Category: News

THERE have been calls for a ‘wet’ hostel to be set up in Ennis to help alcoholics.

Ennis councillor Paul O’Shea says the need for such a service, as Ennis can’t keep “exporting” people with alcohol problems to Limerick and Galway.

Wet hostels provide shelter for street drinkers while allowing them to continue to consume alcohol on the premises, unlike other homeless hostels that enforce abstinence. Cllr O’Shea said there are 324 people waiting on the local authority-housing list that are presenting as homeless.

He said a growing number of young people are ending up homeless caused by drink related problems. Speaking at the May meeting of Ennis Town Council, he said, “We don’t have wet hostels in Clare but we have Clare people that are using them in Limerick and Galway.

Councillors were discussing issues raised by the death of Czech national Josef Pavelka (52) who died on the streets of Ennis earlier this month.

His plight came to national attention when District Court Judge Patrick Durcan described as a “scandal” the fact that Mr Pavelka had spent tie living in a toilet.

On Wednesday, Ennis Town Council again insisted that it had no evidence that Mr Pavelka or his Polish friend Piotr Baram (36) had been living in the toilet.

Town manager Ger Dollard said the council never received a report that people were sleeping in the town’s two public toilets. He said, “It doesn’t seem plausible” that the men were sleeping in the toilets. Mayor of Ennis, Cllr Peter Considine (FF) said he had sympathies for Mr Pavelka’s family. He said the story was “badly handled and a bad representation of the town of Ennis”. He said he was “very doubtful” the men had slept in the toilets as the doors open at 20minute intervals. He said the fact that Mr Pavelka had no access to services after his recent surgery was “shameful”. However, Cllr Considine added, “You can’t help people that don’t want to help themselves.”

Cllr Mary Howard described the men as “lovely craters”. “At the end of the day, he’s somebody’s son, somebody’s brother.”

Business man Kevin Keenan who runs, Formacompany.ie on O’Connell Street, said businesses had experienced problems because of people drinking in the area.

He said, “I wouldn’t wish what happened on that man to anyone. Its not they’re fault they’re alcoholics. But people are feeding their habit. They are stopping on the street to give them money. If you knew someone with a heroin habit you wouldn’t go and buy them heroin.”

Mr Keenan says he has noticed an increase in the number of people drinking in the area. “There was an Irish contingent that caused a lot of bother. They were gone for a while and now they are back. There is so such goodwill out there that people are milking it.”

A MAN who committed a series of offences on Holy Thursday that included the theft of two Jack Russel terriers has paid compensation of € 1700 to victims of his crimes.

William Donovan (20) appeared at Ennis District Court on Wednesday having previously pleaded guilty to a number of offences committed in North Clare on March 28.

Mr Donovan, with an address at 54 Clancy Park, Ennis admitted stealing two tan and white terriers worth € 200 from 18 Ardnaculla, Ennistymon on March 28. The dogs were returned to their owner.

He stole an alloy wheel at Station Road, Lahinch. He also entered a building on Station Road, Lahinch as a trespasser.

Mr Donovan admitted damaging the front window of Kenny’s Pub, Lahinch, causing € 1000 worth of damage.

Mr Donovan broke a window at the Claremont Hotel causing € 125 worth of damage.

The court was also told that the accused smashed the window of a silver Toyota Avensis before attempting to hotwire the car.

The court heard Mr Donovan then broke the windscreen of another car, belonging to the mother of the previous car owner, causing € 400 worth of damage.

Gardaí stopped Mr Donovan around 40 yards from where he stole the alloy wheel.

The court heard the accused’s car had only three wheels as it appeared a tyre may have blown out.

The court heard that gardaí were able to trace Mr Donovan’s movements on the day by following the tracks made by the three wheel car.

On Wednesday, solicitor Tara Godfrey told the court that Mr Donovan’s family had gathered € 1700 for compensation to injured parties.

Of the series of incidents on Holy Thursday, Ms Godfrey said;

“There was a lot of prescription drugs taken and he lost the proverbial run of himself.”

However Ms Godfrey added that Mr Donovan is a “completely different person” from the one who appeared in court in March.

She told the court that her client is committed to entering a residential treatment programme.

Addressing Mr Donovan, Judge Patrick Durcan said; “You’re a young man and there is no reason why you can’t face up to challenges in life.”

Judge Durcan placed Mr Donovan on a probation bond for nine months. He ordered him to abide by all directions of the Probation Services.

A LIMERICK man who spat in the face of garda in Kilkee last summer has been sentenced in eight weeks in jail. Lee McNamara (25) had to be restrained by three gardaí during an incident at Strand Line, Kilkee on August 15, 2012.

