Galway In Days Gone By

Unsanitary towns

The grave reports made at the last meeting of the Tuam Rural District Council regarding the renewed outbreak of fever in Dunmore ought to direct our attention to the entire lack of proper sanitation in our country towns and villages.

Local government can be concerned with no more important or vital thing for the welfare, health and happiness of the people than the provision of decent modern sanitation; and nothing reveals how far we are behind other communities than the lack of it.

We are saved from disease and death largely because our population is small and our climate healthy; we owe singularly little immunity to our own precautions, or to the rigid administration of the sanitary laws.

How many of our towns have a decent sewerage system or a proper supply of water? Galway is far from achieving perfection in this matter. Only a few weeks ago, Loughrea was visited with an epidemic of typhoid fever which is said to have been directly traceable to improper drainage.

For the past quarter of a century, Mr. C. J. Kennedy has been urging the erection of a waterworks in Dunmore. Every year, fever has recurred. Lives could have been saved and the health of the people improved had a proper system of drainage been instituted when labour and materials were cheap.

Pictured: A replica of the horse drawn carriage used on the Galway-Clifden, which had been used for transport between the two towns prior to the railway, passes through Eyre Square during the 1974 St Patrick's Day Parade.