Month: October 2012

SECTIONS of the ceiling of one of Clare’s largest shopping centres fell in following heavy rain during the week. The incident occurred at Dunne Stores in Ennis on Tuesday when water poured onto the busy shop floor shortly before 1pm.

Sections of the ceiling have been removed for repairs. One eyewitness said, “It was like a waterfall. It was unreal the amount of water that fell.” It followed a series of exceptionally heavy showers that drowned the county capital. Parts of Parnell Street suffered flooding, with the water at one stage rising above the level of the footpath.

Local businessman Alfonso D’Auria said people in the area were shocked by the amount of rainfall. He said, “Now, in fairness to the (Ennis Town) council, they have done a bit of work on the drains. They cleared away a lot of the leaves, which made a huge difference. But the amount of rain that fell that day was incredible. I don’t know if it was just a freak thing but it looked bad for the street, the amount of water that was just sitting there. The amount of people using the footpath who got drowned wet there was just ridiculous.”

Mr D’Auria said the problem was compounded by rubbish being dumped in the area. He explained, “We have people dumping big black bags of rubbish in the lanes every week. Every week there is rubbish being dumped. I’ve had to put locks on my bin. There is only one bin on Parnell Street.”

Ennis Town Council has said that the tender process has started for phase two of the Ennis Flood Relief Scheme. Phase one of the scheme is credited with preventing floods in large areas of the town centre during November 2009.

Last week’s council meeting heard that residents in the Tulla Road and other areas along phase two of the scheme have encountered difficulties securing house insurance because their homes in a flood risk area. Town Engineer Eamon O’Dea encouraged people to contact the Council. He said the Council would request the Office of Public Works (OPW) to write to insurance companies. Mr O’Dea said that once complete, the scheme would alleviate flooding in the area.

Cllr Johnny Flynn (FG) called for the OPW to provide a blanket certificate for residents in the area.

SHANNON anti-war protester, Margaretta D’Arcy, had planned to scatter the ashes of Booker Prize-shortlisted playwright John Arden on the runway at Shannon Airport on Sunday, but was prevented in doing so.

Seventy-eight-year-old Darcy, who has protested at Shannon Airport on a regular basis since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan more than 10 years ago, managed to scale the fence at Shannon Airport on Sunday with fellow protester Niall Farrell.

The protest was undertaken to highlight to use of unmanned drone attack craft in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The pair managed to occupy the runway at Shannon Airport for 15 minutes before they were apprehended by security.

Ms D’Arcy was the long-time partner of the late John Arden, who passed away earlier this year. The pair were regular visitors to Shannon and recently performed a play about the Ralahine Commune, a co-opera- tive society founded in Newmarketon-Fergus in 1831.

In a statement released to the media, Dette McLoughlin, of the Galway Alliance Against War, said Shannon Airport had been used for special extraordinary rendition flights.

“Over the past 11 years, Shannon Airport has been transformed into a US military base, literally into a Warport. Millions of armed US troops, millions of tonnes of weaponry travel freely through Shannon, including the killer drones that daily rain down terror and death on the peoples of Afghanistan and Paki stan,” she said.

“Shannon Airport has been an integral part of the CIA’s illegal “extraordinary rendition” programme. It is known that the kidnappers and torturers of a number of victims of the CIA have travelled unhindered through our country. This makes consecutive Irish governments guilty of colluding in torture as well as mass murder.”

A Garda spokesman said two people were arrested, then released without charge. A file has been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

IT’S the end of an era in Ennis after well-known businessman Jimmy Brohan retired after 49 years in business. Jimmy has decided to step away from his hardware business on Parnell Street. The premises will be taken over by new Clare owners. Family, friends and a large group of traders gathered in O’Halloran’s Bar last Thursday for a presentation to mark Jimmy’s 49 years in business. A native of Ruan, Jimmy started out at John Roughan’s store just off O’Connell Square in 1963. He worked there for 20 years before leasing and eventually buying the premises in the mid-1980s. An incident in the year 2000 damaged the building and forced the relocation of Brohan’s to Parnell Street. In an interview with the paper last year, Jimmy spoke about the skills needed to run a successful business. He said, “One secret is that you have to be nice to people. If you’re nice to people and treat them right, they will come back to you. We have people coming to us since I started and now their family are coming (to us). Only for them we wouldn’t be here. “We do a good town trade but we get a good country trade as well. We get them from other counties too. A few years ago, you’d have people from Cork on the way to Knock, busloads, they would always call to me on the way back.” A family-run business, Brohan’s is known for having a wide collection of stock. Jimmy said, “People still come to me with the old spraying cans, copper spraying cans that the farmers would use. They weren’t made for 30 years or more but I still have bits and pieces for those. That’s just one item. There would be lots of other bits and pieces that people come to us looking for. I don’t care how old it is, I love to have it.”

