Better-off Barntown has a new first citizen
BARNTOWN has a new mayor and is more than €72,000 richer following a long electoral campaign which included innovative fund raisers the length and breadth of the parish.
The new Mayor is Tom Dempsey who said the objective of his mayorality is ‘ to pull people together, working for the betterment of all in the community.’
Funds will go towards the development of the parish - church repairs, floodlighting of the Astro Turf pitch, benches for church grounds, paying down the Church debt, which stands at some €270,000.
The parish committee is due to meet soon and will be more specific about how to spend the windfall.
‘ The last few weeks have been activity focussed - it’s time to sit down and forward plan now. All went much better than we thought community wise as much as finance wise,’ said curate Fr John Carroll.
Fr Carroll congratulated Tom Dempsey, his wife Mary and the family and team who helped to elect him.
‘Well done Your Worship, enjoy today and the many days you will be our first citizen and local leader,’ he said.
The curate said Tom and the other candidates Declan Power, Martina Brazzill, Donie O’Dowd, Billy Codd and Mag Gurhy had all striven to bring the people of Barntown together as a curacy and as neighbours and this had been successfully achieved,
He also thanked all those who had donated to the campaign members of the committee, Ann O’Brien. Denis Sinnott, Aoife Duggan, Jennifer O’Keeffe, Christy Goggin and Caitriona Walsh who had ‘acted professionally, energetically and imaginatively in the single aim of greater unity, strength and togetherness at the local level’.