The team ethic concept has always been an important feature in the life of South Tipperary County Manager Ned O'Connor.

An avid sports fan when it comes to supporting the county hurlers or his favourite football club, Everton, Ned O'Connor puts teamwork on the top of the agenda in his role as the leading administrator in South Tipperary.

He is a firm believer that teamwork and togetherness is crucial for South Tipperary to succeed in this economic climate and once that foundation is well secured, the area will be poised to avail of the upturn in the economy when it happens.

Throughout his distinguished career as a public servant - he started working with the authority in 1964 - Ned has instilled the ethic of team work into whatever responsibilities he has taken up.

Wherever he has served in the urban areas of South Tipperary or at the helm of the County Council as county manager, he has surrounded himself with a cohesive and comitted team working with a common purpose..

It starts with the 800 plus staff, indoor and outdoor, located all over South Tipperary and that teamwork in place in those offices also applied to the towns, villages and communities that make up South Tipperary.

County Manager for the last eight years, he believes a sea change took place in South Tipperary some years ago that enables everybody interested in working together to develop and promote the county to achieve better results.

IT is a source of relief and pride to him that gone from the South Tipperary psyche is the damaging competitiveness that towns engaged in for a long number of years that in his view held back the county from fulfilling its potential.



He cites the example of the protracted, acrimonious and bitter dispute between Cashel and Clonmel over the most suitable location for a single site for the development of the acute hospital services in the region.

That row lasted for over thirty years while the health services in the area stagnated and that sad chapter stands as the primary example of what an unhealthy rivalry can lead to.

That game changing moment, which saw all elected members throughout South Tipperary buying into the strategy that had to be adopted, came when South Tipperary was omitted from the National Spatial Strategy.

"We had to develop our own strategy in response to that setback. We had a very good urban infrastructure in place, between Tipperary town, Carrick, Clonmel, Cahir and Cashel, all nicely located. For years rather than use this as a positive, by and large the towns were competing with each other. That had to change," said the manager.

He said at the very core of that strategy was the need to have one growth centre, that South Tipperary needed a town comparable with Ennis, Tralee or Dundalk.