Tidy Towns competition playing a key role in helping to tackle climate change

Dara Calleary, minister for rural and community development, has said that Tidy Towns initiatives play a vital role in addressing the effects of climate change.

Mr Calleary was speaking in Ballincollig, Ireland’s Tidiest Town in 2024, on Monday, as he launched this year’s SuperValu Tidy Towns competition.

He said that Tidy Towns could educate the public on the role that everyone has to play in addressing climate change.

Mr Calleary said the Government had received more than 65,000 applications for humanitarian assistance in the wake of Storm Éowyn in January, and was processing those claims.

He said he would urge anyone who had initially been turned down a payment to seek a review.

Review

Mr Calleary said a review of the State’s humanitarian aid process was under way to ensure it was fit for purpose for dealing with larger events, such as Storm Éowyn.

“Previously, humanitarian assistance would have dealt with applications [of] 1,500 to 2,000; we’ve dealt with 65,000 to 66,000,” he said.

“I’m going to review the scheme afterwards to make sure that it’s purposed for bigger events. Normally in humanitarian assistance, the event happened and the consequences were manageable within a couple of days, but, obviously, with the power outages it’s taken quite some time to deal with it.”

The minister said there was a commitment in the programme for government for a fund to address storm damage, but that climate change needed to be tackled.

“That’s why Tidy Towns has a large portion of it addressing local climate initiatives, initiatives that are community-led, bringing awareness about climate, bringing changes locally to climate, such as the ones here in biodiversity, and that brings it right back to community level initiatives, such as Tidy Towns, focusing on climate change,” he said.