Month: October 2011

THE spirit of enterprise will be alive and kicking in Clare next week as the county plays host to Enterprise Mid West, an event that has been dubbed a showcase for aspiring entrepreneurs in the region.

The event is being hosted by Clare County Enterprise Board in colaboration with four other enterprise boards from around the region.

The event will be targeting Clare’s small business community and also those who may be thinking of setting up their own small business within the county. The programme was launched this week. It includes a wide range of intresting events including a new visitor-friendly map for tourism providers, an interesting and inspirational talk from mountaineer and entrepreneur Pat Falvey, a building workshop from Therese Ryan and many more.

The CEO of Clare County Enterprise Board, Eamonn Kelly, said that the small business community in Clare continues to rely heavily on enterprise supports, delivered at a local level.

On Monday, October 10, the event will start with Therese Ryan and her building workshop at Bunratty Castle Hotel at 9.30am.

Best known from her appearances on RTÉ’s Hea lth of the Na tion and How Long Will You Live , her workshop will focus on the aspects of managing stress in the workplace.

Stephen Kinsella will be delivering a talk around the Irish economy and local development on Tuesday, October 11, at 12 noon at the Temple Gate Hotel in Ennis. Stephen himself will be discussing the economic landscape for Clare businesses.

Mountaineer, adventurer and entrpreneur Pat Falvey will be helping small businesses to ‘Reach for the Stars’ during his motivational talk on Wednesday evening at the Woodstock Hotel, Ennis.

Miriam Ahern and Anne Corcoran from Alighn Management Solutions will be the ones to run a interactive networking session just before Pat’s talk which starts at 6pm.

A full day-long mentoring clinic will take place on Thursday, October 13, with three experienced business mentors – Theresa Mulvihill from Smart Marketing, Michael Brynes and Associates and Sharon Cahir, from Cahir & Co solicitors.

Free mentoring appointments will be available from 10am to 5pm. Each session will last 50 minutes with the three mentors at the meeting rooms at the Vandeleur Walled Garden in Kilrush.

Closing the programme of events will be the launch of a dedicated tourism map of North Clare entitled ‘Rugged North Clare – Ireland As It Once Was’.

All of the events are to be presented at free of charge or highly subsided by the Clare County Enterprise Board.

SHANNON businesses with queries on the tax system are being encouraged to attend a seminar at the Oakwood Arms Hotel next week. The event is of particular relevance to family-owned businesses.

An overview of the various tax reliefs available will be provided at the event, which is organised by Shannon Chamber of Commerce.

Tips on how to qualify and how to make the most of tax reliefs will also be provided at the breakfast event on Thursday, October 13, from 7.45am to 9.30am.

“Dwindling tax-free thresholds have meant that with each passing year, the tax cost of succession has increased. The four-year National Recovery Plan points to reliefs and exemptions from capital gains ttax (CGT), capital acquisitions tax (gift and inheritance) and stamp duty being either abolished or greatly restricted,” said Shannon Chamber’s Chief Executive Officer, Helen Downes.

“Family-run businesses need to plan their succession strategies, not let them happen haphazardly. Practical issues such as making provision for retiring owners need to be addressed, as does the importance of taking legal advice when formalising arrangements. This seminar is the Chamber’s way of bringing this critically important issue to the fore,” added Ms Downes.

“Handing over assets or businesses to the next generation is a major decision and recent and proposed changes to the tax system have made it an even more urgent consideration,” said Eamonn Murphy, Tax Director with Grant Thornton, Limerick, who will speak at the seminar.

Speakers will share their experiences on structuring succession plans to get the best results for the individuals involved, balancing the intentions of the parties and the tax implications which arise.

To reserve a place at this seminar, contact Jackie Finucane at Shannon Chamber, alternatively participants can email admin@shannonchamber. ie or phone 061 708341.

THE search for the Banner County’s best new musical talent gets underway in Ennis next weekend with the opening round of the Mixtape Music Battle Extravaganza.

