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INVESTIGATIONS are continuing into the latest smash and grab raid on a business in Ennis town centre.

The latest break in occurred at around 3am on Wednesday morning when two men used a sledgehammer to break through a glass door panel at Ennis Electrical on Parnell Street.

High value good estimated to be worth € 20,000 were stolen before the gang made their escape in a silver car.

A vehicle was later found burnt out near the Ballyhannon area of Quin. Gardaí are investigating if the car is linked to the break in.

A senior garda said yesterday no one has yet been arrested but investigations are continuing.

He also denied suggestions that Ennis is being targeted by criminals, pointing to a spate of similar smash and grab raids against businesses in Clonmel, Charleville and Limerick.

Gardaí are also examining the similarities between the latest break in and another smash and grab raid at a pharmacy in Ennis two months ago.

In May, Cassidy’s Pharmacy in En- nis was the scene of a raid occurred at around 2.30am.

Two raiders, believed to be males, used a sledgehammer to smash in the reinforced glass panelling on the front door of the premises.

The thieves filled bags with stock, mainly brand name men’s fragrances and cleared several shelves before leaving the scene in a black Volkswagon Golf.

The incidents have sparked concern among businesses in the town.

Clare Labour TD Michael McNamara said, “This incident is the latest in a series of similar break ins in the town and these robberies are a challenge to the Gardaí as well as to business owners and employees.

“They are not just an attack of property but potentially on the livelihoods of people who work in the town centre.

“Ennis has an enviable reputation as a friendly town that welcomes visitors from near and far.

“Break ins and anti-social behaviour cannot be allowed to damage this reputation or the business life of the town which needs all the support it can get in these difficult economic times,” Mr McNamara added.

FIVE apartments and three retails units right in the heart of Ennis could be yours for as little as € 180,000. That’s according Allsop Space Estate Agents, who will be putting such a property in county capital under the hammer this Tuesday at its latest sale of distressed properties.

What has been advertised as a “detached modern mixed use block” that’s located on the Mill Road in Ennis will be auctioned in the RDS, with Allsop, which has already sold a number of properties in the area giving a guide price of € 180,000 to € 200,000.

According to the auctioneers, the block is “internally arranged to provide five two-bedroom apartments and three retail units” and it is being advertised as an “ideal investment opportunity”.

The property is located along the Mill Road close the junction with Pound Lane and the Old Mill Road, while Allsop have revealed that first floor offices are not included in the sale as they have previously been sold.

Rental income on the property at present amounts to over € 25,000 per annum, a figure made up of € 18,000 from three of the apartments while one of the retail units is bringing in € 7,380 per annum for the present owner. Two of the retail units are vacant at present as are two of the apartments.

ILLEGAL hunters, using high powered rifles capable of firing bullets for more than a quarter of a mile, could pose a serious risk to public health.

Gardaí in East Clare are investigating an incident in which a horse was shot dead on private property near Whitegate earlier this month.

The animal, an Irish Draft Yearling, was shot at night with a high pow- ered gun, with the bullet travelling so fast that it passed clean through the animal. The owners believe that their horse was shot accidentally by hunters at night, who were in the area shooting deer.

With deer shooting season over until the autumn, local landowner Geraldine Jones believes her animal was killed by ‘lampers’ or hunter operating at night using flashlight.

“There has been incidents here before of cattle being shot. There are houses in the area but there is also deer, and when there is deer there are hunters. We’re out of pocket [because of the shooting] but that isn’t the point really, we have more horses down there and we don’t want to go down there and find them shot – or worse still, see someone walking on the road get shot, she told The Clare People .

“These weapons are very powerful and some people just seem to shoot and not worry about where [the bullet] is going to end up. I’m not antihunting or anything like that, but they [high powered rifles] should not be in the hands of careless people.

“The animal was shot on the [Sunday, June 15] evening or later that night – we can’t pinpoint the exact time. He was our animal but to others he was only a horse. We don’t think that it suffered.

“There was no marks on the ground where the animal might have scratched if it was in pain, but it looks like it was dead before it hit the ground.

“It is distressing. I go down there now and if I see one of them [the horses] lying down I automatically think that they are dead.

“The worst we thought would happen was the horses getting frightened and maybe breaking out onto the road. We never expected to find one with a bullet in it.”

Clare dog warden Frankie Coote says that the rifles used by some of these hunters are very powerful.

“It has happened but not at this time of year. These are people who are lamping and shooting deer out of season.

