Cork County Muintir na Tire News: News from Clashmore public meeting re setting up of Community Council

Clashmore and Kinsalebeg Community Council

Over 40 people attended the first public meeting to discuss setting up a Community Council for Clashmore and Kinsalebeg.

Set out below is a short summary of the meeting but for people who attended the meetin there are some things you need to do:

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Please consider the issues we discussed and if you have thought of anything since the meeting that you see a Community Council being involved in, please let us know.
If on reflection you would like to be on the Steering Committee, please volunteer now as we could do with a few more people.

Report of Meeting 27^th May – Clashmore National School

Mike McKenna recapped on how we had got to this stage through discussions of the initial idea, through an exploratory meeting with various members of the community to this advertised public meeting to assess support.

He explained the role of the Community Council would be to

Support existing organisations
Provide a strong unified voice to deal with outside bodies such as the Council, Leader, WAP etc.
To look at the the bigger picture and come up with a community approach to issues such as low employment, adapting to climate change, providing supports for the young and the elderly.

Mike explained the point of the meeting was to assess whether there was support for a Council and to perhaps explore some of the concerns of residents, The next step would be to set up a Steering Committee to develop a needs analysis and explore the existing strengths within the area.

Mike then introduced Denis Kelly, who is the Community Development Officer for Muintir na Tire.

Denis explained his role and shared examples of other Councils throughout the area.

Comments then came from the floor and they could be divided between things people thought should be stopped and things people thought should be started, revived or improved.

Problems:

Speeding traffic – speed humps
Litter
Dog Fouling
Potholes

Issues:

Broadband
Employment Opportunities
Healthy Living
Grow it yourself
Mother and Child support
Use of the various village halls
Happy Man Festival
Setting up a photographic heritage
Community Centre Courses
Newsletter
Rural Transport
Reviving the footpaths/St Declans Way
Local tourism

Concern was expressed about the possible cost of insurance and the problems that poor broadband (or none) caused to local enterprises.

It was agreed that a Steering Committee should be set up and the following people volunteered:

Mike McKenna - Gerard Byrne - Richard Torney

Jazz Fitzgerald - Heather Foley - Noel Hogan

Colette Beresford - Tom Llewellyn - Siobhan Murray

Charles Walker

The Steering Committee would look at what was needed to be done to set up a Community Council (and then cease to exist ), identify key needs, identify the assets within the Area and the groups which already exist. It was recommended that local organisations should have representation on the Council when it was set up.The first meeting would be in the middle of June.

Everyone attending the meeting completed a short questionnaire detailing their interests:

The Top 5 were