Community has year to spend €100,000
ROSSLARE Harbour, which is getting €100,000 to renew itself, will be a changed place by this time next year, villagers were told at a public gathering last week.
About 50 local people were at the meeting at the Hotel Rosslare, hosted by Wexford Mayor Cllr Jim Moore and Ger Mackey, from the county council, who told them it would be up to the villages of Rosslare and Kilrane to decide how to spend the €100,000 fund.
Mr Mackey said ideally the fund of €80,000 from the government’s town and village renewal fund, plus €20,000 from the council, should be spent ‘more on job creation than on flowers’.
‘We don’t do failure, we spend every penny and we don’t hand the money back to the department. Neighbouring villages would take the hand off you for this funding,’ he said.
He said the council hopes to have a professional in development expertise by St Patrick’s Day to guide them.
The Rosslare/Kilrane community will then have a year in which to spend the money. He said the village will be a changed place by this time next year and suggested that people elect a team of stakeholders with business people among the key drivers of the village renewal action plan.
Among those in attendance were councillors Ger Carthy, Frank Staples, and George Lawlor, Angie Laffan, district manager, Madeleine Quirke, chief executive of Wexford Chamber and Nicky Furlong, historian and author.
Anne-Marie Laffan of the Community development section of Wexford County Council presented the example of the development of a similar €100,000 plan at Bunclody, which, within two years, helped to turn the town, the most deprived town in Ireland in 2015, to winner of the Bank of Ireland Enterprise award in 2017.
Cllr Moore said this is a very important time to be developing these plans for the simple reason that Wexford County council is obliged to have a fiveyear development plan.
Part of that plan was the future of Rosslare Port and everyone at the meeting had an interest in that, he said.
‘I met and spoke on a couple of occasions with the manager of the port.. there has been a reorganisation in Iarnród Éireann to the effect that a new manager was appointed here about six months ago and that in itself that position has been restructured as well.
‘He is also the freight manager, so he has responsibility for other places other than Rosslare, particularly Dublin and Waterford. At the moment, you may be also aware that there is an operations review going on in the port under Irish Rail.
‘That report is being dealt with in the next couple of weeks, but already he has initiated several activities in the terminal building with regard to ‘at long last’, upgrade works, improvements and he has his own view that he will be developing for the terminal building including letting out some spaces down there.’
‘Many of us councillors were down here in Rosslare a good while ago in relation to two derelict sites. I know the former mayor Ger Carthy had been involved with the developers in particular with regard to (these) two particular sites.
‘You may be aware that there were issues with notices under the Sanitary Services legislation and Structures Acts and hence that’s why we got it in the position it’s in.
Cllr Moore said there were 14 properties in Rosslare Harbour which were issued with notices under derelict sites legislation.
‘Currently, there are none on the derelict sites register, but five premises are undergoing assessment for inclusion on that register... I can assure you that all the council are actively engaged in dealing with some of these issues.’
Local people raised issues at the meeting about high commercial rates, about the use of a local hotel as a public toilet, activities for children who have few facilities, the remoteness of the bus service for elderly people, the number of people in rented accommodation, how to cater for non-nationals, many of who are working for transport companies in the port and whether the funding project could be extended to Tagoat as part of a conurbation of Rosslare Harbour, Rosslare Village, Kilrane and Tagoat.