For the second year running, Cork city has won the top award in the City Neighbourhoods competition for this year. Christine Newman reports.
Patrick Street was named the overall winner at an awards ceremony in Dublin Castle yesterday. Last year, Cork won the accolade for its South Mall.
The famous street in the heart of the city also won in the categories of overall best city street and best shopping street. Cork carried off a third prize for the best civic building for the Crawford Art Gallery.
The awards were presented yesterday by Minister of State for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Mr Batt O'Keeffe.
The Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr Seán Martin; the Cork city manager, Mr Joe Gavin; and Mr Frank Hanley on behalf of the Patrick Street traders were presented with € 3,000 and the City Neighbourhoods' Perpetual Trophy, commissioned by the Department and designed and sculpted in bronze by Mr Holger Lonze.
The prize for the best residential area went to Silverbrook housing estate in Limerick while Salthill, Galway, took the award for best urban village.
Of the 14 awards, Dublin won six, Cork three, Limerick three and Galway two.
The competition, now in its second year, is for residential and commercial districts in the five cities of Cork, Dublin, Galway, Limerick and Waterford.
The aim of the competition is to make the five cities more attractive places to live, work and visit and to raise environmental standards.
Mr O'Keeffe said that not only had the winners laid a strong foundation for the competition to build on, but also by coming out on top, they had demonstrated their willingness to set the standards for others to follow.
In thanking city councils for their support, he said he wanted local competitions run by the city councils streamlined from next year so that the highest achievers from each would go on to compete at national level through an automatic qualification system.
"For City Neighbourhoods to reach its full potential, we must build on this success and continue in our efforts to make it a real bottom-up initiative," Mr O'Keeffe said.