Dublin suburb awarded silver at LivCom
Ballyfermot has scooped a Silver Award at the finals of the UN endorsed international LivCom contest, officially recognising the Dublin suburb as one of world's "liveable communities".
The Irish entry had reached the finals, in Niagara, Canada, from over 200 hopefuls worldwide and was competing in the heavily contested Category B (population 20,001 to 75,000) amongst a shortlist of 15 .
A ten-strong delegation from Ballyfermot traveled to Canada last week to represent their community at the four-day event which culminated in the announcement of the decisions from an international panel of world-renowned judges in the early hours of this morning (Irish time).
The criteria upon which communities were judged involved five categories: Use of Environmentally Sensitive Practices, Community Involvement, Heritage Management, Enhancement of the Landscape and Planning for the Future.
"For a small town, Ballyfermot, on their first visit to the LivCom finals, made a heavyweight presentation to the judges," remarked a LivCom spokesperson.
The judges had listened to presentations from 48 finalists overall from 20 countries across the globe at the non-political event which was first launched in 1997 under the name "Nations in Bloom".
The record numbers of entries include those attending the finals for the first time amongst them communities from Latvia, Austria, Lithuania and Puerto Rico.
This year's final also saw the first running of the LivCom Environmentally Sustainable Project award with a further 14 finalists from five countries.
The finalists are divided into vive categories according to their population.
The winners were Annapolis Royal, Canada (up to 20,000), Qian Dao Hu, PR China (up to 75,000), Rhein-Hunsruck-Kreis, Germany (up to 200,000), Stadt Munster, Germany (up to 1,000,000) and Honolulu, USA (over 1,000,000).
