Hundreds of people attended a rally yesterday in support of a campaign to preserve Kilkenny's city status.
The event at City Hall was organised by Kilkenny Chamber of Commerce and Industry which said it had collected 17,000 signatures in support of the campaign by yesterday afternoon. The figure was expected to rise to well over 20,000.
Representatives of the chamber and members of Kilkenny Corporation will meet the Minister for the Environment and Local Government, Mr Dempsey, on June 12th to press for Kilkenny's status as a city to be recognised.
They are angered by proposals in the Local Government Bill to give Kilkenny a town council, while only Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford would be recognised as cities.
Mr Dempsey's Department argues that there would be no change in Kilkenny's status and it could continue to use the royal charter granted the city in 1609 for ceremonial and related purposes.
However, the mayor of Kilkenny, Mr Tony Patterson, said it was very hard to see how the Bill would not take from the city's status. The local authority would be forced to use "town council" in its stationery. "We've been told we can call ourselves what we like . . . but to me it's not so much what we can call ourselves but what the rest of the country calls us," he said.
"If they call us a town, very gradually over the years we're going to forget ourselves why we do call ourselves a city." He believed some minor changes in the Bill could accommodate Kilkenny's needs.
Ms Una Hughes, president of Kilkenny Archaeological Society, she was "angry and sad" at what was happening.
