{"id":629954,"date":"2026-09-19T22:16:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T22:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/629954\/"},"modified":"2026-09-19T22:16:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T22:16:10","slug":"riverstown-blackrock-win-gold-medals-in-entente-florale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/629954\/","title":{"rendered":"Riverstown, Blackrock win gold medals in Entente Florale"},"content":{"rendered":"

Riverstown in Co Sligo and Blackrock in Co Louth have been awarded gold medals in the Entente Florale – a European environmental competition.<\/p>\n

The two villages competed alongside entries from Hungary, France, Italy, Germany, and Czechia, in the prestigious competition.<\/p>\n

The Entente Florale Europe, established in 1975, aims to promote a greener and more pleasant environment in European towns and villages.<\/p>\n

Often compared to the TidyTowns competition, Entente Florale places strong emphasis on partnership between local authorities and communities in delivering improvements.<\/p>\n

Riverstown and Blackrock took part in the competition following nominations from the Department of Rural and Community Development.<\/p>\n

\"old
\nThe old swimming pool walkway in Blackrock in Co Louth<\/p>\n

Entente Florale Europe entries are evaluated across 10 key criteria by an international jury panel, consisting of members from each participating country.<\/p>\n

More than 160 delegates attended this evening’s awards ceremony in the Visual Centre of Contemporary Art and the George Bernard Shaw Theatre in Carlow town.<\/p>\n

Carlow was selected to host the awards ceremony, following its performance in the 2024 Entente Florale Europe competition.<\/p>\n

Minister of State at the Department of Health Jennifer Murnane O\u2019Connor, who attended, said the standard was exceptionally high across the participating countries.<\/p>\n

Minister O\u2019Connor who presented the Green Spaces Special award to Kecskem\u00e9t, recognised the support of Sligo and Louth County Councils to both Irish entries.<\/p>\n

“Ireland\u2019s community effort and involvement, particularly our TidyTowns volunteer movement, is very highly regarded amongst our European counterparts,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Riverstown in Co Sligo and Blackrock in Co Louth have been awarded gold medals in the Entente Florale…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-629954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}