BY CRONANSCANLON
THE residents Manorcunningham are proud of where they come from. They work hard to clean and maintain the area, however, they feel that they are suffering because of a lack of funding and resources from Donegal County Council.
Despite large scale housing developments in recent years the village has still got no proper water supply, sewerage facility, footpaths or road signs. Fed up with council inaction and politicians' broken promises, the residents formed the Manorcunningham Environmental Group to carry out routine outside maintenance of the village. Water shortages and boiling notices are also a regular occurrence and residents claim they can not get an explanation from the council.
"There is no boiling notice at the moment but that all could change any minute," said Ms Mary McFadden, spokesperson for the group.
"We have never been told by the council exactly why the water has to be boiled. The water was never good here and is often full of limescale".
She added that, earlier this year, the water was switched off from 8pm until 8am for two consecutive months in order to conserve supplies.
Mr Alan McMenamin, Project Leader in the local community centre, put the water problem into some perspective: "There was an advert on Highland Radio a while back for a new housing development in Manor'. A few minutes later the station broadcast another advert from the council saying that the water was going to be cut off here," Mr McMenamin said.
Ms McFadden, who runs the Lagan Inn pub, stressed that the council need to put together a structured plan for the proper development for the area.
"Manor has been left behind since the new road opened," she explains.
"It has been bypassed by the council in more ways than one. The entrances to the village are overgrown and there are no proper signage or lighting for the village. Preposterous looking steel poles have been plonked on the Main Street and no one knows where they came from, they should be called the Manorcunningham Spires after the Millennium Spire in Dublin. The footpaths flood when it rains, the kerbs also need to be repaired and the roads around the village are terrible," she said.
Among the reasons for the formation of the Group was to investigate the possibility of entering the village in to the national Tidy Towns awards. Ms McFadden said that the group regularly clean the village and trim hedges themselves and that requests to the council for assistance have fallen on deaf ears. An application for some environmental workers under a FÁS scheme has also been unsuccessful.
STREET CLEANERS
"When I moved here first 30 years ago there were two men employed to clean the streets and look after the area. Now there are none," she said.
The Manor Roundabout is also another area of concern for the Group and an offer by a local business to sponsor landscaping there was rejected by the council. The Group said that the roundabout is an eyesore and is overgrown.
"It is generally felt locally that, even though we are only five miles away from Letterkenny, we may as well be 50 miles away," Ms McFadden said.
"A lot of people don't know where Manor is and we want the council to put us back on the map again. We are not looking for a fortune, all we want is flowers and baskets. We will even do the work ourselves but we need some assistance from the council. We also need a proper green area for the village that we can maintain. The council are doing nothing to enhance this area," she said.
Traffic calming is another issue, both in the village and on the dangerous entrances to the village off the busy Letterkenny to Derry road.
Two members of the Group met with councillors and officials of the Letterkenny Electoral Area in September. Ms McFadden described the meeting as very positive but said that the only councillors that take any interest in the area are Gerry Crawford and Tony McDaid who are from Lifford.
Mr McMenamin said that the local sewerage scheme was out of date not long after the work had been completed and that it can not cope with the extra load from new developments. He said that blockages and overflows are a common occurrence and that bins are needed for the Main Street if they are to enter the Tidy Towns.
"We are lumped in with Letterkenny in the Letterkenny Electoral Area. We lobby the councillors but everything goes to Letterkenny town. Letterkenny councillors have no interest in this area and we are fed up with their broken promises," he said.
"We are not looking for charity. The people are prepared to do the work themselves but there is no help from the council or from most of the councillors. They are only paying lip service, lip service is just not good enough, what we need here is action and we want it now," Mr McMenamin concluded.
Ms McFadden had one last message for the council: "We want Manor brought up to 2006 standards just like every other town and village in Donegal".
A response from the council could not be obtained at the time of going to press.
