Councillor Campbell left disappointed as motion to rescind Pikeville twinning with Dundalk fails

Dundalk councillor Anne Campbell has expressed her disappointment today, after her motion to rescind the twinning between Dundalk and Pikeville in Kentucky was defeated at yesterday's Dundalk Municipal District May meeting.

Dundalk Municipal District has been twinned with Pikeville, a town in Kentucky, since 2015. The twinning of the towns links Dundalk to an area with a population of seven thousand in Kentucky, where Dundalk billionaire late Pearse Lyons once founded his Alltech Brewing business.

Cllr Campbell tabled a motion, at the last municipal district meeting before the local elections, to dissolve the twinning between the two towns as a way of saving much needed funds for the local authority.

A number of councillor's gave their views on the twinning of the two towns at the meeting, including Cllr Marianne Butler, one of just two councillors who voted against the twinning of the towns in 2015.

Cllr Butler spoke at the meeting of Alltech's subsequent decision to open up a brewery in Dundalk and said she considered the €5,000 set aside for the twinning of the two towns was an appropriate amount. “We've got anything [we have spent] back 100 times over at this stage”, she added.

Dundalk Carlingford councillor Peter Savage also went against the motion, saying that he believed the motion was “small minded” and pointed to the arrival of Alltech in Dundalk, saying, “getting a factory here within three years is great”.

Supporting his party colleague's motion, Cllr Tomás Sharkey cast doubt on the benefits of the twinning, suggesting that it was the work done by the likes of the IDA and DkIT that brought the jobs to Dundalk.

The vote on the motion was tied with six votes for and six against the motion, with Cllr Maria Doyle abstaining from the vote. Cathaoirleach Conor Keelan used his casting vote to reject the motion.

Speaking to the Dundalk Democrat today, Cllr Campbell said:

“I’m disappointed with the result of the motion, but I’m glad all the issues are how twinning is picked, run and assessed have had the opportunity to be debated and by those who were opposed, a lot of them had reservations about how twinning is assessed and the use of it, and while I am disappointed that the motion did not pass, I am glad that I got the opportunity to have this debate”.