This year, the annual music competition, run by Clare Youth Service (CYS), sees greater emphasis on young musicians recording their own music and building their profiles as performing artists. Organised by members of the CYS Music Project, the competition will link in with the ongoing Mixtape series of live music events being run and promoted in Glór in Ennis.

The Music Project committee is comprised of young people supported by a number of staff and volunteers. The committee oversees the purchase of equipment, organisation of all performances and administration of training events.

Giving young bands, singers, DJs and performers of all stripes an opportunity to showcase their talents is one of the project’s central aims.

This year, the competition is again aided and supported by the Mid West Regional Drug Task Force and will take a different format to other traditional young band competitions. The Mixtape Music Battle Extravaganza will be staged over three separate events, each. The aim of the Mixtape competition is to attract all forms of musical creativity, from bands, DJs, producers, solo artists, beat-boxers, acoustic acts, rappers and traditional Irish music musicians.

The opening round commences on Saturday, October 15, in the main hall of the CYS building in Carmody Street in Ennis. Only four acts will progress from the first round to the next stage of the competition.

Contestants must register in advance before October 12. Application forms are available from the Bureau of Clare Youth Service in Ennis, as downloadable documents on our CYS Music Project Facebook page and also by email. Each act will receive 15 to 20 minutes of performance time on the day, and will be required to perform at least three songs, one of which must be original material. DJs and producers must include one of their own original productions in their sets also. The competition is open to the general public and performers are invited to bring along some audience support on the day. Audience admission is € 3. As with all Clare Youth Service events, this is a strictly drug and alcohol free event.

Four acts from the elimination round will be invited to progress to the second round of the competition, which will focus largely on composition and recording. Each act will be asked to compose an original song and will have one full day in the CYS studio, along with engineers, to write and record the song. The whole process will be captured on camera and each act will be asked to use the footage and recordings to develop their band identity online. The two acts that score the highest in this section will progress to the third stage of the competition and be invited to go head to head in the Mixtape Final to be held in Glor in early December.

A CAMPAIGN to save a pioneering newspaper set up by Clareman Breandán Mac Lua in London has been successfully concluded with news that The Ir ish Post will be back on the newsstands next week.

The weekly newspaper, which had a circulation of 70,000 at the peak of its popularity, was founded by Mac Lua in 1970 and had been closed by Crosbie Holdings in August but has been bought by Irish businessman Elgin Loane.

Five bids were received by Belfastbased liquidators FPM for the title, with Mr Loane, who owns the classified ads magazine Loot emerged as the winner for an undisclosed sum.

Mac Lua was born in Lisdoonvarna and raised in Miltown Malbay and was a long-serving editor of the newspaper that was inspired by his devotion to the preservation of Irish culture in London.

He began his career in Dublin as a full-time GAA official and freelance journalist. In the early ‘60s, he was one of the first two full-time executive officers appointed by the GAA at Croke Park and he was also a member of the association’s central council policy committee.

In 1967, he wrote the definitive book on the GAA’s controversial ban on foreign games, The Stea dfa st Rule , and he reported on Gaelic games and boxing for the Irish Press Group.

Following publication of The Stea dfa st Rule , he was chosen as the sole (and secret) inheritor and custodian of the only extant volume of GAA founder Michael Cusack’s 1880s weekly newspaper, The Celtic Times , the first periodical devoted to Gaelic games, which he donated as a complete volume to the Clare County Library in Ennis in the mid80s.

The ethos of Cusack’s newspaper “for the preservation and cultivation of the language, literature, music and pastimes of the Gaelic race” was the template Mac Lua followed when he established the Irish Post in 1970 with his business partner, County Waterford-born, Londonbased accountant Tony Beatty. Mac Lua served as editor and joint publisher until the pair sold the paper to the Smurfit Group in the late ‘80s.

Circulation grew to peak at about 70,000 copies a week.

