Look along the river in Boyle and the buildings on Main Street have their backs to you. Behind them are old storehouses and ground nobody has had much use for in years.

Ciaran Sheerin looks at that and sees restaurants. Or rather, the Boyle 2040 plan does, and Ciaran’s job is to help get it there. When he came in to talk to us in 2023 he had recently been elected chair of Boyle Town Team, which he described as an honour or a punishment, he wasn’t sure which. He wanted people to know what the town team actually does.

“Back in 1831, there was 60 people per hectare, and nowadays it’s six people per hectare.”

A focus on the town centre itself

The Boyle 2040 vision was drawn up around 2019 by Emmett Humphreys, an architect with Roscommon County Council. It is a long document, well over 100 pages, and Florence’s advice to listeners was to download it and have a look anyway.

Ciaran’s summary is shorter. The plan splits the town centre into three character areas, the Frybrook creative space, the King House cultural quarter and the Abbey area, and it starts from that view off the bridge. All the undeveloped space along the river, behind the shops, is the opportunity. Restaurants, eateries, green spaces, public spaces. You can already see the first of it in the civic space behind An Ríoga, the old Royal Hotel.

Next along the north bank comes a purpose built library. When we spoke, the funding was in place and building was expected to start around 2025 and take up to two years. The library, the space behind An Ríoga and the new riverside promenade would all join up with King House.

Carlo had spotted something else in the plan: a walking loop around town that takes in the river, the Lawn and the Abbey.

Breaking down the building blocks

2040 is a long way off, so the town team doesn’t try to swallow it whole. Ciaran describes three layers. There is the 2040 vision. Below that sits the LECP, the Local Economic and Community Plan, running three to five years. And below that is the town team’s own plan of works, one year at a time.

Their own budget is about 10,000 euro a year, and much of it goes on part funding bigger projects that come in through grant applications.

A drop in the ocean

The Lawn is a good example of how it actually goes. This year’s plan of works included landscaping there. The team set aside 5,000 euro, then walked up to have a look.

They came back down knowing it would be, in Ciaran’s words, “a drop in the ocean”. So instead of spending it and having little to show, they started working with the council on ORIS Measure 2 funding, which is a much bigger pot.

Florence asked what the Lawn could look like with that kind of money. Ciaran was honest about it: he isn’t the creative one, and he leaves that to the architects. But he talked about connecting it up with the St Patrick’s Well area and a planned distillery experience nearby, and making it part of the loop. Florence pictured picnics and kids running around. It is in the middle of town, and almost nobody goes there now.

The Shambles is another one. The plan imagines it as a covered food market. The team applied for funding a few years back to put a pavilion in front of it, where the public realm works were finished recently, and were turned down. Ciaran thinks they may go back to it.

No one can say we didn’t know

The biggest job on the town team’s list for the year was getting the plan in front of people. Ciaran says a lot of people in Boyle don’t know a thing about 2040, and that it’s on the town team to change that.

The answer is a brochure: a snapshot of the vision, a link to the full document, and practical information on renovation grants, what to do with land at the back of the house, and when the town team can write a letter of support for planning. The links sit behind QR codes so they can be updated. The aim was every house, pub and restaurant in town.

We’re not a secret society

Florence put it plainly. People hear there are grants out there, but it’s hearsay. They don’t know where to apply or who to ask.

Ciaran agreed. When the town team doesn’t explain itself, people fill the gap themselves, and that is on the team. That is why he wanted the podcast, the local papers, anything that would let them say what they do. They are not a secret society, he said. If anything, the opposite.

He was also clear about what the town team isn’t. Asked about help for new business owners, he said the team has to stay narrow. If it becomes a lobby group for everything wrong in town, it stops delivering the plan. Supports for new businesses are mostly for state bodies, but he would bring the question to the next meeting.

The first and second gate

Carlo asked about the link between Boyle and Lough Key, which has its own master plan alongside Boyle 2040. Ciaran explained the project the town team was working on at the time, paid for from the 2022 round of ORIS funding: around 30,000 euro to put a kerb on the cycle track between the first and second gate, and landscaping on either side of the gatehouse. Roscommon County Council handled the first part. The town team ran the landscaping.

Thomas Crummy Landscaping won the tender, and just clearing back the overgrowth on the first evening had already made a difference.

“You’re not gonna win every battle. You have to pick your fights.”

