Geashill is Ireland's Tidiest Village 2023

GEASHILL is Ireland's Tidiest Village. This is the second time the village has won this accolade, having taken the title first in 2021.

The announcement was made today Friday October 6 at the SuperValu Tidy Towns Competition awards ceremony. The awards were presented by Minister Heather Humphreys. Tullamore has retained it's gold medal.

With a score of 375 Geashill was described by the judges as, ''exceptionally clean and tidy with a high standard of litter control to be seen during our visit. This clearly reflects the hard work that goes into twice daily litter picks during summer and once daily litter picks at other times of the year.''

They congratulated the village on becoming the ''All-Island Winners of the Creative Places Initiative Award and for supplying the associated brochure - your project of the year involving the community, local CE workers and the Tidy Towns Committee. Another notable project was your participation in Make Way Day, the accessibility audit now underway which will inform future community development in the village.''

The judges added, ''It was a pleasure to visit your lovely village this year and we were left in no doubt that all of your efforts (and innovative projects) are having a transformative effective on Geashill. Be sure to keep up the good work and we look forward to returning and seeing further progress in 2024.''

Caren Carruthers is the Chairperson of Geashill Tidy Towns, ''we're really thrilled with the win. We are a small group of volunteers and we are all building on the work of previous tidy towns committees. Tidy Towns is in Geashill for 40 years so it's a generational thing.''

Caren said the village gets a lot of visitors following the wins, ''they want to come and see the projects. Other tidy towns groups come to visit too and we might go to visit them. Anything that brings more people into the village is great,'' said Caren.

5 of the committee went to Croke Park for the awards ceremony, ''we were delighted and shocked. We put in a lot of hard work but a lot of other community groups work equally hard,'' said Caren.

Tullamore scored 362 points with the Judges saying, ''Tullamore retains its historical past with some broad streets with their fine two or three storey commercial premises and houses, the harbour and Grand Canal. The town also has expanded to include housing estates, schools, offices, shopping centres etc. In recent years attention has been given to the centre of the town at O’Connor Square, Market Square and Millennium Square. How the town must have expanded and developed in the sixty years since the Tullamore Tidy Towns committee began their work. How the scope of work and range of projects undertaken by the Committee must have expanded too. Based on the application and the three-year plan submitted Tullamore Tidy Towns has a lot of work in hand – all for the betterment of the local community and environment. Lean ar aghaidh leis on obair ! ''

Shane Murray is the Chairperson of Tullamore Tidy Towns Committee, ''It is important that we keep gold standard for many reasons, and we are confident that if our wider community continues to respond in a positive way as it has in previous years and that Tullamore can maintain its performance at national level with the ambitious aspiration to win the competition outright in the near future.

To push this onwards we really need to up our game in working with the local business and the chamber of commerce in particular. If we want to push for the outright award! Looking at the scores which the committee will go through in more detail in the coming weeks, the first thing I noticed is litter control the single biggest area for improvement. Our volunteers have never worked so hard at this in the last year,but it is clear to us that we have a major problem with litter and dumping,'' said Shane.

Minister for Rural and Community Development, Heather Humphreys TD, announced Abbeyleix, Co. Laois as Ireland’s Tidiest Town for 2023. 

 Over 600 TidyTowns volunteers were present at the SuperValu TidyTowns awards ceremony at Croke Park in Dublin with the event live-streamed to thousands more online.

 This year, 887 towns were competing for the prestigious awards demonstrating the continuing huge national interest in the SuperValu TidyTowns competition which has been running since 1958.