“Everyone involved in the ‘Save the Irish Post’ campaign is delighted with the news,” spokesperson Fiona Audley said.

“The voice of the Irish in Britain is back, the voice that was started by Clareman Breandan Mac Lua, who was a huge figure in the Irish community in Britain,” she added.

Breandan Mac Lua passed away in January 2009.

THIRTY people have signed up to take part in the Clare Conquest amateur boxing competition. Organised by Ennis Chamber and Clare Crusaders, the event sees competitors with little or no previous boxing experience square off inside the ring. The aim of the game is to raise money for the Clare Crusaders, one of the country’s best-known providers of services to children with special needs.

After being through their paces over a tough 10-week training schedule, 36 boxers took part in last No- vember’s White Collar Boxing night in the West County Hotel. A crowd of over 1,000 people turned up to support the fighters who came from a wide variety of sporting and professional backgrounds.

The event was managed by former Olympian and professional boxer Cathal O’Grady of White Collar Boxing. Thirty first-time pugilists will step into the ring at this year’s fight night, which will take place at the Queens Hotel on November 25.

But before the boxing begins, all participants will be put through a tough training regime to make sure they are in peak physical condition,

Coached by Darren Ward of Fitness Solutions and Ennis Boxing Club coach Ollie Markham, a former national champion, this year’s group are facing eight weeks of stretches, push-ups, skipping, sparring, weights and punch bags in order to be fighting fit on the night.

Training got underway on Monday night at St Joseph’s Doora Barefield’s redeveloped facilities at Gurteen. The training sessions will continue at Ennis Boxing Club in Chapel Lane, the spiritual home of Clare boxing, which this year celebrates 50 years in existence.

According to a spokesperson, the event “enables the hosts, Clare Crusaders and Ennis Chamber, to continue their services to disabled children and to promoting and enhancing the local economy respectively. Sponsors have an opportunity to be associated with the most sought after event of the year and the people of Clare enjoy a fantastic eight weeks of excitement and interest, culminating in the fever-pitched exhilaration and entertainment of Fight Night. There are no losers in this boxing event, it’s winners all the way.”

VOLUNTEERS are the unsung heroes of Clare, whose work is vital to a host of organisations around the county who are making a huge impact on the daily lives of people across the county.

On National Volunteer Day last Fri- day, this spirit of volunteerism was hailed by Mary Morrissey, the driving force behind the development of the Clarecastle Daycare Centre that’s a model for other elderly care centres around the county.

“You couldn’t find words to describe them and how good and how important volunteers are. There is tremen- dous work being done out there by volunteers in Clare,” she said. “We have volunteers and they’re coming in for the last 10 years. They are unsung heroes. Three artists giving their time; they’re from every walk of life and they come in because they love the elderly.

“The elderly benefit an awful lot from the love they get from them and they get that back. Volunteers are wonderful people,” she added.

The Clarecastle Daycare Centre co-ordinator made her comments when taking part in Volunteer Day in Ennis on Friday, during which a host of voluntary, community and healthcare organisations enjoyed a unique celebration built around the county capital’s sculpture trail.

“We dressed up the sculpture in the Parnell Street carpark,” Ms Morrissey revealed. “It was a great idea that Sharon Meany and Dolores O’Halloran came up with. It was just to show what voluntary groups are doing. Knitting was the theme. We had to dress the sculptures. Each person had a sculpture to do and everything we had on display was made in the daycare centre, made by the elderly with the help of volunteers.

“It was a great idea, a wonderful way of bringing volunteerism out to the people. People don’t realise what’s going on everyday in centres around the county because of the work of volunteers,” she added.

Others groups to take part in the Ennis celebratations were the Clare Haven House, Caring for Carers, Clare Crusaders, Carrigoran, Cahercalla and the Kilmaley Daycare Centre.

CLAIMS that the cost of parking charges is “crippling” businesses in Ennis have been rejected by the Ennis Town Manager.