“A bullet shot from one of those rifles could travel up to a quarter of a mile and kill whatever it meets.

“They are so powerful that the bullet will keep travelling until it hits a target. We have had similar cases in this area in the past and it is a real problem,” he said.

Margaret (Olive) CULLINAN (née
Tuohy) , 77Turnpike Road, Ennis. Funeral Mass Tuesday, July 1, at 11amat Ennis Cathedral, followed by private cremation. Family flowers only, donations if desired to Milford Hospice, Limerick. May she rest in peace.

Kevin MALONE
, 3 Aiden Park, Shannon. Late of Burnham, Dingle Co Kerry. Funeral Mass onTuesday at 12 noon at St John and Paul’s Church, Shannon. Burial afterwards in Lemenagh Cemetery. May he rest in peace.

John (Jack) MCINERNEY
, Scart, Kilkishen. Laid to rest in Clonlea Cemetery. May he rest in peace.

Aine FITZGERALD (née Fennell)
, Renton, Washington, USA, and formerly of Henry Street, Kilrush. Laid to rest in All Saints Cemetery, Shanakyle. May she rest in peace.

Robert GODZISZ
, 15 Ard Caoin Gort Road, Ennis. Laid to rest in Cork. May he rest in peace.

Denis JONES
, Clonloum, O’Callaghans Mills. Peacefully at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital. Laid to rest in Clonlea cemetery. May he rest in peace.

John (Johnny) MALONE
, Clareview, Ballybeg, Ennis. Peacefully at the Galway Clinic. Laid to rest in Clareabbey. Donations, if desired, to Slainte an Clair. May he rest in peace.

Derek (Dobber) O’BRIEN
, Rivendell, Pass Road, Meelick. Peacefully at his residence. Laid to rest in Ballycannon Cemetery, Meelick. Donations, if desired to the Oncology Department, of Limerick University Hospital. May he rest in peace.

Patrick (Pa) O’SHAUGHNESSY
, Knockdonagh, Kilmore. Laid to rest inTruagh Cemetery. May he rest in peace.

Patrick BUCKLEY
, 126Tradaree Court, Shannon. Laid to rest in Illaunamanagh Cemetery. May he rest in peace.

Sister Baptiste CASEY
, Kilkenny/Ruan. Late of Rinneen, Ruan. Laid to rest in Foulkstown Cemetery, Kilkenny. May she rest in peace.

Mary DONNELLY (née Burke)
, Kilmacduane, Cooraclare. Laid to rest in Kilmacduane cemetry. Donations if desired to Milford Hospice. May she rest in peace.

THE allegiances of many in West Clare will be tested when the lights go up in the Festival Dome in Tralee next month, as a New Zealand Rose with impeccable West Clare connections, goes up against this year’s Clare Rose, Joanne O’Gorman.

Indeed, it has emerged that this year’s Kiwi Rose, Liza Bazalo from Wellington, has Miltown Malbay blood coursing through her veins. While Bazalo is by no mean a common West Clare name, Liza’s mother’s side of the family are Taltys, a name very familiar in Miltown, Quilty and all indeed all over West Clare.

Liza’s grandparents, Michael and Colleen Talty, left Miltown Malbay in the 1958 and settled in New Zealand. Indeed, Michael’s brother, 93-year-old Senan Talty, still lives in Miltown, in the same house where the brothers grew up, while his sister, 88-year-old Mary, also lives in Miltown.

It is expected that Liza will visit her relations at the the family home in Carhuduff, on the Hand Road outside Miltown Malbay, where the Talty family have been living for more than 400 years.

The 24-year-old lawyer is very active in the Irish community in New Zealand and holds a number of awards for her Irish dancing.

“Three of my dancing teachers were national roses. They have all been role models for me,” she said.

“I enjoy expressing my heritage through Irish dance, and cherish the time I spend with my grandparents talking about home over cups of tea. My paternal grandfather was born in Croatia, and I consider myself lucky to live in New Zealand, which is a melting pot for many cultures.

“I studied law and land planning, and work as a lawyer at Buddle Findlay. I specialise in environmental and Maori law. A particularly rewarding aspect of my work is volunteering at a centre providing free advice to people in the community.”

THE first in a series of controlled explosions at the site of the new Doolin Pier took place last Wednesday, without any significant harm coming to local sea mammals, including Dusty the Dolphin.

