DOZENS of volunteers turned out to clean up Carlow town a week ago in a tremendous show of community spirit, but it didn’t take long for some brainless idiots to strike.

Vandals wrecked two beautiful planters in Potato Market just days after a Love Carlow clean-up on Saturday 15 October. However, the Love Carlow group was defiant after the damage and pledged it would not be tolerated.

A reward of €150 was put out by Love Carlow for information about who committed the senseless act and gardaí are reviewing CCTV footage from the night.

“We’re really interested in following it up and finding out who did it,” said Yvonne Jones, co-ordinator of the Love Carlow Day. “I would love to make an example of whoever did it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

The planters had been erected by Philip McDonald of Detail Clothing and his staff.

“At a cost to themselves and credit to them, they bought the stuff and got the guys to come in. They did a beautiful job and by Thursday morning we got a call that two of them had been messed with.”

Love Carlow highlighted the incident on social media, which generated valuable feedback on what the group should do.

“The whole thing about Love Carlow is to be positive. But we do have to realise that we have challenges in our town and anti-social behaviour is one of them,” she said. “We wanted to show people the challenges in the town and also to generate in the community the lack of acceptance that this is good enough for the town we live in. It is not good enough.”

Last Friday morning, Mr McDonald and the Detail team restored the planters to their former glory once again.

Ms Jones said a strong message needed to be sent out that the Love Carlow group would not be deterred in its bid to rejuvenate Carlow.

“We won’t stop. We won’t let this take from what we are doing. These things happen. We’re going to pick ourselves up and move on. This won’t stop our team from regenerating this town.”