Dining with this crowd could give you chronic indigestion

Anyone would be forgiven for thinking that the people of Tuam had fled to the hills and that the traffic on the streets had been replaced by tumbleweed Ð such was the attendance which turned to a public meeting held in the town on Monday evening.A football team and their subs would have occupied more space in the 300-seater room of the Ard Ri House Hotel than the crowd that eventually turned out for the much publicised meeting, which turned out to be something of a fiasco.In fact just 18 members of the public Ð taking into account that there is around a 7,000 population in the greater Tuam area Ð bothered to turn up to the public meeting which was organised by Tuam Town Council.It wasnÕt that it was a bad night or anything like that. The roads were certainly not blocked by snow drifts and there hadnÕt been any significant rainfall in the Tuam area for the past three weeks so flooded roads was not an excuse.Nor was it a shock that so few people turned out Ð there were nearly more politicians than there were members of the public Ð because a few years ago a similar public meeting failed to become the main attraction in Tuam. But for the fact that a few people trickled in from a novena in the local cathedral at the time, it would have been equally embarrassing.Once again the main item on the agenda was the long running Tuam Hospital issue Ð and if it failed to draw an audience four or five years ago, there was little chance of it being a crowd puller this time around either. The lack of action over the issue has just worn people down and there is an acceptance that it just wonÕt happen.While the intentions of the Tuam Town Council members, who put a lot of work into organising this meeting, were admirable, the people of the town spoke with their feet and told the elected members that they are just not interested anymore.Not even the fact that there were other issues like the Tuam bypass, the Western Rail Corridor or...