Good attendance at Community Forum
The Carlingford Community Forum, which is comprised of the main interest groups in Carlingford (Carlingford Tidy Towns, Carlingford Lough Heritage Trust, Carlingford and Cooley Tourist Association, Carlingford Community Development and the Carlingford Traders), held its first Public Meeting on Thursday 26th May.
The meeting was exceptionally well attended, with an estimated attendance of up to 100 people. All the Community interests were well represented at the meeting, which was held in McKevitt’s Village Hotel in Carlingford.
Notification of the meeting was circulated to Carlingford residents, businesses, community groups and other interest groups and individuals who were invited to attend and to participate with their views, comments and suggestions.
The Carlingford Community Forum saw this as a unique opportunity for everybody to participate in the future direction in which Carlingford develops.
The Forum also sees this as an opportunity for all the people who live and work in and around Carlingford and the Cooley area to take a much more proactive interest in the future direction and development of Carlingford for the benefit of all who live and work in this most beautiful and historic town on the Cooley Peninsula, which is now the northern outpost of Failte Ireland’s Ancient East Tourism initiative.
The Forum envisages this as the first step in an ongoing consultative process whose core objective will be to make Carlingford a better place in which to live, work and raise families and for the many visitors who visit Carlingford to enjoy a unique experience, the positive memories of which will hopefully remain with them for the rest of their lives.
When the present amenities and town planning were developed, many of them over 25 years ago, Carlingford did not have the popularity it now enjoys as a tourist destination. The rise in numbers of visitors coming to Carlingford has put many pressures on the facilities which currently exist and it is hoped that the present initiative by the Carlingford Community Forum will produce proposals more suited to the town’s present and future needs.
The primary reason for this ongoing consultation process is to ensure that the wishes of the whole Community in Carlingford are listened to, adopted and implemented in all future town development plans.
As the views of all the Community interests are incorporated into the plan which will develop over the coming months, it will put the Community Forum in a position to achieve the agreed objectives with the support of the whole Community.
It is intended that the Forum will engage with the Local Authority and other relevant Public bodies in due course to seek their support and agreement and funding of the ideas put forward on behalf of the local Carlingford Community.
John McKevitt of the Forum states “We in the Forum, not to mention the whole community in Carlingford, are all very excited with the reaction to this community consultation process.
“It is clear from the reaction to our public meeting, with the large numbers attending and the positive proposals put forward, that people were looking for an opportunity to express their views and we expect great things to evolve for the benefit of everybody who lives and works in the town.”