Category: News

SUPERVALU Retailers in Clare are calling on the county to get behind this year’s SuperValu TidyTowns competition.

Anthony Robinson, Queally’s SuperValu, Killaloe, Pat Haugh and Gerry Fitzpatrick, Fitzpatrick’s SuperValu, Ennistymon and Paul Queally, Queally’s SuperValu, Kilrush made the call as the competition officially kicked off for 2013. This year is the 22nd year of SuperValu involvement with TidyTowns and the second year of SuperValu’s title sponsorship. Last year there were 34 entries from County Clare with

Ennis winning the title of Ireland’s Tidiest Large Town. Speaking at the launch Martin Kelleher, Managing Director of SuperValu said;

“We are delighted to continue and build on our long term partnership with TidyTowns. Our retailers across the country pride themselves on being at the centre of the communities in which they live and trade. Throughout our 22 year association with TidyTowns, SuperValu has al- ways been passionate about doing everything we can to help our communities shine.

I would like to pay tribute to the hard work and dedication of so many people across the country who have made this one of the longest running and most successful community initiatives in the world. I would encourage people to talk to their local SuperValu retailer or visit tidytowns.ie to find out more and realise the huge rewards in taking an active part in their own community.”

The closing date for receipt of entries for all of this year’s competitions is 23rd May 2013. Entry forms to the SuperValu TidyTowns competition can be obtained from the TidyTowns Unit in the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government – Phone (071-9186744) or by visiting www.tidytowns.ie or www.supervalu.ie For entry to the Special Competitions please download your entry form at www.tidytowns.ie

CAMPAIGNERS against the construction of Ireland’s largest fish farm off the North Clare coast will get a chance to have their concerns heard in public as an oral hearing into the controversial salmon farm is now likely to take place.

The Department of Agriculture is currently deciding whether to allocate a license for the massive fish farm, which could create as many as 500 jobs if it goes ahead. A formal request was made by Galway City Council to the Department of Agriculture last week for a full oral hearing on the matter to take place and it is understood, because of the complex nature of the proposal, this request is likely to be granted.

The proposed fish farm, which will be located a number of miles off the Fanore coast, has divided opinions since it was first proposed in November of last year.

Indeed, the farm has even led to government agencies going to war, with Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM) who proposed the farm, going toe to toe with Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) who oppose it.

Both organisation have submitted a large amount of technical data on the possible effects that the farm could have on the wild fish in the area and the nearby spawning rivers. Both sets of expert data contradict on a number of key points – most significantly on the amount of water pollution that the farm will create and the damage that sea lice will cause to native stocks.

More than 2,000 anglers and en- vironmentalists took protest against a proposed organic fish farm last month.

BIM claim that the fish farm would be a major employment boost in the North Clare area and could create as many as 500 local jobs. These claims have been contested by organisation such as IFI, who say that the likely number of jobs created will be closer to 40.

CLARE is celebrate Youth Work Ireland in style from next Saturday with a series of events around the county that will showcase the activities of the Clare Youth Service.

Details of the activities in the county for the week-long celebration of youth affairs in the county from April 20 to 28 have been revealed, with the Clare Youth Service staging a host of different events throughout the county providing an opportunity for people of all ages to participate, get involved and ‘Be part of it’.

These events include a Youth Space Music and Film Event that will take place at Clare Youth Services headquarters on Carmody Street. A spokesperson for the youth service said this event is “aimed at volunteers and youth leaders who are interested in starting film-making projects with young people”.

Meanwhile, over 40 years of youth services in Clare will be reeled in at the West County Hotel on Satur- day, April 27, when it plays host to a ‘Youth Club Leaders Reunion’, in conjunction with a photography exhibition that will showcase the history of the Clare Youth Service and the people involved in youth affairs in the county dating back to the early 1970s.

“In addition to the events we are holding two open mornings and inviting people to call in and visit, to meet with staff and to see some of the work Clare Youth Service are doing around the county,” the youth service spokesperson revealed.

“The Junction Youth and Community Building, Cloughleigh Road, will be open from 9am to 1pm on Thursday, April 25, for people to call in, visit the building and have a cup of tea. On the same morning Clare FM will be broadcasting their show live from The Junction.

