FERMANAGH District Council Chief Executive Brendan Hegarty is to hold a meeting with Enniskillen business and property owners next month to discuss preparations for the G8 Summit next June.

With just over six months before the eyes of the world focus on the Fermanagh's County Town, Mr Hegarty is aware that time is of the essence in order to ensure Enniskillen is looking its best.

"The meeting will provide an opportunity for us to identify what needs to be done and collectively see what is achievable in the time scale and with the resources that we have," he explained, "It will be an opportunity to bring people up to date on where we are with various projects as well.

"More importantly I want to use the opportunity to highlight to property owners and business people in the town what funding streams are currently available to them.

"At present there are some funding opportunities that the can access as opposed to the Council so I will have a representative from the Department of Social Development at the meeting to outline these.

"This may be to do with urban regeneration or shop frontage schemes." Mr Hegarty said the meeting would also be an information session on what the Council intends to look at between now and June 2013.

"We want the town to be looking as well as it can so we are looking at how we can achieve that and having discussions about what needs to be done and whether or not we are in a position to do it.

"But the Council can't do it all on its own. We need to work in partnership moving forward to June next year. "I'm not saying there will be funding opportunities made available to us between now and June, and the timescale is very short, so we need to know now what the views are of people in the town to see if we can secure any assistance."

Mr Hegarty said the Council were also viewing preparations for the G8 in much wider terms than just Enniskillen.

"We will want to explore whatever opportunities there are to maximise the profile of the County as a whole. So we will be talking to a number of Departments in due course," he added.

The meeting between business and property owners is expected to take place on December 10 at 6pm in Townhall.