They had wanted flower beds too, but the money only stretched so far, so they put it into relawning the area properly first. If a local business wants to help with the cost of beds, Ciaran said, they should get in touch. He also thanked Boyle Tidy Towns, whose volunteers helped with the design.

And the gatehouse itself? The Chamber of Commerce was working on it, and the town team would support them. But it’s a protected structure, one of the finest buildings in Co. Roscommon, and it has to be done right. Watch that space, he said. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Do we need a new library?

Carlo raised a question a lot of people in town had been asking. Do we really need a new library?

Ciaran said up front that he wouldn’t convince the doubters and that it wasn’t really his job to defend it. Then he made the case. The funding that was available was for a library. It wasn’t for a hotel or anything else. What Boyle gets is not the library of old but a modern building with educational spaces and a range of facilities. And it frees up room in King House, which, he suspects, could use more exhibition space.

Carlo thought it would work alongside An Ríoga to give the town centre a heartbeat again, after years of the Royal sitting derelict.

A town we can sell

Ciaran sees it from the business side too. On the town team he represents Nordson Medical, where he has worked for more than 12 years. It’s a US owned company, and visitors and customers come to Boyle regularly. When the Royal was falling apart, he said, it was nearly a bit embarrassing to bring them through the centre of town.

“Now we’re in a position where you’re proud to bring someone through the centre of town.”

There is more public realm work planned, and businesses had started to come back after COVID, which he called a punch in the gut for the town. A couple more restaurants had opened. He wouldn’t say the word hotel, but everyone in the room knew it, and he made the case anyway: anyone thinking of opening one wants to set up in a town that’s on the way up.

“I wanna set up in a town that’s starting to lift and starting to rise from the ashes again.”

People per hectare

Florence summed up the plan in basic terms: bring visitors back, and bring people back to live in the town centre. Ciaran pointed to the Spool Factory, run by his fellow town team member Brian Nerney, which offers remote working space. On a recent visit he’d been to Studio Malia on the top floor, a business whose owner moved it out of Dublin. It has staff both remote and in person, and some people have moved to Boyle specifically to work there.

Florence raised the other side. Thirty or forty years ago, business owners lived over their shops. Now people are buying whole premises on Main Street to live in, and some worry that squeezes out business. Ciaran’s answer was the vacancy rate. Would you rather an empty building, or people living in it?

“There’s enough vacant properties for everybody.”

Then he read from the plan. In 1831, Boyle covered 57 hectares, at about 60 people per hectare. By 2016 the town had spread to 465 hectares, and there were six. That, he said, is Ireland in general. Everyone wants a garden and a parking spot. The government and local strategies are about getting people back into the centre.

A stranger’s paradise

Florence asked how Boyle keeps the welcome so many guests on this podcast have talked about. Carlo remembered a line from an earlier episode with Christy Wynne, who heard it from the two sisters in Matt Smith’s old pub: Boyle was a stranger’s paradise. Ciaran knew the stories, people staying in people’s houses on the street. The town is more multicultural now, he said, and keeping that welcome will be a challenge.

The accommodation just isn’t there

Florence then asked about the biggest stumbling block of all, the lack of places to rent or buy. Ciaran put on his business hat. Nordson has struggled to bring new employees to Boyle because the accommodation isn’t there, and he doesn’t want to see them pushing out local people looking for somewhere to rent.

He pointed to the refurbishment grants for town centre properties, up to 70,000 euro he thinks, and to building work already visible on Main Street. It takes time. His appeal to listeners was simple: don’t sit on properties. Rent them out, to students commuting to Sligo or anyone else, and if the town team can help with a letter of support or a contact in the council, ask.

It didn’t happen overnight

Before we finished, Ciaran wanted to say thank you. Boyle has had around 15 million euro in funding over a short few years, he said, and the town has had its fair share and then some. He thanked Frank Feighan, then local TD, for his support on the Royal project, and for always selling Boyle.

He thanked the volunteers on the town team, past and present, though he wouldn’t name anyone for fear of not surviving the next meeting. At their most recent one he kept them an hour and a half late. The emails go back and forth every day, and the WhatsApp group never stops.

Florence asked whether Boyle is ahead of other towns. Ciaran thinks it is lucky. Very few towns have a road map like this. Having the people to deliver it is the other half. Florence wanted to know if there would be a 2060 plan after. He’ll definitely be retired by then, he said. The next chair can have that one.