Drogheda man Paddy inspires Kilkenny TT win

September 1985

THE 1985 Tidy Towns Competition came and went last week with Drogheda finishing in a rather miserable 42nd place and just 6 other large towns separating us from the bottom of the heap!

Drogheda scored 125 points in this year’s competition—an improvement of 14 points over last year’s performance — and finished well behind the eventual winner, Kilkenny, who scored 178.

Drogheda now has the slightly dubious distinction of being numbered among the seven dirtiest towns in all of Ireland — and no-one is denying that we deserve this boobiest of booby prizes.

We now join Cavan, Letterkenny, Shankill, New Ross, Carrick-on-Suir and Ashbourne as the towns least likely to succeed in next year’s competition.

However Cllr. Ray Dempsey, the man who deserves much of the credit for Drogheda’s improvement this year, feels that the town is not yet out of the running.

He will soon be putting forward a proposal that Drogheda Corporation and its officials visit Kilkenny to see, at first hand, what can be done.

“I have already discussed the matter with the Kilkenny Co. Manager Paddy Donnelly, who is a Drogheda man himself and he has said that he will be only too happy to make all the necessary arrangements,” he said.

Meanwhile Drogheda’s own Paddy Donnelly is basking in the glory of Kilkenny’s Tidy Towns win. , .

“I am delighted” he told us this week “although somewhat saddened to see my home town doing so badly.”

“It is a pity” he continued “because Drogheda has many of the things that have stood Kilkenny in good stead, they just have not been taken advantage of in the same way.

The adjudicators of this year’s competition made some points in their report on Kilkenny that would seem to indicate where Drogheda has been going wrong.

Among the first things they noted was the fact that Kilkenny is indeed a tidy town! “The overall impression of Kilkenny is tidiness” they said — and one needs only to look at any town centre street to know that Drogheda is far from tidy. “There are no areas of dereliction which take away from many other large towns they said — and one needs only to look at something like the Drogheda Grammar School to know that Drogheda is far from this ideal, too.

The judges also noted the abundance of flowers in Kilkenny’s town centre — and sadly, this too is a rock upon which Drogheda perishes.