Ambassador to join in festivities for 30-year-old twins

THIS weekend Kilkee will celebrate the 30th anniversary of its twinning with the town of Plouhinec in France.
French Ambassador to Ireland Emmanuelle d’Achon will attend the ceremony in Kilkee. The ambassador has been in the post since July 2010.
Over 80 people are to travel from Plouhinec to participate in the celebrations including many of those who have visited Kilkee on previous twinning trips. There will also be a small delegation travelling from the German town of Weidenburg, which is twinned with Plouhinec. The Plouhinec choir will stage an informal concert at the Kilkee Bay Hotel at 8.30pm on Saturday and all local people are welcome to attend. The official ceremony will be at Cultúrlann McSweeny following 11am mass on Sunday. A commemorative tree planting ceremony is scheduled for Allender’s Field afterwards.
In 1983, Kilkee and Plouhinec in Brittany signed a twinning agreement to promote social, cultural and commercial exchanges between the two communities. Many towns in France and particularly Brittany, a Celtic region, have twinned with Irish towns.
At the February meeting of Kilkee Town Council, members decided to hold a plebiscite in Kilkee to change the name of Kilkee town square to Place de Plouhinec.
“We’ve three months to do this,” Councillor Paddy Collins said at the time while Councillor Lily Marrinan Sullivan suggested that residents should be informally consulted first.
However, it was decided at the March meeting of the town council not to proceed with a name change for the square. Instead that there will be a tree-planting ceremony in Allender’s Field with a plaque due to be erected to commemorate the anniversary.
Kilkee twinning president Paul Williams, who is also Kilkee Chamber of Commerce secretary, believes the 90 visitors will benefit Kilkee economically this weekend.
“In the current climate, we need to cement relations with places like France and Germany who are virtually our next door neighbours. Having that many people come over is a short-term boost for the town and hopefully will provide a long term boost and re-energise the twinning,” he said.
“You need these kind of things to happen on a regular enough basis to keep the twinning in the public eye because people often forget about the twinning,” Paul Williams added.
Plouhinec consists of its town, two villages on the nearby River Etel and the surrounding rural area. The principal economy is mixed farming with a thriving vegetable co-operative, rural tourism and aquaculture, fishing and employment in Lorient. There is a beach south of the town and some interesting terrain along the coast and river inlets. French is the spoken language, although some older folk speak Breton.