Mr McNamara, with an address at 150 Glenbrook, Old Singland Road, Limerick, appeared at Ennis District Court on Wednesday.

He pleaded guilty to charges of intoxication and provoking a breach of the peace. The court heard that Mr McNamara was sitting on a wall and shouting obscenities. Inspector Tom Kennedy said that when gardaí intervened, Mr McNamara got more aggressive and spat into a garda’s face. The court heard it took three gardaí to restrain Mr McNamara. The accused has 38 previous convictions, the court heard. Defence solicitor Tara Godfrey said, “He apologises unreservedly. He was incredibly intoxicated”. Ms Godfrey said Mr McNamara, a father of one, had been involved in a family dispute on the day. She said her client has lived a life of “misery, drug abuse and addictions. It is about the saddest case I’ve ever seen. There is a sense of sadness pervading Mr McNamara,” she added. Ms Godfrey said her client is a man without hope and without much prospects. Insp Kennedy said that while he did not know the circumstances of Mr McNamara’s life, “his behaviour on the day was deplorable to his child and to the gardaí.”

Addressing Mr McNamara, Judge Patrick Durcan said; “You may not like the gardaí but the guards are empowered to do a job. They do a difficult job.” He said tourism is very important to areas like West Clare and people have the right to go for a walk without seeing such behaviour.

Judge Durcan said he accepted that Mr McNamara has had a difficult background but this did not give him the right to visit these difficulties on the public. However, he added, “someone who spits on the gardaí deserves very little sympathy.”

He fined Mr McNamara € 400 and imposed a 10 week prison sentence. Judge Durcan reduced the sentence by two weeks. A JUDGE

INTERNATIONALLY renowned acoustic group Lúnasa have announced their plans to break a Guinness World Record next month in Ennis.

The group is calling out for more than 1,020 musicians to take part on June 21 in Abbey Street car park, Ennis, in order to break a world record for the largest tin whistle ensemble.

Tracy Crawford, of Ennis Roots Music Weekend, has said that the event has received a massive response from an international audience because of its promotion during Lúnasa’s American tour and that they are expecting a lot of visitors from overseas.

Bands, groups, and music schools have also been invited to take part alongside anyone who wants to learn to play ‘The Siege of Ennis’ on the tin whistle for the first time.

According to Tracy, “The event is for everyone and it’s a chance to take up an instrument. It will be very exciting to try break the world record and we are really looking forward to it.”

The current world record for the largest ensemble of tin whistlers stands at 1,015 which was achieved at an event organised by Scoil Acla in Keel, Achill Island, on July 31, 2010. The ensemble performed the “Dawning of the Day”.

Custy’s and The Irish Shop in Ennis have a range of whistles available for the event in store.

“When purchasing a tin whistle,” Tracy continued, “make sure and tell them that you are taking part in the Guinness World Record Attempt to claim your free copy of the ABC tune notation.

“We chose the ‘Siege of Ennis’ because of its obvious connection with the county and to make it interesting we are going to play it in two different keys.”

Tracy has also announced that the weekend will further feature an International Street band competition and the chance to perform with the Kilfenora Ceilí Band.

The event coincides with the Gathering 2013 and will feature a free open air concert by Lúnasa, Socks in the Frying Pan, The Kilfenora Ceilí Band and special guest Maura O’Connell.

For video tutorials and more information on the record attempt visit www.ennisrootsweekend.com.

AN estimated € 240 million of ordinary hard-working Clare people’s money is being put under threat by a Government policy that “requires credit unions to give banks preferential access to creditors”.

According to MEP Marian Harkin (Ind), there are up to 66,000 people from the banner county, who are members of the county’s nine credit unions, and they must insist their public representatives oppose the Government policy and that of the Central Bank and regulators.

The MEP for Ireland North West accused the Government and the central bank of threatening the future of the credit union movement in the interests of banks, which, she said, had undermined the country’s economy and caused incalculable harm to individuals, families and the entire social fabric of the country.

“It is astounding, to say the least, that the Central Bank acting for the government, is attempting to weaken the credit union movement in the interest of the banks and in doing so is undermining a financial support mechanism which has, unlike the banks, done nothing but good for the community. The latest spokesperson for ‘official Ireland’ to engage in an unworthy attack on the credit unions is the registrar of credit unions Sha- ron Donnery. In her speech to the AGM of the Irish League of Credit Unions last weekend, she has warned of dire outcomes for the peoples’ credit movement if they fail to concede to the banks. For the Regulator of Credit Unions to demand concessions for banks, which broke every rule in the book by pushing excessive mortgages on people, is totally unacceptable.