The blasting, which is being carried out by Clare contractors, L&M Keating Ltd, had been scheduled to take place on a number of occasion earlier this month but had been delayed because of weather.

The explosions took place just after 9.10pm last Thursday evening. A number of members of the Clare based, Irish Whale and Dolphin [IWDG] were in the area to over see the explosions.

With Dusty basing herself on the Aran Islands for the last number of months, no sea mammals were harmed in the explosions – with a small number of fish the only reported casualties.

“The Marine Mammal Mitigation Plan was successfully delivered by IWDG and no marine mammals were affected. Despite heavy rain, sea conditions were very favourable,” said a spokesperson from the IWDG.

“Visual and acoustic monitoring 60 to 150 minutes pre-blast detected no marine mammals or otters and blasting went ahead. Post-blast monitoring recovered two dying pollack which were thought to have been killed by the shock wave but no other affected marine life was observed.”

More blasting in expected to take place in Doolin later this week provided that weather conditions are suitable. The blasting is to clear rock for the construction of a new start of the art pier at Doolin and an exclusion zone will also be put in place on land to ensure that no humans stray too close to the blast site.

During Wednesday’s scheduled explosion, a number of volunteers were also with Dusty the Dolphin on the Aran Islands, ensuring that the bottle nose dolphin did not stray too close to Doolin or be effected as a result of the shock wave.

A CLARE local election candidate, who came within a whisker of winning a seat to the local authority at last months election, hosted a rally in Ennis last week aimed at changing Irish drugs policy.

Fís Nua candidate, Niamh O’Brien secured 731 first preference votes in last months local election – just 20 short of then Mayor of Clare Joe Arkins (FG) – and came close to winning the final seat in the Killaloe constituency.

She hosted an information event in Ennis last Thursday and is also exploring the possibility of establishing a branch of Student for Sensible Drugs Policy (SSDP) in Clare.

“It is all about drugs – supporting and not punishing – and the whole issue of decriminalising drugs in Ireland. The idea is to educate people about drugs and to transfer the money – which at present is spent on the court system, the prison system and the Gardaí – over to things like rehab and the mental health system,” she said.

“We don’t treat alcoholics in the same way as we treat drug addicts. We offer a lot of support and help to alcoholics and we should be offering the same to drug addicts and people who trying to get off of drugs.

“We need to offer proper information about the real effects of drugs. These people [drug addicts] are desperate and they need help.”

Ms O’Brien, who listed a change in government policy towards illegal drugs on her campaign information, was also collecting signatures for the Rachel Keogh petition in Ennis. Rachel Keogh is a former Irish heroin addict who has started a campaign to change Irish drugs policy.

The event was part of a nationwide campaign by Student for Sensible Drugs Policy and Niamh is now ex- ploring the possibility of setting up a branch of SSDP in Clare.

“I have been in contact with the group and I was roped in to organise this event.

“I have it [legalising cannabis] on the back of my leaflets while running for election in the Killaloe area so I though this was a perfect opportunity to highlight this issue again,” she said.

THE auction of the year was to have been the sale of the correspondence between Jackie Kennedy and a priest in All Hallows College in Dublin, but they were withdrawn at the 11th hour because a dispute over their ownership.

Now, the seminary which is closing has come back for more with another auction that will take place over three days, with one of the lots providing an historic link with Clare.

It’s contained the collection of art that will go under the hammer at Sheppards Auctioneers from Durrow in Laois – a portrait of the Clareborn Archbishop of Perth Patrick Joseph Clune.

Archbishop Clune was born in Ruan in 1864, educated at St Flannan’s College and All Hallows College. He was ordained a priest in 1886 before his first appointment was to St Patrick’s College in New South Wales.

From there he rose through the ranks of the Church and became Bishop of Perth in 1911 before being elevated to archbishopric in 1913, a position he held until his death in 1935.

Though he lived nearly all of his adult life in Australia, Archbishop Clune was given a key part to play in War of Independence in Ireland when British Prime Minister, Lloyd George turned to the Ruan man to act as a mediator with Irish leaders to secure a cessation of violence.

This was despite the fact that at the time Archbishop Clune made no secret of the fact that he was a keen supporter of the Sinn Féin movement. “I admire their gallantry. When Mr Lloyd George termed them assassins I was content to reply to him: ‘No not murderers but the cream of their race’,” he said.

Archbishop Clune’s portrait is one of 14 ecclesiastical paintings that will go under the hammer in the highly anticipated auction and could fetch up to € 2, 500.