“Carmody Street is open from 10.30am to 1pm on Friday, April 26, and again encouraging people to call in meet staff and get a feel for some of the work the service does,” the spokesperson added.

GARDAÍ have admitted they are seriously concerned by a recent rise in burglaries amid fears that criminal gangs from other counties are targeting Clare.

It follows a garda appeal for information following a spate of burglaries in Ennis last week. Four homes were broken into between the hours of 8.10am and and 7pm on Tuesday April 9.

Between 11.30am and 3.15pm a house in Westfields was broken into by forcing open the front door. A gold chain office for Chartered Accountants Midwest Society was stolen. A house in Toberteascain was ransacked when the front door was forced open between noon and 4pm.

Passports, bankcards and cash were stolen between 10.30am and 4pm from a house in College Park when the rear window was forced open.

Between 8.10am and and 7pm a house in College Green was entered when glass on a side door was broken. Cash and coins in a bottle along with the contents of small safe and jewelry were stolen.

Superintendent Derek Smart of Ennis Garda Station said the burglaries are under investigation and has appealed for anyone who may have seen anything suspicious in the areas to contact gardaí.

Supt Smart said, “We haven’t ruled anything in or out at this stage because the investigations are very active in respect to it. But there is a strong possibility of them being connected. With a certain amount of burglaries, we have travelling criminals from all over the country that are targeting the road network. Whether or not the ones on Tuesday are connected with that, we’re not that firm yet. They could be or if it’s something more local to us. There are a still a lot of enquiries to be finished in respect of that aspect of it. We would certainly believe that we have been targeted by travelling criminals in some of the burglaries that have been committed.”

There were 364 house break-ins in Clare last year though burglaries have fallen by 31 per cent in the county over the past five years.

Supt Smart said, “I think we’re probably slightly up on where we were last year with regards to the burglaries. I would have seen an increase in it and that would be very worrying for me in that regard.” Tue16April13

MORE than 20,000 healthy Clare ash trees are currently being planted at various locations around England – in an effort to find a cure for ash dieback disease or chalara fraxinea.

Its is hoped that some of the native Clare tree could contain genetic components that might help them fight the disease or could even make them immune. If this proves successful, the Clare trees could eventually be used to restock much of the ash population in Northern Europe, which has been devastated by the ash dieback in recent years.

The Clare trees, as well as a number from Donegal, are being planted in various locations in the South East and South West of England – where the disease is already well established.

This was revealed in a draft strategy to combat the disease published jointly by the Irish and Northern Irish departments of agriculture yesterday.

The news that Clare trees could provide a possible solution to the ash-dieback crisis is cold comfort for foresters in the county. Two positive finds of the disease have already been identified in the west and east of the county and it is considered likely that more trees in the area are effected.

“We are basically waiting and holding our breath. There is noting else we can do. We are basically doing whatever the forestry services tell us at this point. We are not making any of the decisions, we are just doing what we are told,” said one Clare forester, who asked not to be identified.

“They [forestry services] are sending out letters and contacting foresters. Where the disease is found there is felling, and there is also felling at associated sites. At the moment this is mostly young trees, maybe two or three years old.

“The forestry services are now actively going around and checking sites off their on bat and they had put in place a tractability system to try and identify infected trees.”

There has been some criticism of the measure of the way in which the disease was allowed to enter Ireland. Before the disease was discovered in Ireland, no attempt was made to ban imports of ash saplings from counties where the disease was already present, because it was deemed to be against the EU fair trade rules.

However, now that the disease has reached Ireland, a ban on saplings from these locations has been implemented.

NEIGHBOURHOODS and communities around Clare are being encouraged to report any suspicious activity in thei r areas in the bid to beat the burglars.

There has been a recent spi ke in burglaries in rural and urban parts of the county and Gardaí says scheme such as Neighbourhood Watch and Community Alert play an important role in helping to deter crime.

Supt Derek Smart of Ennis Garda Station said, “Anybody that sees anthing suspicious that they feel isn’t right, pick up the phone straight away and give us a call. No matter how trivial they think it is, let us look at it. Let us now and that can all be done in confidence.”