A LOCAL campaign to amalgamate Ennistymon’s three secondary schools has been resurrected, with a number of meetings taking place between the schools and local representatives in recent months.

A meeting involving representatives from the three schools – Scoil Mhuire, the Ennistymon CBS and the Ennistymon Vocational School – and a number of Clare politicians took place in Ennistymon last Monday, October 1. The meeting was attended by Fine Gael TD’s Pat Breen and Joe Carey and it is hoped that the renewed local campaign could help kick-start the project on a national level. The Clare People understands that the project is currently stalled by a complex legal issue involving the site designated for the new school. Until this issue has been resolved at a national level, progress on the school cannot be made.

A campaign to amalgamate the town’s three secondary schools has been ongoing for more than two decades.

It was announced more than ten years ago that a new school build- ing was to be built on a patch of land close to the current Scoil Mhuire building. Despite this announcement, construction work never began on the project.

The campaign to bring about the school amalgamation restarted in earnest earlier this year with a meeting between representatives of the schools before the summer break. This was followed by last week’s meeting and a third meeting is now planned for November of this year.

Responding to a parliamentary questions from Ennistymon Senator Martin Conway (FG) earlier this year, the Minister for Education, Ruairí Quinn (Lab), confirmed that the Government still planned to go ahead with the amalgamation – once any outstanding issues with the site have been resolved.

The three schools in Ennistymon currently have around 600 students between them.

Campaigners for the school amalgamation believe that educational facilities could be offered at a higher standard if the three schools pooled their resources into one large school. Students in the senior cycle also walk between the three schools as some classes are already being shared between the schools.

AN ILLEGAL dump, discovered in a turlough in the North Burren, has the potential to seriously pollute public and private water schemes in the Gort and Kinvara areas.

That is according to Senator Lorraine Higgins (LAB), who also described the illegal dump at Caherglassaun Lake as being a “significant” operation.

The cost of cleaning up the estimated two tonnes of rubbish which have been discovered in the waterway could also run into the tens of thousands.

The rubbish is understood to be mostly household waste, and has the potential to cause significant impact to the turlough and its surround plant and animal life. The waterway is renowned for it fish and is also a top quality natural habitat of plants and animals.

“When I was first contacted on the matter, I went to the site and it was clear this was an illegal operation of some significance,” said Senator Higgins.

“It would be a place which would have special amenity value in the area certainly, and perhaps recreational as well. More disturbing again is that if there was run-off from it, it might enter the water supply and could make people in the areas of Gort and Kinvara sick.

“I would urge people in the constituency that if anyone arrives at their door and offers to dispose of household waste for a fee that seems below market price, or any price for that matter, they are fully entitled to find out if that person has a permit to dispose of the rubbish. If they do not have a permit, I would urge people not to use them because it is the householder that will be liable for prosecution,” said Senator Higgins.

Caherglassaun Turlough is located about six kilometres to the west of Gort, just outside of the Coole Nature Reserve and 5km south-east of Kinvara. Caherglassaun is both a lake and a turlough, with a permanent lake at its centre and a large surrounding area which floods at areas of heavy rain.

GARDAÍ in Shannon have this week renewed their appeal for information about a serious assault that took place in the town last Sunday week when a man was stabbed in his home in the Cluain Airne estate.

The man was attacked at 6.30am in the morning after he opened his front door and was then stabbed in the stomach by a man who was standing outside. The man then fled the scene.

Last week Gardaí released details of the person they believe is responsible for the attack.

He is described as being 5’8” in height and approximately 20-21 years of age. He was wearing a navy jacket with an Eircom logo on the back. Gardai say he may have had a black eye.

Now, a week on, Gardaí have released a photograph of the type of jacket being worn by the man who committed the attack.

“We hope that this picture might jog someone’s memory,” a Shannon Garda spokesperson said. “This is the kind of jacket he was wearing and we believe him to be local to Shannon and living in Shannon,” he added.

THE number of people signing on the live register in Clare has dropped to its lowest level in more than three years – but it is emigration and not job creation which is credited for the drop.

