Letter To The Editor
Control the controllables
Editor,
The meeting on Monday, March 14 of Cavan County Council and Cavan County Development board when presentations were given by Mary Buckley, head of Regions and Property Division of the IDA, and Conor Fahy, senior executive at Enterprise Ireland, covered in last week's edition was a positive initiative by the county.
The benefit of foreign direct investment anywhere in the region has to be acknowledged and welcomed.
However, with Dundalk within commuting range of our hub town of Cavan, we need to continue to accelerate investment in the east west strategic route to our gateway as soon as possible to reduce journey times and improve access to regional, national and international markets, as well as third level education, employment and other services.
We also need to show our success stories in the region as well as our skilled, flexible workforce.
Cavan County Development Board recently commissioned Indecon to produce an economic development plan for Cavan and environs, which recommends that the IDA seek planning permission for a 2,000-square-metre office building suitable for internationally traded services similar to the hi-tech office facility at planning stage for Cootehill.
Enterprise Ireland is predicting 2011 will be a record year for Irish companies selling abroad so we need to tap in to this potential growth.
Government needs to continue to invest in identified deficiencies in economic and social infrastructure in the border region, including the extension of natural gas to Cavan and Cootehill so we can tick all the boxes in attracting and maintaining foreign direct investment to the county.
Contacts forged between this county and the American ambassador to Ireland last year on his visit here need to be maintained and the role of the American special envoy to Ireland, Declan Kelly, needs to include County Cavan with the six counties north of the border in promoting more economic links with our country which is an enjoyable safe place to do business.
Yours,
Malachy Magee,
Cavan County Development Board.
Famine memory
Editor,
I would like to establish contact with others willing to assist in forming a County Cavan and possibly area committees to honour the memory of the famine dead on the now annual National Famine Day in May.
Such committees would engage in re-discovering the famine graves throughout Cavan and marking them with due respect.
The ceremony, as with others held in County Cork, Monaghan and Dublin in 2009, and throughout Ireland in 2010, on last year's National Famine Day would entail a short lecture or chronicle on the national and local conditions prevailing at the time of the famine.
The ceremony to also include reciting of poetry, piping and harpist lament, with scattering of flowers over the common graves.
County Cavan was one of the few counties in Ireland which failed to mark National Famine Commemoration Day 2010 by the holding of appropriate commemoration ceremonies.
County Monaghan held two, in Clones and Monaghan town, and of course the people of Carrickmacross has given lasting recognition to the suffering of the millions, through the restoration and preservation of the former 19th century workhouse on the Shercock Road.
Yours,
Orlagh Fay,
Virginia,
Acting secretary,
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