As part of the latest round of Clár funding the Ballingarry Community Development have been granted €100,000 for the purchase of a wheelchair accessible minibus.
It’s part of a total allocation of more than €2 million nationally announced by Minister for Rural and Community Development Heather Humphreys.
The application for funding came about following a number of public meetings earlier this year to see what facilities or services were needed in the area.
Manager Michael Kealy says the bus will be put to good use.
“We often see our local older people mightn’t have their own transport or whatever and we’ll be able to go on little trips with them or bring them to appointments. And then for our younger people we might be able to bring them to matches or different things like that or our secondary school is slightly outside the town and their Transition Years are always looking for projects to do and transport is always a problem so there’s all sorts of different reasons that we went for the application.”
Michael is already thinking about the next step.
“The first thing that struck me is that we’re going to need bus drivers and where are we going to get those but we’ll start working on that straight away.
“Ideally it would be a voluntary set up and if there are drivers in the area we’d be absolutely delighted to hear from them to give whatever time they would be able to give, that would be brilliant. So if there are drivers please get in touch with us at Ballingarry Community Development.”