Supt Smar t said plans to roll out a community alert text system in Clare are cur rently being reviewed. “There is an issue there with ensuring that the cor rect information goes out on that system. It’s actually being reviewed on a trial basis in parts of the country. Any system like that, we’d be eager to adopt.”

Cll r Michael Guilfoyle (Ind) is the area co-ordinator for the Turnpike Neighbourhood Watch Scheme that has been in operation for 22 years. He said the scheme has been effective in curbing crime and giving residents greater security.

He added, “I would encourage all communities, given all the recent cutbacks there has been to Garda resources, to set up neighbourhood watch schemes. It gives people in an area more security and confidence that their homes are protected.”

Ray Cummins, Chai rman of the Glassan Residents Association, said the area has been relatively unaffected by break-ins. However he said that the resident’s committee has discussed setting up a Neighbourhood Watch Scheme.

He said, “The one area, from a security and safety point of view that people are concerned about, is the inability to get proper street light- ing put in place. We are waiting for Ennis Town Council to take over the estate but that hasn’t happened yet.”

Meanwhile, three people arrested by Gardaí as part of an ongoing investigation into a series of aggravated burglaries in West Clare were released without charge last week.

The arrests of two men and one woman came following Gardaí investigations into recent aggravated burglaries targeting elderly people with incidents repor ted in Kilmihil, Moyasta, Kilmaley, and Inagh.

The suspects – all in thei r 20s were questioned by Gardaí at Ennis and Kil rush stations before being released without charge.

CLARE TD Pat Breen (FG) has been accused of helping to rig parliamentary question time for the Minister for Health James Reilly’s (FG) – in order to flood the session with positive questions.

Deputy Breen used his allocated question, during Minister Reilly’s last questions time, to question the Minister for Health about cuts to waiting lists at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.

This followed a similar question from Clare Deputy, Joe Carey (FG), about the reduction in the number of patients on trolleys at Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Ennis.

Indeed, more than half of the 170 questions submitted to last month’s health session were queries about cuts to waiting lists or MRSA infection rates submitted by Fine Gael backbenchers.

These actions were described as a “cynical abuse” of the rules of the Dáil by Clare Fianna Fail TD, Tim my Dooley.

“The Government parties are engaging in a cynical abuse of the outdated parliamentary question process to prevent opposition parties from getting to the truth of the broken promises which were made prior to the election,” said Deputy Dooley

“The five government reps in Clare, three TDs and two senators, need to face up to the litany of uturns on property tax, PRSI increas- es and child benefit cuts amongst others.”

The Minister for Health hosts a parliamentary questions and answers session every five weeks. The number of questions submitted has increased greatly in recent months with 71 submitted in September, 86 in November, 112 in February and 170 last month.

In a statement, Deputy Breen claimed that he had a perfectly valid reason for submitting the question.

“The reason why I submitted a PQ [Parliamentary Question] in rela tion to waiting lists at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, was because the Small Hospital Framework will shortly be published by the Minister for Health, which may have some affect on the Mid Western Regional Hospital in Ennis and given that hospitals in the Louth area have already undergone a reconfiguration I was interested in ascertaining the impact that this reconfiguration had on the waiting lists in Louth,” he said.

HOPES that a new state of the art national school will be built in Sixmilebridge to cater for the population explosion in the catchment area over the past decade have soared this week thanks to the intervention of the Department of Education.

Nearly a year after St Fiannachta’s National School in Sixmilebridge was controversially was excluded from the Government’s five-year schools building programme, the Department of Education has performed a u-turn.

In a decision announced on Monday, the department has revealed that the new school project for Saint Finnachta’s will now be progressed through the architectural planning stage.

“It’s good progress,” said school principal Gareth Heagney in welcoming this latest development “and it means we are moving the project to the real business stage and we will be liaising with the business unit shortly to get the specific details.”

Last June on a visit to the school, Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn admitted that the facility, which now boasts ten pre-fabs to cater for the ever-growing numbers of students, “wasn’t fit for purpose”.

