Opinion: Make us proud
It is almost 11 years since I wrote an article on KildareNet News about the formation of Kilcullen Community Action, writes Brian Byrne. It was titled 'Kilcullen reinvents itself. Again. And again.'.
Since then, the town has changed considerably. Though a perusal of the article will show that many of the issues which pertained then are still issues of today. One might be forgiven for thinking that we haven't progressed.
But of course we have moved onwards. Considerably. In population, and in the number of homes. In infrastructure, with new enterprises, a playground, a significant memorial to our prehistoric past, and most recently in the streetscape improvements carried out to 'open up' the parkland behind the old Cross & Passion Convent wall. The official opening of the Parish Centre by President Mary McAleese was another highlight of these intervening years.
The effects and influences of the new people come to live in the town are also now being felt, as they and their children move into and through local organisations and schools. Their knowledge, skills, and aspirations will provide the lifes-blood of Kilcullen in its future.
Just now, an Implementation Group is looking at how best to progress the new Development Plan that has come out of the recent Community Survey commissioned by KCA. It seems that we have turned a circle from those days eleven years ago when the newly-formed KCA was even then considering a similar plan to move Kilcullen forward, albeit one not as detailed.
The ideal now is that enough new people will get involved in whatever aspects of the latest Development Plan they feel they can contribute to. Because this is a plan not for us older players on the Kilcullen stage, but for those who will be the community here when we are gone. Those who will be living here, involved in the social, leisure and business elements that will be tomorrow's Kilcullen.
My piece on KildareNet News—itself the very first local internet daily news service in Ireland—was not the first I have written about Kilcullen's hopes and fears over the more than three decades in which I have been a journalist here. But it did record one of the many watershed moments in our village-now-a-town's modern history.
Read it if you have an interest in seeing where we were hoping we might go next at that time. And maybe you might feel you can be part of the latest stage of the project for yourselves, your children and even their children.
I'm four generations here. Some of you are not yet a decade with us. But Kilcullen is not my town. Nor is it your town. It's our town. Let us all help to make it something we can be even more proud of.
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