National pride of place award for kilberry

The community of Kilberry picked up a top prize in the in the Co-operation Ireland Pride of Place Awards, which were announced last week at a ceremony in Ennis.
The Kilberry Amenity and Heritage Group scooped the runner up award in Category One of the main competition, which is for communities with a population size of up to 250 people.
More than 800 people attended the gala ceremony to hear the announcement of the winners and runners up. The awards were greeted with great celebration by representatives of community groups, from all over the island of Ireland, eagerly anticipating the announcement of winners.
The Kilberry Group has been together for three and a half years and in that time have created a beautiful wildflower garden in memory of people who died on the roads in the area.
They created this beautiful garden in an area where old concrete and cement had been left following roadworks.
The group also did Trojan work tidying up grass verges, re seeding them and planting hedges and trees.
The group has also been involved in  protecting and highlighting the local heritage.
Spokesperson, Ciara McQuaid, explains that a flint, which as found in Kilberry graveyard, which is now in the National Museum, was discovered to predate Newgrange dating back to the Mesolithic era, up to 7,000 years ago.
She says there are five national monuments in the area and geophysical surveys have already been carried out on a souterrain and a big mound.
There are now plans to survey a ringfort in the area and they are just waiting for a licence for that.
Meanwhile a disused postbox has undergone a big revamp and is now being used by Santa Clause each Christmas and children travel from far and wide area to post their letters to Santa in that post box.
Ms McQuaid said that a lot of the work that has been done could not have been carried out by the committee alone and they had the support of the entire community.
“Local farmers came out and helped and local children have also been a big help,” she said.
The Pride of Place Awards recognises cities, towns and communities that show respect and inclusion for every sector in local areas and creating communities to which the people are proud to say they belong.