If you have been to Cahir and thought it was notably well kept, what you noticed was a few dozen volunteers.
What the group has won
Cahir holds a bronze medal in the national SuperValu Tidy Towns competition and has been improving its mark year on year rather than holding steady. In 2025 the town added eleven marks on its previous score, which is a substantial jump in a competition where most entrants move by two or three.
In 2024 Cahir won two national category awards: Young Persons in Tidy Towns, and Waters and Communities. The first of those is the interesting one. Tidy Towns groups everywhere struggle to recruit anybody young, and a group that cannot is on a clock.
The local awards
Alongside the national competition, Cahir Tidy Towns runs its own awards for gardens, estates, floral displays and business frontages, which is how a group of volunteers gets a whole town to take part rather than doing the work themselves.
Recent winners give a fair picture of the range. The overall award in 2025 went to Dr David Butler of Carrigeen Castle for the work done on the entrance and gardens there. Mace on Castle Street took best newcomer business, and Birchdale and Nash Place were recognised as best kept small estates.
What it means for a visitor
Practically, it means the approaches are planted, the shopfronts are looked after and the public spaces are maintained. Cahir is a town people stop in on the way somewhere else, and it makes a better impression than most towns in that position do. That is not an accident, it is a couple of hundred hours of unpaid work a year.
The Inch Field playground and green space and the riverside paths are part of the same effort.
Getting involved
Tidy Towns groups always need people, and they need them for ordinary work: weeding, planting, painting, litter picking. If you live in Cahir or nearby, the group is easy enough to find through Cahir's community channels and the county council.
If you are visiting, the useful contribution is smaller and simpler. Take your litter with you.
Seeing the town
Things to do in Cahir and the guided walking tour cover what there is to see, most of which passes through spaces this group maintains.