The benches along the Salthill Promenade are “broken and worn down”, the memorial tree for Trent Keegan “has vanished”, and the Salthill Park bandstand is “held together by paint”.
This is Labour city councillor Niall McNelis’ withering critique of the state of Salthill which he said should be a “jewel in the crown” for the city, but instead is in danger of “becoming cast aside and unfixable”.
Cllr McNelis has sought an urgent meeting with officials of the Galway City Council to discuss the maintenance of Salthill’s various outdoor facilities.
Cllr McNelis said the benches along the prom “are in urgent need of repair”, while those along the golf course beside Blackrock, which were donated by the Galway Lions Club, have been damaged and the Lions Club plates removed.
As well as this, a tree that was planted in 2008, along with a memorial stone, for Trent Keegan, a popular photographer based in Galway, who was tragically killed in Kenya, “has vanished with the stone overgrown by grass and no tree”. Cllr McNelis has now joined the calls for a tree to be re-planted at the site at least.
He said another neglected area of Salthill was the Victorian-esque bandstand in Salthill Park. “This bandstand has stood the test of time but it is being held together by paint and needs to be maintained for future generations,” he said.
Cllr McNelis has been in touch with youth groups in Galway City West with a view to holding a battle of the band competition on the site during the summer.
“Salthill is a great place to live, work and visit,” he said. “These simple improvements will halt the sliding scale of it becoming cast aside and unfixable. If these works are not carried out soon the costs will rise in the long term. We must make sure that simple works are not held up.”
