Special lighting to be used on Athlone cycleway bridge for certain occasions

The pedestrian and cycleway bridge which opened in Athlone last August will soon be lit up in a variety of different colours to mark particular dates and occasions, a council meeting heard recently.

The nearby railway bridge in the town has been lit up specially in recent years for occasions such as St Patrick's Day, International Women's Day, World Autism Awareness Day and the All Ireland football final.

Now a similar approach is to be taken with the cycleway bridge, after councillors in the Athlone Moate District approved a policy on how requests for specific lighting should be handled.

The colours and patterns of the lighting on the new bridge are "flexible" and can be adjusted through the use of an App, director of services Barry Kehoe explained.

And he said this system would also be implemented on the town bridge and Athlone Castle, both of which are due to see the addition of specialised design lighting this year.

Mr Kehoe said the council was conscious of the potential for disappointment or controversy if certain lighting requests were not approved.

He said only requests that "convey a positive message and portray the town positively" would get the go-ahead.

"We won't get into protest lighting, and requests that are considered to be overly politically sensitive or controversial won't be approved," he said.

The lighting must be in the public interest generally, and "requests that would benefit individual commercial interests" would be turned down.

The bridge lighting policy includes a number of set events or dates that will be marked with tailored lighting each year. These include Valentine's Day, World Mental Health Day, Earth Day, Halloween or Samhain, and several others.

Additional requests for different coloured lighting must be submitted to the Athlone Moate Municipal District at least a week in advance, and will be decided upon by the district manager (currently Willie Ryan).

"The lighting for the requested times would be between dusk and midnight, and after midnight we would go back to the standard lighting," Mr Kehoe explained.

"The requests should generally be in the public interest and should be easily recognised. There's no point in doing something that people don't understand, or that isn't being carried by the media."

Cllr Frankie Keena said he had received requests about lighting to mark nationally important days for people of various nationalities, and he asked if they would be considered.

"We need to be careful about national days," Mr Kehoe replied. "We could have different lighting nearly every second day of the week, given that there are almost 200 countries in the world and everybody is proud of where they come from.

"We respect that very much, but at the same time we need to make sure that the colours we put up are clearly representative of a group that's well established and well represented in the town."

Referring to the St Brigid's footballers' impending All Ireland final appearance, Cllr John Dolan said: "Hopefully we will have red and green lights on the bridge shortly, and the new All Ireland champions going across it!"

Cllr Aengus O'Rourke said the coloured lighting on the Irish Rail bridge in recent years had a positive community impact, and he felt this would be the case with the cycleway bridge also.

On the point of "politically sensitive" lighting, he agreed it could be problematic at times.

"I recently made a request to Irish Rail to turn the railway bridge blue and white to acknowledge the success of the Athlone GAA ladies' team when they won their final, and I was absolutely hammered on social media from people saying I was supporting Israel in the Israel and Gaza war!

"Of course, I then had to defend myself on my phone all weekend by explaining why the bridge was blue and white," Cllr O'Rourke said.