Published: Friday, 30th July, 2010 1:45pm

No Edenderry in Offaly tourism brochure

A county councillor has described a new brochure promoting tourism in Offaly as "very disappointing" because it ignores the North Offaly area.

Cllr Nichola Hogan (FG) said that she is extremely disappointed with the Offaly tourism brochure 'Offaly At Your Leisure', which was recently published by Failte Ireland and Shannon Development. Cllr Hogan is disappointed that such an obvious opportunity to promote North Offaly has been missed.

"The brochure is beautifully written and produced and obviously a lot of hard work has gone into it. However, it almost completely ignores the town of Edenderry and all of the surrounding areas of North Offaly," she said.

"Unbelievably there are only three brief references to Edenderry town despite the fact that other towns have at least a full page dedicated to them. There is only one photograph taken in Edenderry which is of a postbox in the town."

She said that as she understands, the brochure will be distributed both nationally and internationally , but called it a "squandered" opportunity to promote Edenderry and the surrounding villages.

"North Offaly has many attractions to appeal to tourists such as the Grand Canal, beautiful golf clubs, numerous sports clubs, a wide variety of shops, restaurants, pubs, guest houses and heritage features yet these have all been forgotten by Failte Ireland," she added. "It is bad enough that North Offaly has been abandoned economically and politically, but now we have been wiped from the tourist trail in Offaly as well."

She called on the members of Offaly County Council to think long and hard as to whether to continue its annual funding to Failte Ireland, when the tourist board is willing to ignore the whole of North Offaly in its publication.