“Even more unacceptable is the pressure being exercised by various representatives of ‘official Ireland’ that the banks must have preference over credit unions in debt recovery,” she said. “The banks, and the Central Bank, as their regulator, have lost any moral or business right to main- tain that mortgage repayment has primacy over the repayment of credit unions which are community-owned not for profit financial institutions.

“Over € 100 million of credit union funds were written off in the failures of Anglo Irish, AIB, Bank of Ireland and TSB. In no way can credit unions again be sacrificed to the benefit of badly-performing financial entities, many of whom are now raising interest rates on mortgages,” she said.

The nine credit unions in Clare include Derg Credit Union, Scarriff; Ennistymon and District, Ennistymon; Fergus, Lissycasey; Kilrush; SFADCo Staff, Shannon Town Centre; Sixmilebridge; St Peter and Paul, Clarecastle and St Francis, Ennis.

CLARE farmers are within touching distance of an end to the fodder crisis – one of the worst feed shortages to hit the county’s farms in decades.

Clare IFA chairman, Andrew Dundas, believes that the next ten days are critical with any remaining fodder running out and grass growth just starting to begin in earnest.

The organisation helped to harvest a further 1,100 bales of silage from land banks at Shannon Airport last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday more than twice what they had predicted they would get from the site.

This mean that 2,300 bales of silage were harvested from the airport over the past two week. While these bales have already been allocated to Clare farmers and are likely all used up – they provided a vital stop gap to get farmers through the worst of the crisis.

“We have gotten a bit of heat and grass is starting to grow. It will take a week or two to get going properly but hopefully the end is in sight,” said Mr Dundas.

“The next few days are the real pressure time on farms but at least an end is, hopefully, in sight. Shannon Airport came at the critical time – there were a lot of farmers in a critical situation over the last 10 days and the bales [from Shannon Airport] really saved them.

“This was about getting people over the hump and I think it made a big difference in the county. I would say all those bales are eaten at this stage – but they were there at a crucial stage.”

One silver lining of the fodder crisis was the way that the local farming community – including the farming organisations, co-ops, marts, local businesses and farmers – came together to see themselves through the crisis.

“A bit of growth is crucial now. It will take a few weeks for the grass growth to come back and hopefully that will be the end of it,” continued Andrew.

“There was a great effort right across the farming community in Clare to get through this. Everyone worked incredible hard and a lot of organisations and people out there deserve a lot credit. It was a real cross community effort – from Shannon Airport to the marts, co-ops and all the agri-businesses. It was a great community effort.” Tue07May13

A BALLYVAUGHAN grandmother who says she was ‘butchered’ by doctors when giving birth to her first son in 1965, is appealing to the Health Service Executive (HSE) to locate records of the birth.

Elizabeth “Ellen” Moore says that she has wanted to die on a number of occasions over the past 48 years following her symphysiotomy – which has left her in near constant pain and completely incontinent.

This procedure, which involved breaking a woman’s pelvic bone during labour, was conducted without her knowledge or permission in September of 1965.

Mrs Moore has recently obtained all her medical records from the HSE under Freedom of Information – but records of the birth of her first son and the controvertial symphysiotomy have been lost.

Ellen, who has five grown up children now living in Shannon and East Clare, says she wants the records so she can finally explain to her children why their mother was the way she was.

“My family are so supportive – they always have been. Sometimes I just curl up on the bed and hope that the pain will go away. It is difficult, [but] I had to get up every morning. I had five children, I had to keep going,” she said.

“There were time when I wanted to die, I wanted to get into bed and never get out of it – after I’d had an accident down the town of something.

“Nobody can give me back the years of my life. I should have had a good life, I should have been able to go places and do things – but I’ve been tied to pain. I think if I felt sorry for myself, I’d start to crack up.”

A GROUP of Clare farmers have proposed radical changing to the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP), which they believe could prevent as disastrous fodder shortage, like the one seen over the past month, from happening again.

The United Farmers Association (UFA) have gained much support in Clare since they formed a number of months ago.

The organisation supports a redistribution of the money paid to Irish farmers under CAP with smaller farmers, such as those in Clare, ben- efiting more, while larger farmers, more common in the eastern counties, would get proportionately less.

Clare spokesperson for the UFA, Joe Corbett, has proposed a change to CAP regulations which he feels would unlock large landbanks of good farmland which are currently not being used to its potential.

The scheme involves allowing inactive landowners to lease their land with their Single Farm Payment (SFP) being split between the landowner and the leasing farmers.

Currently landowners will lose their SFP if they lease their land making leasing unattractive for both parties.

This system, according to Joe, would allow both parties to share the benefits of increased production on the land as well as sharing the SFP associated with the land, a system which he believes would lead to an increased production on Clare farms.

