Heritage Action Forums

You live in a small town. You have done for all of your life; or most of it anyway. You know it intimately – the lines on the footpaths, the gutters, the manholes, the poles. You’ve passed them countless times since your mother first held you by the hand and brought you to the shop; your own journeys up and down to school, to the youth club, to the cathedral, to the snooker hall, to the swimming pool. Aaaah, the swimming pool! The tree-lined winding road, the lover’s lane of the town; the road that brought you shaking with joy and nerves after asking a girl you fancied “Would you like to come for a walk down the Palace?”

This road where so many of the young people of the town first kissed at least one very special person in their lives. Many passed away now, more of us older but with vivid memories.

You pass the road one day and it’s gone! Yes, gone! And you’d walked down it a couple of days previously. Part of the heart of the town, part of the town’s culture and folk memory, part of your youth and your present.

‘It just doesn’t seem right’ You wonder. You ask questions. You find out it’s all wrong. No public site notices, no public consultation, no due process, no permission for the ugly car-park in its place, secret agreement for the transfer of the land, not even carried out properly.

You get sad and you get angry and months of all-consuming work brings you to the County Offices in Galway on a Monday in October, the 22nd, at 12 noon, to show your face in solidarity with the others who believe that the age-old right of way must be kept; that the lovely, old, safe and pleasurable road to the park must be put back just as quickly as it was destroyed. The people have spoken, you hope that the politicians will listen.