Ger Dollard was speaking at a debate on parking at yesterday’s meeting of Ennis Town Council.

The discussion was prompted by a motion tabled by Cllr Johnny Flynn (FG) who called on the council to “urgently review public car parking usage” in Ennis.

Mr Dollard said a review of car parking in Ennis commenced in autumn 2010 and resulted in the introduction of the 2011 on-street payand-display and car park byelaws on March 21.

He said the 2008 Ennis Car Parking Study had made a number of recommendations. In a report, Mr Dollard stated that the council had implemented seven short term measures aimed at improving parking in Ennis, including: discouraging long-stay parking within 100m of Abbey Street; re-designation of 39 long-stay spaces in Friars Walk for use as short-stay parking only; and reviewing the use of Bindon Street and the extension of two-hour-maximum stay zone to Market Place and Friars Walk.

Mr Dollard stated that supply currently exceeds demand at the Friars Walk car-park.

Reacting to a comment from Cllr Paul O’Shea (Lab) that “car parking is crippling businesses”, Mr Dollard said, “I wouldn’t accept the suggestion that the price of car parking is crippling business in Ennis”.

Mr Dollard said the debate on parking in Ennis had initially focused on the shortage of spaces but had now shifted to cost.

He said that just three sources of funding are available to local authorities: government funding, commercial rates and parking charges. He added, “If all of your income streams are under pressure, you are limited about what you can do.”

Mayor of Ennis, Cllr Michael Guilfoyle (Ind), dismissed the impact parking charges are having on local businesses. He said that the cost of shopping in Ennis is expensive, adding, “I don’t think Ennis is a cheap place”. Cllr Guilfoyle said the “doom and gloom (in Ennis) is blamed on car parking charges in the town”.

Cllr Flynn said he put forward the motion to stimulate debate on parking. He said businesses are down 50 per cent to 60 per cent on their Saturday trade.

Cllr Peter Considine requested that a report comparing parking charges in Ennis with 10 other similar sized towns be provided to councilors in advance of their annual budget estimates meeting. Cllr Frankie Neylon (Ind) claimed people are boycotting the Friars Walk car park.

SEVEN cubic metres of grease were recently removed from a wastewater pumping station in Ennis, a meeting has heard.

The grease had built up over a two-year period at the Francis Street pumping station. Town Engineer Eamon O’Dea revealed the detail at yesterday’s meeting of Ennis Town Council

Mr O’Dea’s comments prompted Cllr Frankie Neylon (Ind) to remark, “Europe has a problem with Greece but Ennis has a problem with grease.”

In a report to councillors, Mr O’Dea stated that “the difficulty with the build up of grease in sewers and pumping stations has increased over the last number of years and has resulted in greater maintenance costs”.

Mr O’Dea was responding to a motion tabled by Cllr Paul O’Shea. Cllr O’Shea had called for an inspection of the sewage system servicing the Fioruisce estate.

Mr O’Dea explained, “Clare Coun- ty Council water services area staff monitor this section of sewer each week and the last occasion that difficulties were encountered was Tuesday, September 6 when the council jetter was unsuccessful in fully clearing the sewer and this was done on Thursday, September 8.”

He added, “The primary problem is the build up of grease in the sewer and this has become a more significant issue over the last 12 to 18 months”.

Mr O’Dea said the Council had delivered an advisory sheet to all busi- nesses involved in the production of food in Ennis in regard to their obligations in disposal of grease, oils and fats into the sewer network.

He said the discharging of oils/ grease from frying utensils directly into the sewer is a “particular concern”.

He said the Gort Road recycling centre has a facility for the collection of household cooking oils.

Cllr Johnny Flynn (FG) told the meeting that the grease problems had resulted from people having a “lack of respect for public infrastructure”.