“Farmers who want to retire or maybe want to get employment off the farm need to be incentifised to lease their land. They can’t be expected to lease their land for less than they would get if they had the minimum stock levels as set out under the SFP,” said Joe.

“A person in this position will get 50 per cent of his SFP and get more than the remaining 50 per cent from the farmer who is leasing the land. The leasing farmers will then get 45 per cent of the SFP for the land, which will subsidise the cost of leasing, but he will be able to more than make this up from increased productivity on the land.

“This idea will unlock the production potential that is in this land and it will see the land owner and the active farmer sharing that potential.”

The UFA scheme would also see the remaining five per cent of the SFP used for an emergency hardship fund to be created to help farmers in times of extreme hardship, such as the recent fodder crisis.

GONDOLA type boats and greater use of the Rover Fergus could see Ennis become Ireland’s answer Venice. That’s according to one local councillor who wants to see Clare become the romance capital of the mid-west.

Ennis councillor Johnny Flynn (FG) is urging Ennis Town Council to draft new byelaws that would al low gondola boat journeys through the town centre.

Speaking earlier this month, Cllr Flynn explained that gondolas are boats that were traditional to the River Shannon and Fergus Estuary.

He said, “These were common to the River Fergus and what I would want to see is Ennis become Ireland’s answer to Venice.”

Cllr Flynn’s proposals are due to be discussed at today’s monthly meeting of Ennis Town Council.

In a motion, Cllr Flynn states that Clare needs to develop a unique selling point to capitalize on the Wild Atlantic Way tourism initiative.

He says that the town’s waterways could be utilized more. According to Cllr Flynn boat tours could run from Knox’s Bridge to Steele’s Rock.

He states, “In order for Ennis and Clare to benefit in terms of jobs etc from the development and the promotion of the ‘Wild Atlantic Way’ tourist trail from Donegal to West Cork there is a need to develop a Unique Selling Point, a USP, for the county and its capital town to attract stayovers in the county. Clare is home to the month-long world famous Matchmaking Festival at Lisdoonvarna.

“Ennis due to foundation on an island and its history of flooded streets has been known over the decades as ‘Ireland’s Venice’.”

Cllr Flynn states that the council should seek to build “on Lisdoonvarna’s world renowned matchmaking reputation by promoting Clare and Ennis town as the premier romance county and town destinations along the ‘Wild Atlantic Way’ by immediately drafting byelaws to permit and regulate: (a) horse drawn journeys in jarveys in and around the town centre; (b) gondola boat journeys on the Fergus River from Knox’s Bridge to Steele’s Rock to Post Office Field. Steele’s Rock is so called as result of Tom Steele famously serenading across the Fergus the woman of his dreams living on the opposite riverbank.”

A MAN who set fire to property owned by a man who harassed his mother did so out of “loyalty and love for his mother”, a court has heard.

Judge Patrick Durcan said he accepted that 21-year- old Aaron Moylan had a certain “motivation” for damaging garden sheds at The Hawthorns, Limerick Road Ennis on June 27, 2012. At Ennis District Court on Wednesday, Mr Moylan, with an address at 8 Abbey Court, Ennis pleaded guilty to two charges of damaging two garden sheds by fire.

Judge Durcan this was a “very seri- ous and dangerous offence to commit.”

The court heard that Mr Moylan set fire to a garden shed owned by former Dell worker William Keane (40). In January, Mr Keane, with an address at the Hawthorns, Limerick Road, Ennis, pleaded guilty to harassment of a woman.

The incidents occurred over a 12month period on dates unknown between October 1 (2011) and September 1 (2012).

Mr Keane was ordered by Judge Durcan not to have any contact with the injured party. On Wednesday, Inspector Tom Kennedy told the court that Mr Moylan had an issue with a person living in The Hawthorns who had been involved in a relationship with his mother.

Insp Kennedy said that Mr Moylan went to the man’s property and set fire to the shed with a small bit of fuel and a lighter.

A shed in a neighbouring house was also damaged by fire as a result of the incident. Mr Moylan has no previous convictions.

Defence solicitor Tara Godfrey told the court that William Keane had harassed and stalked her client’s mother. She said the woman installed CCTV at her home because she was afraid of Mr Keane.

She said Mr Moylan had “cracked.” “He did what he felt would attack Mr Keane’s sense of security,” she added.

Inspector Kennedy said a certain amount of provocation could be attributed to Mr Moylan’s actions.

He added, “Mr Moylan was way out of order in going to set fire to this property. It was very dangerous and could have got out of control.”

Judge Patrick Durcan said, “I accept his motivation was out of loyalty and love for his mother….but I also agree this was a very serious and dangerous offence to commit.”

Judge Durcan adjourned the case until September 4 to allow time for compensation to be paid.