Dingle Peninsula named winner of 'Ireland’s Greenest Places 2025'
The Dingle Peninsula in Co Kerry has been crowned the overall winner of Ireland’s Greenest Places 2025.
The peninsula, which has been described as “the most beautiful place on earth” by National Geographic, claimed the title due to the local community’s dedication and commitment to their wonderful environment.
The judges said the core of the community’s work is based on the fact that they don’t take any of their peninsula’s considerable advantages for granted.
Although Dingle town itself has a population of only about 1,600 people with 13,000 in the wider area, a million people visit the Peninsula annually. A big area requires big green commitments, and the community has worked tirelessly to develop projects in energy, transport, agriculture and sustainable tourism.
Category Award Winners
Skerries in north Dublin won the title of Ireland’s Greenest Town for its enthusiastic embrace of a wide range of community-based green initiatives. These include everything from a pollinator corridor which runs from Skerries Mills to Ardgillan, to organising groups of local children to remove plastic from beaches, to installing solar panels on community buildings and several water refill stations around the town.
The judges were particularly taken with the ‘Skerries Beach Toybox’, which is full of the plastic toys children love to play with at the beach, such as buckets, spades and much more. Instead of buying more and more plastic beach toys every summer and adding to landfill, children can freely use and reuse the items in the Toybox. The judges described it as "a green enterprise that could and surely should be in place on every Blue Flag beach in the country”.
The village of Inagh in Co Clare, with a population of 192, has been crowned Ireland’s Greenest Village.
Among the many projects completed in recent years is the planting of 30 nut trees with the intention of establishing a nut butter business as well as planting an orchard of eating apples in the village playground – a playground which was constructed by local parents. There are also plans to plant raspberry canes there.
The category winner for Ireland’s Greenest Community is the Dysart River Project in Westmeath. Judge Eamon Ryan, who visited the project, found that water quality had been an issue at Lilliput in Lough Ennell in 2019 due to ongoing pollution issues, one of which related to runoff from farming activities on the river Dysart.
Thanks to collaboration with the local farming community, the Lough Ennell trout preservation association and several local representatives, a plan was drawn up to address the issue. The project was a success, and last year Lough Ennell was classified as achieving good water quality.
Finally, Dún Laoghaire in south Dublin won the title Ireland’s Greenest Suburb for the way it has reimagined urban space to prioritise pedestrians and cyclists, enhanced biodiversity with more trees as well as establishing more shared public areas.
‘Ireland’s Greenest Places 2025’, an initiative by The Irish Times in association with Electric Ireland, began in late May when members of the public were invited to nominate a special place or project which they believe contributes to a genuinely greener environment.
Each place was judged on specific criteria, including its beneficial environmental impact, level of ongoing collective engagement by the community and evidence of behavioural change by people.
The panel of five judges consisted of Eamon Ryan, former leader of the Green Party, Kevin O’Sullivan, The Irish Times Environment and Science Editor, Lisa Browne of Electric Ireland, and journalists Rosita Boland and Mary Minihan from The Irish Times.
In total, over 120 nominations were received from across the island, with the overall winner and category winners being chosen from a shortlist of 14 entries.
