of rubbish as well as general litter from purchases of coffee, drinks and wrappers etc. On an annual basis Roscrea's CE Workers, together with Tidy Towns volunteers, collect almost six tonnes of litter annually.

Roscrea Tidy Towns would like to congratulate all participants in the competition and especially all the winners from county and region – so much hard work has been done by all committees throughout the country, most of which dontt get any awards for their endeavour, but still enter year after year.

“We wish to congratulate the other Tipperary medal winners – Terryglass, Birdhill, Silvermines and Nenagh in the north of the county and Emly, Kilsheelan, Cahir, Cashel and Clonmel in the south.

“A special word of congratulations to our neighbour Birr on their Silver Medal. We also wish to acknowledge the support of the Roscrea Community Employment Forum Workers and our Volunteers who do so much on behalf of Roscrea Tidy Towns”, Roscrea Tidy Towns said.