23rd April 2009
Minister John Gormley with Cork Green Party candidates, before going on boat trip of Cork Harbour
L to R: Mick Murphy, Stephen Crowley, Cllr. Dominick Donnelly, Mary Ryder and Minister John Gormley.
As part of his trip to Cork today, Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government John Gormley was taken on a boat trip around Cork Harbour by Cllr. Dominick Donnelly, Green Party member of Passage West Town Council and candidate for Cork County Council for the Carrigaline electoral area. The purpose of the trip was to show the minister at first hand the wonderful assets of the harbour, and how this all links in to the history of Cork City and Harbour, as there is an application before his department to have Cork City and Harbour considered as suitable for promotion to UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. The Minister was also accompanied on the boat trip by representatives of both Meitheal Mara and the Coastal and Maritime Research Centre of UCC, who jointly submitted the application, as well as Cllr. Marcia D’Alton of Passage West Town Council.
Cllr. Donnelly said: “It was a great opportunity to take the minister on this short boat tour of Cork Harbour, and we thank him for giving us of his valuable time. The main purpose of the trip was to impress upon the minister the rich and varied history of both Cork City and Cork Harbour, and to demonstrate to him how the two are completely intertwined. While we fully recognise that achieving World Heritage Status for Cork City and Harbour is a long term project that will take a number of years to come to fruition, we hope that today’s trip will help to start that ball rolling. The benefits of achieving such status would be many, and when you see the sort of locations which have achieved World Heritage Status around the world, it is clear that Cork City and Harbour fully deserve to be added to that list.”
Dominick Donnelly 