Could Ennis Town Become Ireland's Newest City?
Highlights from The Pat Kenny Show- 1,639 views
- 11 Mar 2021
Ennis is the largest town in Munster, but do the locals want it to become a city? The Clare Echo, a local paper ran a poll which saw 65% of people vote against the motion. Newstalk reporter Siofra Mulqueen takes a closer look.
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The part Kenny show on news talk with Marter private network during current restrictions. Don't ignore your health concerns. Our expert team is ready to help. Could the town of Anacin County Clare become Ireland's newest city over the past number of weeks, members of a. municipal district have been pushing this idea with the hope that it would bring economic benefits to the area.
Now, NASA is the largest town in Munster, but do the locals wanted to become a city? The clear echo, a local paper, ran a poll which saw 65 percent of people vote against the motion.
Newstalk reporter Steve McQueen has taken a closer look.
Normally, the narrow streets of Venice would be packed. It's a town full of history, renowned for its culture, traditional music and the crack. Over 25000 people live here now. And usually you'd see people spilling out of the little pubs, quaint shops and vibrant restaurants. Today, though, like many towns across Ireland, it's eerily quiet. In recent weeks, the talk has grown of potentially being granted city status. But is this something that the people of the town want to go to about?
It would be that it actually bring a bit of more life into the town because at the moment is more life in it, I expect. And what's in it for us? It's good for people. And that's what's needed in any town, I suppose. So where you have people, you have people the money. So I suppose it'd be good financially for the town and revive it. I think to ennis's to smaller town, to be a city. It's nice quaint town street where you think a city you think of large buildings, factories, large parks.
We don't have that here unless we have the population. All right. We don't have the resources to back it off. I think it could be a good idea. And if we were to get this EUSTATIUS, it would attract more industry and that to a.. That's all badly needed at the moment. But we also, I think, maintain our small stashes and that as well and the friendly nature of it. Do you think Anice prides itself in that?
Yes, I do think it prides itself on being a friendly town. In fact, I think at one stage we won an award for being one of the friendliest towns in Ireland. And of course, our streets lend themselves to that. Our streets are so narrow you can really shake hands with the person at the other side of the street. I don't know, like, will it make a big difference for same side? I suppose, like for young people, it might be a bit better because maybe we get a college and that would be brilliant.
I know person a lot of my friends said to me, boy, I wouldn't really have minded if there was college here when I was younger, I could have gone to it would have been a lot cheaper. Half of us had to go to Dublin. And then when we graduated, we had to move abroad and stuff like that. There was no job. So I think it would have brought a lot less expenses on all of us, and we all would have gotten to stay closer together.
And you think a lot more younger people maybe want to live in a place like a.. Yeah, like there's so much to do here. And to be honest, I know that I've moved back here and I really enjoy it. So if I had the opportunity, I definitely would have stayed.
And I think a lot of other people would have to. The idea of this becoming a city was first mentioned by local CD called Growth, but it has been a all councillor Pat Daley, who has spearheaded the campaign in recent weeks. And I think a bit of research and I went to sort of stay go and Kilkenny. I spoke to councillors in both counties. Both of them told me that particularly in Staghorn, they got a new industry immediately when they became city status.
A lot of it came from Northern Ireland. They got a semi state party in their Department of Agriculture. So a lot of things have happened in state. Similarly, in Kilkenny, you know, they have semi state revenue are in there and they've got a brewery in there, speaks a lot of money was pumped into tourism, particularly Kilkenny Castle. And there's a huge tourism product in Kilkenny. And why do you think NASA in particular needs to be promoted to city status?
But first of all, I'd have to say, and this is a great location, it's very, very close to the airport. It's between American Godhra cities. We're about 40 minutes from going round, about 25 minutes from Derric. Do you think NASA has been overlooked from a business perspective over the years?
We have industrialists and business parks and their technology park. We have a lot of parks, but we haven't got a job in there in over twenty years. And I'm distant every day in the news of jobs in Dublin and CA and Watford of Limerick everywhere. But there isn't a job in in us. So I believe that if this became city status, it would be similar to dislike and Kilkenny and increase in industry.
How much has the population grown in NASA over the years? But I wouldn't need to tell you my age now. I remember if an illness was around four to five thousand and now was up around 26000, which is a massive increase. And I've got full support from under council's management and council level. A lot of cities would have third level institutions and that's probably one thing that would look attractive to the population just under a light have moved into a.. There in recent times, Independence Street.
And there's over 100 students studying there at the moment. You will you know, there are certain courses. There's movement there. Well, I'd love to see the day when we'd have a night in the city. You know, some countries like Sligo or or just looking at the clerical and they did a survey on it on, you know, whether people will be interested in any city status or not. And sixty five percent are actually against it. Have you any idea why that might be the case or can you understand where they're coming from?
But I didn't know that 63 percent are against this is very new. This is only in the last couple of weeks. And if they heard what I said in the last couple of minutes about new industrial maintenance in tennis A. We had a city status, we'd be looked at more professionally and I would like to talk to the 63 percent I'm standing on the Turnpike Road, one of the oldest roads in Addis. Trust your personnel. And Daniel O'Connell used to travel this world into town.
Michael Guilfoile lives on the turnpike. He's a former independent councillor and a former mayor of Ennis. And while many of the current local councillors are in favour of the motion, Michael has reservations. I totally wouldn't support city status. That's first of all, we don't have the population anymore. But apart from that, if you were fortunate to get city status that everything price wise would go through the roof, the cost of living would be quite expensive. The cost of purchasing houses.
