National Tidy Town Regional Awards 2025

Six members of Dromiskin Tidy Towns travelled to the National Tidy Towns Regional Awards ceremony in Athlone on Monday 10th March 2025 to receive their gold medal garnered at the 2024 National Tidy Towns competition. The ceremony was held in the Shamrock Lodge hotel and hosted by the Ballinahown Tidy Towns group (Westmeath) winner of Ireland’s Tidiest Village 2024. Prior to the event, the group visited Ballinahown,  located just outside Athlone, and picked up a number of ideas useful for our 2025 campaign!! 

We, of course, were delighted to accept our first ever gold medal joining Blackrock, Dundalk and Drogheda as the other gold medal winners in Louth and also finishing runner up to Blackrock in the county dislodging Tallanstown in the process. Blackrock also received their prize as Ireland’s Tidiest Small Town the second time they have annexed this title and finishing just one mark off Ireland’s Tidiest Town, Ballincollig Co. Cork. Tallanstown and Ardee received silver medals with Carlingford picking up a bronze medal. Sandpit TT won the Endeavour Award for the greatest year on year increase in marks.

The government was represented by Mr Kevin “Boxer”Moran, Minister of State of Public Expenditure, National Dvelopment Plan Delivery and Reform. Other speakers included representatives from Ballinahown, Westmeath County Council and sponsors Supervalu.

Volunteer Appreciation Night 2025

We had a very pleasant evening in the excellently appointed St Joseph’s Clubrooms on Friday 28th February to acknowledge the sterling efforts of a raft of volunteers during the course of a very successful year for Dromiskin Tidy Towns. The Chairperson thanked roughly forty people who, during the past twelve months, have contributed in some shape or form to our community group. Activities ranged from weekly litter picks, seasonal work sessions, national spring clean, beach clean ups, social media, website, bespoke installations, accounting, consultancy and untold hours filling in forms and applications.

The fruits of these labours were on display with our National Tidy Towns medals, our Louth Looking Good award and an array of plaques and certificates gained over the years. The Chairperson also acknowledged the success of local estate, Church View, winner of the best overall estate in the 2024 Louth Looking Good Awards. He also welcomed members of the Foroige Youth Club who are currently involved in an exciting collaborative project with Dromiskin Tidy Towns. Guest of honour was John Murtagh who had flown all the way from Australia and delighted to meet old friends and neighbours.

An evening of chat and craic with excellent food prepared by parishioner Mark Dorian and catering by wife Áine and family. A great way to prepare for the 2025 season!!

Dromiskin goes green!

Following on from its Gold Medal success in the National Tidy Towns

Competition the village of Dromiskin was once again in celebratory mode this

time as a result of the award of the fourth Community Green Flag for

Dromiskin Heritage Park and a first Community Green Flag for Ginnety’s Pond

Nature Park. This international award acknowledges excellence in the

management of green spaces which are freely open to the public and is the

benchmark for the presentation of public spaces using eight key criteria with

an emphasis on environmental management. The Community Green Flag is

awarded for public spaces managed solely by volunteers, with 25 such

awards in Ireland this year and Dromiskin being the only community in the

country to be awarded this prestigious symbol for its two public spaces.

The flag raising ceremony was held on Sunday 10th November where

Chairman of Dromiskin Tidy Towns Pat Mulligan welcomed local politicians,

Green School Committee members from St. Peter’s N.S., School Principal

AoibheannLynch and local residents to join with committee members and

volunteers to celebrate this great achievement. Pat paid particular tribute to

the Hand family, also present, without whose generosity this success simply

wouldn’t be possible. The committee was delighted that the Chairman of

Louth County Council Cllr. Kevin Callan took time out from his busy schedule

to attend the event and officially raise the two flags. Cllr. Callan made

reference to the fact that public representatives are very rarely invited back to

a community in a short space of time for such a positive news story having

visited Ginnety’s Pond Nature Park in August for its official opening. He

stressed that to achieve two flags is unique and that what happened in

Dromiskin is an example that the rest of the country can and should follow.

Volunteering his skills and expertise with Dromiskin Tidy Towns, both Parks

now flying the Community Green flag, were designed and managed by

Landscape Architect and local resident Kevin Halpenny. In his address at the

event Kevin stressed that this was a very special occasion as the Green Flag

is a recognised symbol of excellence across the globe and is not awarded

lightly. Kevin expressed the view that the Community Green Flag is all the

more special because it recognises communities that, of their own volition,

provide and manage very high quality infrastructure and expressed the view

that it is unprecedented for one small community to achieve the award for two

public spaces.

Green School Committee member Caolán Corr recited a poem written

specially for the event and highlighting the huge success achieved by

Dromiskin Tidy Towns this year. The celebration ended with a cuppa, cake

and a chat in St. Peter’s N.S. The members of Dromiskin Tidy Towns

sincerely appreciate the support they get from the local community, local

businesses, Louth County Council and our elected representatives.