According to new information from the Central Statistics Office (CSO), a total of 9,674 people signed on the live register in the county in September. This is the lowest number on the live register since May of 2009, and represents a month-on-month drop of more that five per cent.

While some of this drop can be attributed to students returning to third-level education, emigration is considered to be the main driving force behind the record low.

According to Rita McInerney, CEO of the Ennis Chamber of Commerce, job creation has been flat in the county in recent months, with some sectors making gains while other sectors are being forced to let people go.

“It is slow at the moment and it is very different from one sector to the next. The retail sector is certainly having a difficult time of it but hopefully that will change coming up to Christmas,” she said.

“Export businesses in the county are doing well and that is good news, they employ a lot of people, but if we are to see some new job creation, we really need people to get back to spending again.

“Emigration is certainly a big factor in all of this. It is one of the unavoidable outcomes of a recession. It is about people looking at their options and deciding what is best for them and their family, whether that be going back to education or emigration.”

The numbers signing on in Clare last month were 300 down on the September 2011 figures and 500 down on the same month in 2010.

CLARE has the second highest rate of same-sex civil partnerships in Ireland, with 15 couples from the county tying the knot since the civil partnership legislation became law in January of 2011.

According to figures released by the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network (GLEN), Clare has the second highest incidence of civil partnerships per head of population – with only Dublin registering a higher rate of civil partnerships.

While 15 Clare couple have been granted civil partnerships, only two couples have been able to have their ceremony in the county.

According to Kilrush man and Director of GLEN, Brian Sheehan, the large uptake in civil partnerships will prove a stepping stone to full marriage for gay couples.

“It has been an incredible take-up in such a small space of time. I think once same-sex couples become more visible in Clare and other places, more and more people will see that a same-sex couple is no different from a heterosexual couple. This is people making a really profound commitment to each other,” said the West Clare man.

“I think people are starting to realise that this is a marriage, with all the same responsibilities and commitments.

“So more and more people are starting to see that gay couples should have all the same rights as other [heterosexual] couples. I think it has demystified it for a lot of people.

“When you look at the figures and see that 14 people over the age of 70 have had a civil partnership, you realise that people have been waiting for this for a long time, to have their relationships recognised. Many of these couples will have been together for 30 or 40 years.”

Under the current civil partnership legislation, there is still a legal connection between a civil partner and the biological children of his or her spouse.

This also creates issues surrounding adoption, when same-sex couples are not allowed to adopt jointly.

“SIT back and enjoy the show,” the patient was told, as he settled into a night in Accident and Emergency in the Mid Western Regional Hospital Limerick to watch the horror show unfold.

It was 1am Saturday and although he was just admitted to the hospital by an A&E doctor, who was too concerned for his health to let him home for the night, the nurse in charge was giving him no false hopes.

He was 27th in line on trolleys in the overcrowded A&E Department waiting for a bed and the night was still young.

His bed for the night would be that trolley, and he would be lying as close to strangers as he had to his wife the night before in a loud, bright and very busy accident and emergency department.

The man in question had arrived from Clare at 7pm on Friday evening, having been referred on by his own GP.

After an hour’s wait in the waiting room he was called and assessed by a triage nurse.

Afterwards he was given a trolley situated right in the middle of a corridor.

A few hours later he would see a doctor, hours later again have an xray and hours later again the results.

Behind his head about 20 feet away was the entrance for the patients brought to the hospital by ambulance from Clare, Limerick and North Tipperary.

All hoped no one would be coming in that entrance in a hurry because there were patients on chairs and on trolleys causing more than just a small obstacle.

To the Clareman’s right was a row of chairs with patients holding arms and sides, some with blood cannula, where they had given blood samples earlier, still in their arms.

Beside them were three beds with patients on trolleys lined up perpendicular to the wall. Then a curtain and more of the same until the corridor turned left, or you went straight on to the ambulance entrance.

At his left arm just metres away was a door used by staff; beside that a chair with a patient holding his left arm; next a man on a drip trying to sleep on a trolley with “Ambulance triage point” on a sign overhead; next a collection point for blood samples with yet another two trolleys in front of that, before a door to what appeared to be a treatment room for seriously ill patients.

Yes, no one was going anywhere fast that night – nurses, patients, tea ladies or paramedics.

I wasn’t going anywhere either, as I observed over stretched, stressed staff and tired, ill and irritated patients making their way through the night.

Each area of the A&E was filled with trolleys, people on chairs and the walking wounded.

A teenage girl with a gash on her head was semi-conscious and vomiting into a paper tray held by her father.

