the Celtic Tiger years

trendsetting Greenways established in Waterford and Mayo.

Noting the excellent work done by Ennis Tidy Towns already on this front, he explains, “You could position Ennis as Ireland’s first climate adaptive town, it’s one of the goals in the vision,” expanding that a climate adaptive town would include minimising our Co2 footprint with increased pedestrian and cycling access, along with “ideally electric public bus services”.

“You would be attracting in that public investment, be it gre- enways, cycle lanes, public bus services which is due in 2025.

“It would definitely put us top of the class [in attracting investment] if we could get out ahead of that. So, we can resist with all our will and be the last to change or we can be one of the first and we can get the funding to go and do that. It’s really important for Ennis to consider, are we trying to be proactive or are we going to be constantly reactive and having a reaction on every proposed town centre development no matter what it is?”

He adds that a recent project Ennis 2040 car- ried out with local TY students opened his eyes to the importance of securing young people’s future in the town. “They’re looking at 2050 and climate change and all that comes with that. They’re looking at that because that happens in their lifetime so they’re prepared to change and they’re embracing change. The winners wanted a green mode town, they wanted their school drop off to be easy from a pedestrian or cycle access, they’re looking for the infrastructure to do that. They’re not looking for that infrastructure in 2040, they’re looking for it now.”