Tralee Town Council employees were yesterday fitting ramps so the newly-elected mayor, who is a wheelchair-user, can take his position on the top table in the town hall council chambers.
The new mayor is Labour Party councillor Mr Terry O'Brien, who has spent the past 14 years in a wheelchair.
Mr O'Brien, the youngest of 10 children, was 20 when he became disabled after an accident at a summer camp in New York after he dived into a swimming pool and hit the bottom.
Following 16 months of therapy in Ireland and New York, Mr O'Brien started a new life and now works as a community development officer for the Irish Wheelchair Association.
He married a Killarney TSB bank official, Ms Teresa O'Sullivan, from Bantry, Co Cork, two years ago. The couple met at a computer course in the Institute of Technology, Tralee.
"I was blessed. I am sitting down, but I landed on my feet there," he said yesterday.
A sense of humour and what he called a healthy horror of politically correct speech had got him through.
He added that if he had been feeling sorry for himself and sad he would have done nothing.
Mr O'Brien "purposely" steered clear of raising disability issues in the first speech after his election on Wednesday night.
"First and foremost I am a councillor. Of course I have a grá for disability issues. It's not that I don't want to be seen as a person with disability or that I am ashamed of it or anything like.
"It's a coincidence in the Year of the Disabled that I have been elected mayor, but I have worked hard over the past four years and I am here to work for everyone," he said yesterday.
Mr O'Brien's election in 1999 with 512 first-preference votes, placing him in fourth place, surprised many.
Ms Maeve Spring's surplus helped him and it was Ms Spring who proposed him for the position of mayor this week.
Mr O'Brien said his first priority as mayor was to tackle Tralee's 1,000-strong housing waiting list.
A previous council acquired a land bank some years ago which, the new mayor said, would have to be developed.
The retention of Tralee General Hospital and ensuring that there would be no down-grading of the services, was also a priority, Mr O'Brien added.
He said he also intended to campaign for the development of a community hospital for the elderly who were now forced to go 20 miles to Killarney for care.
Since he was elected a councillor, the Tralee Town Hall has wheelchair access and a lift to the council chambers has been installed.
More car spaces have been provided, and Mr O'Brien is not afraid to highlight the hotels where he cannot attend public meetings because they are being held upstairs.