A man in a full back brace was wheeled around at will to make way for other patients as they came and went.

Young mothers arrived with crying babies, more experienced mothers with sons who had left the hurling field early holding arms and legs, and other people with their elderly mothers who were all lined up sideby-side hoping for a quieter spot for the night.

In the mix of the physically ill and the injured were the drunks, prisoners and patients with mental illnesses who just had nowhere else to go.

For a lot of the later patients, a visit to A and E was a regular occurrence as the other services had let them down.

Staff were doing their best many using trench humour to survive the battle of the night. The few that could laugh were the lucky ones; most were beyond seeing the funny side.

“Morale is at an all time low,” I was told. It wasn’t hard to see why that was the case.

One staff member told me how she had broken down in tears earlier in the night out of pure frustration.

“How can we help anyone like this? It is the patients that will suffer,” she said.

Another employee told me they were not allowed to talk about the horrors of the service, but said to her mind it was all a health and safety issue.

In the midst of the madness was a nurse you knew had seen it all before.

She walked through the chaos adjusting drips, reassuring patients, all the time bringing in the next person for the long wait.

Here was a woman who could be of use to James Reilly and the Government, but had anyone ever asked the frontline staff what needs to be done, not the unions or the person who shouts loudest but the quite ones that gets on with the difficult job.

“We were told there would be two patients coming from Nenagh after it closed. There were 16 the other night,” said another staff member at the end of his tether. “It is getting worse, much worse.”

Among the Clare people I met was one man who walked out after a fivehour wait with a cannula still in his hands.

Some people took umbrage that they were resigned to a chair, but it was a case of “those in greatest need”.

Another couple had driven from West Clare after the woman had a serious fall.

It was 11pm, so she bypassed Ennis General Hospital and travelled all the way to Limerick to be told it was just bad bruising.

As the night went on, a rowdy drunk in danger of hurting staff or other patients was taken away by security guards to another room and, if the sounds were anything to go by, was soon sedated.

And all the while very sick people were expected to rest as they awaited their fate, many eventually making it to wards where there would be less staff on for the weekend.

The staff in the meantime moved patients around like a game of draughts, refereed drunks, and tried to appease patients who were becoming impatient, all the while trying to do their own jobs.

And this was just Friday night; Saturday would as always bring the worst of the weekend excesses. Thank God we weren’t there to see that.

ONE of Clare’s largest entertainment venues would be forced to “close its doors” if it did not receive local authority funding, a meeting has heard.

Director of Glór, Gemma Carcaterra told last week’s meeting of Ennis Town Council that it was also “imperative” that Glór maintain its current staffing levels in order to be in a good position when the economy picks up.

She said the biggest challenge fac- ing Glór is the management of limited resources.

Ms Carcaterra said that Glór must also lessen its reliance on local authority funding in the future. Glór employs 33 people and has an annual turnover of € 1.25 million.

The Ennis venue receives funding from Clare local authorities and the Arts Council.

In a presentation to councillors, Ms Carcaeterra said Glór makes a net contribution of € 850,000 per year to the local economy.

Following questions from Cllr Brian Meaney (GP), Ms Carcaeterra said that Glór’s end of year financial position would be “very positive”. She said that it was her understanding that Glór does not have an outstanding financial liability.

Town manager Gerard Dollard said, “We’re not starting out with historical debt. It’s about how we fund Glór into the future.”

Cllr Meaney said it was important that at a time when the council is facing difficult budgetary choices, the exact financial position of Glór is known.

Ms Carcaterra also confirmed that Café Noir, the company running café facilities at the venue, pays a small rent to Glór.

She described the three-year partnership with Café Noir as “crucial” to ensuring there is life in the venue throughout the day.

Originally from the midlands in England, Ms Carcaterra has worked as director of Glór for the past 12 months.

She told the meeting that 600,000 people had passed through the doors of Glór since it opened in 2001. 35,000 people attended 255 events in Glór in 2011. A breakdown of the figures shows that 5,000 attended music events; 6,000 attended theatre shows while 9,150 schoolchildren, teachers and parents visited the venue.

Ms Carcaeterra also praised staff, describing them as “highly knowledgeable, professional and loyal”.

Mayor of Ennis, Cllr Peter Considine (FF) praised the work of Glór staff, saying Ms Carcaterra is implementing an “ambitious plan”.

Cllr Johnny Flynn (FG) said the council had contributed on average € 240,000 per year to Glór since it opened in 2001. He said the venue should play a central role in events for The Gathering next year.