"A very nice place to live": European judge's assessment of Ballinahown

By David Flynn

One of the four-strong judging panel for the Entente Florale competition praised Ballinahown village to the media on Saturday

At a press conference, Jaroslav Brzak, who is Vice Chair of the jury said his impression of Ballinahown was that it is a lovely place, and the Czech Republic man said that he also loved Ireland and has come here for many years.

“There are very friendly people here and in Carlow, but especially here in such a small community, it is really always the involvement and you can see that for small money they achieved nice output,” said Mr Brzak.

“They have a very nice place to live here.” He said that as judges they look for quality of life, through the environment and community involvement and focus on public space and public green and issues related to the environment and nature issues.

“Also the traditional look of the villages, and also an approach to the restoration of the town and village centre and tourism – is part of our adjudication,” said Mr Brzak.

He said that the adjudication is kept secret until the award ceremony, which will take place in September in Hungary.

“We judge the achievements, the community and what they have done and how they are able to cooperate and how much they are involved in the topics related to nature,” he said.

This year there is a four judge committee, although the Chairman of the jury is an Irishman, Dr Christy Boylan, but he wasn’t able to adjudicate in his own country. Mr Brzak told the media that Ireland, Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Slovenia are participating in the competition.

“We are comparing the level of achievements, comparing to the standards in each place,” he said.

“It’s a small community here, of seventy-five inhabitants and in the past we have judged towns like Dusseldorf and Bristol, but the system of our competition is able to judge the different type of municipalities.”