ENNIS Town Council may be forced to spend € 170,000 to demolish and reconstruct a section of a building believed to be the oldest home in Ennis. Town Manager Ger Dollard said yesterday that work is “urgently” required at the derelict McParlands site at the corner of Chapel Lane and Parnell Street.

Scaffolding and hoarding was erected around McParland’s after initial restoration work carried out in November 2009 revealed the 16thcentury building to be in a “danger- ous condition”.

The building, which is a protected structure, is home to a rare triple diamond Jacobean stone chimney that dates to the period 1580-1650AD.

In response to a motion tabled by Cllr Paul O’Shea (Lab), Mr Dollard said that the “building has been deteriorating and the short term measures put in place do not render the structure safe on a long term basis”.

Mr Dollard said the Council has taken detailed professional advice from the National Monuments Service. He told the meeting that it is clear that the owner of the property “does not have the financial resources to make the building safe”.

He explained that Ennis Town Council under its statutory powers is obliged to make the structure safe.

He continued, “This will involve the demolition of the gable wall and chimney and reconstruction of same. These works will not return the property to a habitable state but will make the building structurally safe.”

Mr Dollard said that a grant of € 85,000 has been secured to partially cover the cost of the works which he estimated could total € 170,000. Councillors expressed concern at the cost of the project.

Cllr Peter Considine (FF) said that while he acknowledged the importance of historical buildings, “there comes a point when you have to spend your money wisely.”

He said the estimated cost of the works represented a “lot of money down the Jacobean chimney”.

Cllr Frankie Neylon (Ind) said there was a serious health and safety issue to be addressed at McParlands. Mayor of Ennis, Cllr Michael Guilfoyle (Ind) expressed concern at spending € 170,000 on a chimney, for which he said there is no tourism benefit.

Mr Dollard admitted that the Council “finds itself in a position that it doesn’t want to be in”. He said the Council might be able to recoup some of the balance of the cost through any future sale of the property or further government grants.

Responding to concerns from Cllr O’Shea that the project will not go out to tender, Mr Dollard said he was happy the project would comply with procurement requirements.

He said the work has to be completed before the end of November in order for the council to avail fully of the € 85,000 grant.

AN ENNIS psychotherapist whose recovery from a brain injury was aided by her work on the Feldankrais Method says the therapy is now providing support to children and adults with disabilities in Clare.

Bernadette Kenny, co-ordinator of Tara Healing Arts Centre (Ennis), is one of the practitioners in Ireland of the Feldankrais method. The centre opened last year and provides a range of movement based therapies and counselling to children and adults.

The Feldankrais method uses movement and function as a gentle non-invasive aid in learning to learn. Bernadette explained that new research and neuro-science has validated the 60-year-old method, which has its own research in the USA, UK and Germany. “My work is scientifically based. It’s just not fully out there yet,” she said.

According to Bernadette the Feldankrais method benefits children and adults with special needs through improvements in walking, language and cognitive development as well as behaviour.

Bernadette has worked in the area of psychotherapy and counselling for 30 years and holds a four-year qualification in the Feldankrais Method. Originally from Ennis, she previously worked in youth services in London. She also spent two years working in Dublin at St Michael’s House, an organisation that provides community-based services to people with intellectual disabilities.

She is currently completing masters at the University of Limerick in Feldankrais and Dance therapy and how they can support learning of children with special needs.

Bernadette had reason to turn to the Feldankrais Method. Four years ago when she suffered an angioma (brain injury). She lost her speech and stability but by applying the lessons she had learned throughout her career, Bernadette made a full recovery.

She recalled, “It helped moderate and kept brain working and learning.”

According to Bernadette interest in her work as increased among parents who have been hit by the withdrawal of State supports for children with disabilities. She said her ultimate aim is to establish Tara Healing Arts as a non-profit organisation. “Everyone has the right to treatment.”

Bernadette will hold a talk about the Feldankrais Method at the Auburn Lodge, Ennis, on Friday, October 21, at 8pm.