The Mayor of County Cork Cllr. John Paul O’ Shea recently launched “The Kinsale Age Friendly Town Plan” at the Blue Haven Hotel in Kinsale.
The Kinsale Age Friendly Strategy has been up and running since 2014, when Kinsale became the only town in Cork County (and one of eight nationally) to be selected to take part in the Age Friendly Town Strategy for 2014/15. A Planner was appointed by Age Friendly Ireland to undertake the initial consultations and walkability study and draw up the age friendly Programme for the town. This work was overseen by a number of local stakeholders who made up the steering group, including representatives from Kinsale Active Retirement Association, Cork County Council, K-CoRD, An Garda Siochana and Positive Ageing Week.
The report was completed in May of this year and contains 19 short, medium and long term actions which it is anticipated will be locally driven. Two actions have already been successfully carried out in the town in conjunction with Cork County Council and Smiths Supervalu. Ms. Aileen Hurley, Cork County Council Age Friendly Coordinator mentioned the projects that have been completed to date and thanked all involved for their hard work and commitment during the works, “five new benches have been placed along the Compass Quay walk, a new bench is in place at a convenient point on the walk between the town centre and the new Super Valu and two Older Persons Parking Spaces have been installed close to the Super Valu supermarket, one on the surface car park and one in the underground car park for the convenience and use of older people. We are delighted with the progress made to date and will continue to work together to ensure further improvements are made in the near future”.
Pictured at the launch of the Kinsale Age Friendly Town Plan with Mayor of the County of Cork Cllr. John Paul O’ Shea were Ms. Deirdre Mullins, Kinsale Positive Ageing Week and Shane Winters, Age Friendly Ireland Co-ordinator for the SOuthern Region.
A third action of the programme is to engage with the business people in the town (in conjunction with K-CoRD ) and roll out the Age friendly Business recognition scheme. The first step towards achieving that goal was taken recently when Shane Winters of Age Friendly Ireland and Hannah Murphy of K-CoRD presented to over 40 local businesses at the Chamber meeting in the Blue Haven.
Speaking at the launch the Mayor of the County of Cork Cllr. John Paul O’Shea was munificent in his praise of the Age Friendly Strategy and commended the hard work done by all stakeholders. “The work done here in Kinsale as part of the Cork Age Friendly County Programme is an example to all towns across the county. I am delighted to be here today to launch the Kinsale initiative and it would be remiss of me not to congratulate all stakeholders on the huge body of work they have done in a relatively short period of time. Other towns who will take part in the Age Friendly initiative in the coming months would be well served by visiting you all in Kinsale as you have certainly provided an excellent template for all to follow”
The next phase of the programme will be to identify the priority actions and with that in mind the initiative is seeking new members for the steering group to help drive the actions in the plan. It is anticipated that an enlarged local steering group would have the capacity to choose and drive the next set of actions.
The plan now forms part of the Cork Age Friendly County Programme which is driven by the Alliance group, made up of key stakeholders including both universities, Cork Chamber of Commerce, Cork County Council, HSE, Bus Eireann and the newly formed Older Peoples Council. Following from the success of the Kinsale Age Friendly Town Plan, a county wide age friendly strategy is currently being drawn up and will be completed in early 2016. For further information please contact Ms. Aileen Hurley at aileen.hurley@corkcoco.ie.
