Púca festival highlights need for more tourist accommodation in the county

The recent Púca Festival was a huge success welcoming visitors from as far away as the USA and Canada but highlighted the need for more accommodation in Meath, according to Trim councillor Joe Fox.

At today's meeting of Trim Municipal District, Cllr Fox congratulated all involved with the festival, describing it as a massive success with visitor numbers up on last year. "A striking feature was how many tourists there were from America, Canada and France. We have done a lot of promotion in America and Canada and it is paying off and other attractions around the area would tell you too that they were going out visiting other attractions in the county too. It is a massive success and hopefully will go from strength to strength," he said.

However, one issue he felt it highlighted was that more accommodation is needed in Meath. "We are not too bad in Trim but the whole county needs a lot more accommodation. That was the feedback from some of the people I was talking to involved in it. A lot of them stayed in Dublin and just drove out to Meath and back again. We need more accommodation and we to start thinking outside the box. If you look at other countries, there is a lot more accommodation in rural areas, farmhouse accommodation and the likes of converted stables.

Cllr Noel French also congratulated all involved and said Puca festival was improving every year and that the key to its success was getting the community involved and the organsiers had worked very hard at doing just that with more and more community groups getting involved.

"I would also like to echo Cllr Fox's view regards to accommodation. One section we are not good at here in this county is for caravans and camper sites. If they had added a site within the vicinity of Trim or accessible by transport-and there was excellent traffic this year for the Púca festival- the numbers would have massively increased," he said reiterating it was the one sector of accommodation that they were missing in the county.

'Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme'