Month: May 2012

EAST Clare people commuting to Limerick City will soon be able to reduce their travel time to just eight minutes following the decision to grant planning permission for Mountshannon company Harbour Flights to operate a seaplane base in Limerick.

This completes Harbour Flights roster of six sea-airports in the region, and represents a major step forward in the Clare company’s bid to establish a commercial seaplane service for tourists and locals in Clare.

While Harbour Flights have now been granted permission to operate six sea-airports on Lough Derg, Galway, Dublin, Cobh, Foynes and Limerick, they are still awaiting final approval from the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) to operated as a licensed commercial airline. Once this final hurdle is achieved they will be able to begin trading in a matter of days.

According to Emelyn Heaps, CEO of Harbour Flight, the new company has the potential to revolutionise the tourism industry in Clare.

“This is a massive step for us – we have been waiting for 22 months for this decision to come though.

“Our plan is to offer scenic flight from these locations as well as commuter services. We will have you into Limerick from Lough Derg in eight minutes. We will also be able to take people from Lough Derg to Dublin in about 40 minutes,” he said.

“Tourism is going to be our main product – that is why we started this in the first place. At the moment we in Clare have become a day destination for Dublin. People are getting on buses and travelling to the Cliffs of Moher or Bunratty and then back to Dublin again. The concept behind this was to make Dublin the day visit, not Clare.

“We can have people in Dublin from any of our regional airports. So people can enjoy their day in Dublin and then come back here and stay and spend their money is Clare,” added Heaps.

PEOPLE born and living in Clare will soon be outnumberd by residents who were born outside the county.

That’s the future that’s in store for the Banner County if the population trends highlighted in the latest 2011 Census of Population bulletin report published by the Central Statistics Office continue.

All because, nearly half of the people now living in Clare were born outside the county. Census returns have revealed that 47.7 per cent of Clare’s population were born outside the county boundary.

This percentage translates into 55,903 of the population of 117,196 not being born in the county, a statistic that places Clare far ahead of the provincial and national average for people the CSO say were “born outside the county of usual residence”.

At a Munster level, the CSO fig- ures have shown that the average for those born outside the county of residence stands at 30.8 per cent of the province’s overall population of 1,246088, while nationally this figures stands at 37.6 per cent.

One reason for the high percentage rate in Clare has been attributed to the lack of maternity services in Clare, which closed in the late 1980s, while the census results have also revealed that 18,522 of the county’s population were born outside the Republic of Ireland, a figure that translates into 15.8 per cent of the overall current population of the county.

The figures were released by the CSO last Friday, with the other standout statistics being the continued growth in the environs of the western corridor, with the populations of Quin and Sixmilebridge jumping by 65.5 per cent and 51.1 per cent respectively.

CLARE’S most senior garda has acknowledged the “widespread” problem of fuel theft in Clare.

Chief superintendent of the Clare Garda Division John Kerin said yesterday that gardaí had received an estimated 40 reports of fuel theft so far this year. He said roughly 25 report referred to the theft of home heating oil while around 15 to 20 concerned theft of fuel from cars.

He explained, “It is fairly widespread, right across the country and people are using sophisticated methods.”

Chief Supt Kerin was speaking at a meeting of the Clare Joint Policing Committee (JPC) in Clare County Council.

There have been calls for greater use of the community text alert scheme to halt the rise of robberies in rural parts of the county.

Speaking yesterday, Chief Supintendnent of the Clare Garda Division, John Kerin, said there had been 14 more burglaries in Clare over the first three months of 2012 compared to the same period last year.

The number of assaults was down from 302 in 2010 to 225 last year. There were 36 incidents of arson in 2011, while gardaí in Clare dealt with 46 sexual offences.

Clare’s most senior garda also confirmed that the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) is carrying out investigations in the Clare area.

There have been 440 garda checkpoints set up in Clare during the first four months.

Chief Supt Kerin added, “I want to get guards out of the station and onto checkpoints.”

Councillors backed proposals to extend the use of community text alert schemes to all parts of the county.

The meeting also heard that there had been 41 garda retirements in Clare since 2010.