And then with that, you also have the difficulty. The bigger you are, the bigger the problems.
Could you ever see it being a city? Do you pride yourself as living in a town?
I, I love the town of Venice. Even the fact that I'm speaking to you, I'm speaking as as a bond and real person in the town. And I don't want no one to destroy my home. I have grandchildren. I'd rather leave them something that they'd be. So as proud as I am of the time would not to destroy it. Have you been talking to many people about this? What do people think of us? No, they think it's a good idea.
Know people. People don't want us. You see, no one wants to Doblin and no one wants to cochino even dog always. Bouman You know, it's quite near the municipal district councils. You have 50 percent older Daptone. And so you could have councils from Naclerio for city status and it would mean nothing to them. I know it would probably never happen before. I would be, well, truly dead and gone before it would happen. But at the same time, I don't think we should be going down that road.
Even I was speaking to my son there in Scotland and he was and ah, he said, look at the benefits of it. What they're not looking at, that could be the gangs or there could be the drug scene or could be the nightclubs, you know, and they're keeping everyone awake at night.
The streets of Venice have been pedestrian E since last May to help with social distancing. Business owners within the town, however, have held protests seeking the end of the measures due to the negative impact it has had. I caught up with a few of them to hear what they thought of becoming a city.
Yeah, so it's not only from Tony Sicher shop in 17 minutes here.
We don't need any city. We just we need to be is left. Actually, as it was. My own grievance at the moment is actually is the street. We don't need to complicate issues. It's our town and we want to ask to be our town.
You were just talking about the campaign as well to to stop the pedestrian ization of the streets. And this has been going on for a few months now where the main street has been pedestrian.
Yes. Yes, I see. It is a narrow street, really. It's just sometimes can't separate association. You can't just block out on Wall Street willy nilly and expect to see traffic to go into a car park.
Is the council culture tick boxes for people who might know why was the street pedestrians used in the first place there? You. And the big thing is, do you want to go door you to Corbitt hair? Corver is very serious. And it's a worrying phenomenon at the moment. So I'm in business for 40 years and I've been trying to criticise the street for a long, long time. They've actually really adopt a tone and I know things are quiet, but they don't need to be that quiet.
Just actually at six o'clock, the barriers open from 11 to eleven to eleven to 6:00 to Claw's magic wand and they open at six o'clock and Corvet doesn't stop at six o'clock. So this is just a contradiction. They just don't talk to the general public. Ninety per cent of our traders in this disagree with this 90 percent, just watercross.
So when you have this frustration over this for the last nearly a year now, what must it be like when you hear the news of, you know, that a city status is being considered?
Yes, it's another distraction. We don't need city status. We will be told we're just not a city and we'll never be a city. We don't need to be a city. We just need industry. And it is going well at the moment. You will have bit of an old post out here. It's a great deal. But we don't need we don't need to just forget about city status. Concentrate on the greenways.
Hi, I'm Peter Moyen and I'm here and and we're in business on the main street here. Whether people like it or not, cars bring a certain level of buzz and atmosphere. And ultimately, if people want to do any kind of serious shopping, they tend to come in the car because ultimately, if they buy things, they're going to carry them and nobody really wants to walk any major distance. So in the sense of the city idea, I would say that this is by and large what I would call displacement activity to get a kind of debate about not really as a business owner.
Does it seem attractive at all?
To be honest, I got instinct. My feeling on this, after all the submissions, everything is that by and large, they've made a decision to kind of get rid of kind of small independent retailers. And they just they want to kind of bring people back, maybe kind of living. The tone centres, and it could be nice and peaceful like that, but it brings other issues, too. All I can see is if it was the street you stop car coming in, I lose business and money and livelihood and that's what I do next.
I do know one of the things that the council is saying is that they've looked into how it's worked in Kilkenny, where when Kilkenny was major city in Sligo town was made into the city as well, and that they have seen benefits in terms of more business coming in.
Who are the businesses that came in? More morality, more, as far as I can see, the more of the pedestrian ization, if you do whether you do it on Grafton Street, anywhere, you kind of close the guy is the word there and you bring in kind of chains. So all you're doing is changing the actual configuration of people who were on the street and maybe some of the uniqueness of it in favour of the same kind of outlets that are pretty much everywhere else.
So quite a divided opinion on the motion. But how is the town of Ennis evolved over the years for it now to be considered a city? Here's a..
Genealogist Larry Brennan A basically came about in 2014. So we're in Old Town.
We're similar to Watford age, but the population just has seemed to have grown and grown. A lot of younger families are relocating to places like Ennis. There's loads of more housing estates that you wouldn't have seen a few years ago. Would you have noticed much of a difference from your time as a young lad?
Yeah, I my family will go back a number of generations into Tullamarine. At that stage, we were cocooned. So we had all these people here and you may have people coming in from outside five, ten miles. The biggest change in and came in the 60s when we had housing on the outskirts of the town. We had a housing problem and the houses started to grow. We had the worst slums in Ireland and this was recorded nationally. But we have moved on from that.
Now we have no slum areas in in us with the housing programme that took place. But nowadays, I would say I'd say a third of the town is local people. Two thirds would have arrived from one place or another to the good of, in a sense, a score by the people that have come into this because they've added to the town with culture. It has grown and please God, it'll grow further. I love to be an honest person.
I have no interest in living at home. It was enough in this town that will see me out and see me six foot under. Would you stay in it if it was a city?
This is my town. I live in this town and I'd be delighted to stay in it. I let it go and make a difference to me. Like I say, I don't honestly believe I'd see the city in my time.