'My little farm has more biodiversity than the whole town of Portlaoise'

A Portlaoise Municipal District councillor has urged more biodiverse planting in the town, but his criticism stirred up defence of Portlaoise Tidy Towns' work.

Cllr Paddy Buggy who was given Fine Gael TD Willie Aird's seat, claimed that "my little farm has more biodiversity than the whole town of Portlaoise", while suggesting a new eco friendly flowerbed for the town, in a motion he tabled to their February 2025 meeting. 

His motion asked Laois County Council to convert the concrete paved corner at Keegan's Funeral Home beside Portlaoise's St Peter and Paul's Church into soft landscape.

"I'm a firm believer that we need to introduce more biodiversity into our urban settings. We notice now with climate change that when it rains, we've downpours. When we've concrete and tar, there's more water running into the system, and sometimes the wastewater treatment plant is not able to cope, which is ensuring that polluted water gets into rivers. We have to try and stop that. Part of the way is to have soft ground to soak up rain whether it's gravel or soil.

The footpath outside Keegan's funeral home. Image: Google Maps

"Every urban settlement all have to play a part in clean water. Until all wastewater treatment plants are upgraded we have to cope with the excess water," he said.

More Laois environment related stories here.

Cllr John Joe Fennelly defended Portlaoise's biodiversity. 

"You related it to the biodiversity on your farm, but Portlaoise Tidy Towns and this council have done huge work in fairness. I know what work goes into tidy towns and the work of this council on biodiversity projects," he said.

"I wasn't running down that now in fairness," Cllr Buggy replied.

Cllr Caroline Dwane Stanley who seconded the notion also said she acknowledged the great work of the tidy towns and council in planting up roundabouts and roads. 

Cllr Buggy had also mentioned the campaign by farmers to retain their EU nitrates derogation, to allow them to keep spreading manure.

"Clean water is going to be vital going forward. If you look at the world at the moment, there's no guarantee we'll have the tech industry and pharma industries generating so much revenue. We may be falling back on farmers again as we did in the last crash to try and keep the county growing. Unfortunately because of the nitrates derogation we could lose that based on poor water quality. Because farmers would have to cut back on production and economies would lose out," he warned.

Cllr Buggy is also calling for laybys for tractors on the N80 Portlaoise to Mountmellick road.

In reply to his motion, the senior engineer Wes Wilkinson said that the Portlaoise MD office will examine the location for conversion into a soft landscaped area to include biodiversity and pollinator friendly planting, with a view to doing the work before summer this year.