Sixmilebridge is one of the fastest growing towns in the county with the development of 22 new estates swelling the town’s population by 51.1 per cent over the past seven years.

This population explosion has been reflected in school enrolments – there are currently 421 pupils in the school, a figure that’s set to rise to over 550 in the next three years.

The existing school was built in 1934 and was extended in 1985, while one of the ten pre-fabs in use dates from 1976. In 2005 the school applied for a capital grant to re-development the current building.

Three years later the project went to the design team phase, but was then shelved because of the gathering economic crisis.

However, the school principal has expressed hope that this week’s announcement doesn’t represent anoth- er false dawn for St Fiannachta’s.

“We are thankful and relieved that the Department of Education has finally acknowledged that our school is a school of rapid growth and with that classification it means that we’re going to move along a lot quicker than we have done,” he said.

“This news might be greeted with a little bit of skepticism, given the cutbacks in capital expenditure and the knock-backs that this project has encountered down the years, but I genuinely think that we are on the right track,” he added.

CLARE children are almost twice as likely to be admitted into a psychiatric hospital as children born in the rest of Ireland. According to the State of the Nation’s Children report, published by the Department of Children last week, a total of 20 Clare children were placed in the care of a psychiatric hospital in 2011 – the most recent year on record.

This means that Clare’s rate of committal per 1,000 children is 65.2 – the second highest in Ireland after Tipperary. Clare’s committal rate is almost twice the national average, which stood at 37.9 children per 1,000 in 2011.

The counties with the highest rate of children being admitted to psychiatric hospitals were all located in rural areas. Each of the counties with the highest rate of children placed in the care of a psychiatric hospital have suffered a major downgrade of their primary hospital in recent years with Clare, Tipperary, Roscommon, Monaghan and Leitrim having the highest ratios.

According to the report, 435 young Irish people were admitted to psychiatric hospitals in 2011. The vast majority of these young people were under the age of 18, however information concerning three people who were over the age of 18 but treated in child and adult units was also in- cluded.

Meanwhile, the report also revealed that Clare has the lowest rate of children with a registered intellectual disability in Ireland. According the State of the Nation’s Children report, just 148 Clare children had a registered intellectual disability in 2011.

The county’s rate of children with a registered intellectual disability is 4.8 per 1,000 children – almost half the national overage of 7.7 per 1,000 children.

The report does not give any indication as to why Clare should have such a low rate of intellectual disability compared to other counties. Besides being a possible indicator that Clare has a low level of children with intellectual disability, it could also be interpreted to indicate that Clare children with intellectual disabilities are less likely to be diagnosed or are less likely to be officially registered with the statutory bodies once diagnosed.

A HOST of amateur North Clare actors will make their major television debut next Monday in the PJ Curtis film ‘The Road of Souls’.

The film, which was shot on location the Burren in 2011, features a mixture of professional and amateur actors including many members of the hugely successful Corofin Drama Group.

The short film, which was written by Curtis and is partially biographical, tells the story of Patrick, an 11year-old boy and his interaction with a stranger who comes to the Burren in the 1950s.

“It was a memorable experience having a film crew here to turn my little story into something bigger,” said PJ.

“I’m really looking forward to the television screening as it will give people throughout Clare a chance to see the film. It’s a fitting tribute to the cast and crew that worked so hard on the production.”

The cast is lead by a young Clare actor Emmet O’Doherty who plays the role of Patrick and also includes locals Michael Keane, Peter Daffy and Maura Clancy.

The film is the first such work for writer and music producer PJ Curtis and originally appeared in a collection of his short stories entitled ‘The Music of Ghosts’.

PJ himself won a Best Script Award for the film at the 2012 LIT Film Festival. Later this year, PJ’s novel ‘A Nightingale Falling’ will get the big screen treatment as it is set to become a feature film.

‘The Road of Souls’ is produced by Mixed Bag Media, who financed the film along with some assistance from Clare Arts Office. It will be screened on RTÉ 2 on Monday, April 22, at 23.35pm. It will then be available on the RTÉ Player for a further two weeks. To see a trailer for the film visit www.mixedbagmedia.com.