A MAN is recovering in hospital today after being involved in the latest of a spate of serious accidents involving motorcyclists in Clare.

The German tourist sustained multiple injuries when his motorcycle collided with a car at Mountrivers Bridge on the outskirts of Doonbeg on Wednesday afternoon. A second motorcyclists was also hurt in the incident but her injuries are understood to be less serious.

The car, which was being driven by an American tourist, is though to have clipped another vehicle, before colliding with the bridge itself and then the two motorcycles.

The motorcycle being driven by the male tourist became embedded in the front of the car during the crash, while the second motorcycle was thrown over the car. Both of the motorcyclists were taken by ambulance to University Hospital Limerick for treatment.

This incident comes just weeks after a two motorcyclists died in a horrific collision just outside Lisdoonvarna. That incident saw the sad deaths of Ferdinand “Ferdi” Waidel, a 55-year-old German national who had been living in Clare for more than a decade and Ricardo ‘Ricky’ Godoy, a Chilean television presenter and motorcycle enthusiast.

CRATLOE Post Office Action Group have been given two weeks to put forward a plan to improve business at the post office or face possible closure.

The group met with senior officials from An Post in East Clare last Friday, in an effort to convince the postal company to retain the local service.

The meeting, which was described as “positive” by Jim Enright of the action group, was also attended by three Clare TDs as well as Mayor of Clare, John Crowe (FG).

The future of Cratloe Post Office came into doubt two week ago when an An Post review of operations found that the post offices was not generating enough income to justify keeping it open.

The Cratloe Post Office Action Group has gathered more than 1,000 signatures locally from people and businesses who are pledging to use the post office more often.

The action group have proposed a five-year trial period with An Post, to allow local people to support their post office and increase usage numbers.

“It was a good worthwhile meeting. We have until Friday week (July 11) to put in our submission on behalf of the action group and we have asked all the local organisation to support the submission. We need to put forward as strong a case as we can,” said Jim Enright.

“We need more business to take place at the post office to make it viable from An Post’s point of view. A lot of people live in the parish but work in Limerick or Shannon and they use the post offices in these towns. We need people to change their habits and support their local post office.

“We asked An Post to give the post office a five-year trial provided there was a concerted effort by the local community.”

The Cratloe Post Office Action Group say they will take to the streets if necessary to protest for the retention of their post office.

“We would protest if that is neces sary – whether to the GPO or wherever. We will do it but hopefully we won’t need to,” said Jim.

“I am hopeful that we might be a five year reprieve.”

The mid-west representative of the Irish Postmasters’ Union, Kildysart native Tom O’Callaghan, has called on the Government to allocate more services to post offices in a bid to maintain their viability in a time of increased pressure.

PLANNING permission for the construction of a park and ride service to the Cliffs of Moher has been refused by Clare County Council.

The application, which sought to retain a planning permission granted to Atlantis Development in 2009, was submitted earlier this year by a new company, Lazarus Investments.

According to documents lodged with the Company Registration Office (CRO), both Atlantis Development and Lazarus Investments list Clare businessman John Declan Flanaghan as their director.

The proposed retention of planning permission was refused by planners on Friday, with changes to the Clare County Development Plan cited as the main reason for the decision.

Lazarus Investment are currently objecting to upgrade work planned by Clare County Council on the parking facilities at the Cliffs of Moher. The objection states that according to the original planning permission granted for the Cliffs of Moher Visitors Experience, a park and ride service and not a permanent car park should be provided.

In recent weeks, Lazarus Investments have also lodged a number of planning applications with Clare County Council in relation to properties connected to the Atlantis Development.

An application, which would have involved a major redevelopment to Egan’s and McHugh’s in Liscannor, including the construction of a seven-bedroom hostel, has also been refused by Clare County Council, while a proposal to construct a 11 houses at Teergonean in Doolin has been given the go ahead.

There are decisions pending on a number of other projects including the construction of a supermarket, crèche, medical centre and a chemist at Killilagh in Doolin.

Meanwhile, a Liscannor hotel, which once formed part of the Atlantis Development collection of properties in North Clare, has been offered for sale with a price tag of € 550,000.

The Cliffs of Moher Hotel, which was built in 2006, is being offered for sale by receiver Michael O’Regan of PriceWaterhouseCooper. The hotel, which is located a stone’s throw from Liscannor Bay, sleeps 22 and includes a fully-fitted out bar and restaurant.