Category: News

MORE than a dozen people who previously worked in the area of middle management and are now seeking employment are benefiting from a new initiative set up by the St Vincent de Paul.

The local St Joseph’s Conference of the St Vincent de Paul set up a support and information network targeted at this group, when it became apparent they were finding their new job-seeking status particularly difficult. To date an average of 12 to 15 people attend the monthly meetings, but the local SVP believe it can help even more.

Its next meeting is in the Information Age Park, Gort Road, Ennis, at 10 am on October 11.

The agenda includes a presentation from Gerard Kennedy, Clare Local Development Company, and from Michael Byrne of Acton BV.

Gerard will be outlining the activities of CLDC and the supports they have to offer and Michael will be talking on how the members can use the net to source jobs. Clare Connect is a network for unemployed supervisory and executive personnel and it meets on the second Thursday of each month in the Board Room of the Information Age Park.

Those wishing to attend would let the organisers know by emailing clareconnect123@gmail.com.

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.

ALMOST half of the fees paid to Clare solicitors under the criminal free legal aid system were paid to just under 20 per cent of those on the legal aid panel.

Figures from the Department of Justice show that solicitor Tara Godfrey was the highest earner from criminal legal aid cases in the county for the second year in a row.

The Ennis solicitor earned € 144,434 last year, a decrease of € 19,265 on the previous year when her payment reached € 163,699.

The payment to solicitors in Clare last year was down more than € 100,000 on the previous year in total.

In 2011 € 468,892 was paid to solicitors in Clare, with a further € 235,723.60 paid towards the provision of up to two counsel or barristers, doctors, psychiatrists, engineers, forensic scientists and language experts for defence cases in criminal hearings in the Clare District and Circuit Courts.

Among the other top earners on the Clare legal aid panel last year was Ennis-based solicitor Darragh Hassett who earned € 96,092. Mr Hassett had graduated from third to second place on the top earners list. In 2010 he earned € 110,130 but was then surpassed in earnings by Ms Godfrey and former Kilrush-based solicitor Eugene O’Kelly.

Mr O’Kelly who was appointed to the bench in March this year and is now a district court judge in Limerick, earned € 71,602 from free legal aid cases in 2011.

He earned € 135,748 the previous year.

Judge Kelly’s clients are now served by his former legal partner of five years Patrick Moylan.

John P Casey, based in Ennis, earned € 30,293 from legal aid work in criminal cases last year; Jenny Fitzgibbon from Shannon earned € 29,838; and, according to the Department of Justice, William Cahir Solicitor took in € 29,287.

In total, the top six earners on the legal aid panel earned € 257,112 between them. There were 23 solicitors or firms named in total.

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.

OVER ten per cent of Clare’s population are non-nationals, the latest report from the findings of the 2011 National Cenus of Population has revealed. The sixth bulletin report on the census, entitled ‘Migration and Diversity – A profile of diversity in Ireland’ has found that British and Poles make up the majority of the county’s non-national population.

The figures show that 12,076 nonIrish nationals were living in Clare at the time the census was taken in April 2011, a figure that accounts for 10.5 per cent of the total population of the county that stands at 117,196.

The report presents a profile of the non-Irish nationals living in Clare in April 2011, along with results on recent migration, foreign languages and ability to speak English.

“This report provides further analysis of the non-Irish population living in Clare at the time of the last census,” says Deirdre Cullen, a senior statistician at the Central Statistics Office.

“It examines aspects such as mixednationality households, age structure and marital status, numbers by towns, as well as new data on ability to speak English by year of arrival into Ireland. Clare has become an increasingly diverse society over the past decade and the different nationalities that make up the population of Ireland have an increasingly im- portant impact on the economy and society,” she adds.

The figures for Clare show that the county is running below the provincial and national average when it comes to non-national residents. The national average of the non-national population is 12 per cent, while in Munster it stands at 10.6 per cent.

Of the 12,076 non-nationals resident in the county, 3,622 were UK nationals – the largest non-Irish nationality in the county, followed by Polish nationals with 2,658 persons.

The census results show that of the 53,267 persons who arrived in Ireland in the year prior to April 2011, 1,010 were living in County Clare. Of these 627 or 62.1 per cent were non-Irish nationals.

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.”

NEARLY half of Clare’s population was born outside the county, a new set of statistics relating to the 2011 National Census of Population have revealed this week.

The figures released by the Central Statistics Office in its ‘Migration and Diversity – A profile of diversity in Ireland’ report have been broken down into seven different categories – those born in Clare, those born in counties in the State outside Clare, those born in Northern Ireland, England, Walsh, Scotland, the United States and also a category for other countries.

Accordint to the census returns 60,174 people who are resident in Clare were born in the county, a figure that translates into 51.3 per cent of the county’s total population of 117,196, with the remaining 57,022 born outside the county.

The majority of these are made of up people who were born in other counties in the State – 36,863 in total which account for 31.45 per cent of the population. This large number of Irish nationals born outside the county can largely be attributed to the fact that Clare has been with a maternity hospital services for over a quarter of a century, a state of affairs that seen most of the county’s births taking place in Limerick and Galway.

British subjects make up the largest category of Clare residents born outside the country. A total of 7,529 were born in either England or Wales, 971 in Northern Ireland and 345 in Scotland. This mean that British nationals, which number 8,845 in total, make up 7.5 per cent of Clare’s population.

There are 1,732 American citizens resident in the county, a figure that translates into 1.5 per cent of the county’s population, while residents who were born in other countries number 9, 582, which represents a percentage of 8.1.

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 WAS an issue that took over the airwaves two weeks ago, and last evening it ironically became one of the talking point in the county council chamber.

The decision by Clare County Council to include a reminder about paying the household charge with third level grant application letters became an issue when it was interpreted that the council would not pay the grant if the household had not paid the controversial tax.

Cllr PJ Ryan asked that the council would inform its elective representatives of any announcements of public interest, prior to the media being informed.

“It is not nice to get a call at 7am from someone from Morning Ireland to see if you had any comment,” he said.

“Then you go to the local shop to field a barrage of abuse from local ladies who asked “what are you f-ers doing?” I don’t know how this was put into the media. Was it the Min- ister’s office or Clare County Council?”

Describing it as an embarrassment to councillors, Cllr Christy Curtin said it the letter was ill conceived and caused confusion on processing the grant.

Cllr Pascal Fitzgerald added that the issue was “all over facebook” the night before the story broke.

“I went into the shop and people were asking why are you a councillor if you don’t know what is going on.”

Co Manager Tom Coughlan said the council was not aware it was go- ing to become an issue and if he did he would have informed the councillors.

He said, “An individual who got a letter decided to publish it on the internet.

“The first I heard of it was at 11pm that night.”

“ Morning Ireland picked up the story that Clare County Council was not going to pay the grants, but that was not the story.”

It was an administrative decision to send out the letter and to return to the council chamber every time such a letter was to be issued would be unworkable micromanagement according to the manager.

He added, “You just don’t know when the next story is going to break.”

“We made it clear during the day that we were not withholding the grant, but what compounded the issue was Tipperary County Council who said it was going to follow Clare County Council and withhold the grant,” he said.

“We were never withholding the grant,” he said.

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.