Category: News

GARDAÍ in Clare are advising home owners across Clare to be more security conscious, in the wake of burglaries in Ennis, Kilrush and Kilkee over the past week.

In one incident, an assortment of electrical goods was stolen during a break-in to a house on the Gort Road in Ennis, overnight on Friday.

Among the items stolen were a flat screen television, a dvd player, a hifi, laptop, several pieces of gold and silver jewellery, coins and savings stamps. Entry was gained after glass in a back door was broken.

A house at Lenabeg on the Lahinch Road in Ennis was broken into overnight last Tuesday. A kettle and two tins of paint were stolen, after a back window was broken.

In Kilrush, upstairs rooms in a house were ransacked after thieves broke into a house on Burton Street overnight on Friday. However, gardaí say it appears that nothing was stolen.

Gardaí in Kilkee are investigating a break-in to the local golf club at around 1.45am yesterday (Monday). The alarm activated and a number of people fled. An individual was seen running across the golf course.

Meanwhile, the theft of lead from a house being built on the outskirts of Ennis is being investigated by gardaí. The house, which is currently being built at Edenvale on the Kilrush Road, was targeted between 6pm on Friday and 8pm on Saturday.

Kilrush Superintendent Gerry Wall is advising home owners to exercise vigilance.

“People are not securing their property. They are going out for short periods of time and don’t take an extra couple of minutes to secure their property. It’s obviously opportunistic burglaries. People have alarms on their homes but don’t turn them on,” said Supt Wall.

MORE than two decades after the beginning of bitter fight to construct an interpretive centre at Mullaghmore in the South Burren, the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) has established its first tourism base to serve the world famous national park.

Up until last month the Burren was the only one of Ireland’s six national park’s not to be served by either a information point or an interpretive centre operated by the NPWS. That all changed two week ago when three Burren guides were employed by the NPWS to offer tourism advice and free walking tours from a base in Corofin.

Plans to construct a controvertial interpretive centre at Mullaghmore, which was to be built the Office of Public Works (OPW) and managed by the NPWS, were abandoned in 2000, after a nine-year legal battle to decide planning permission for the site. The new NPWS facility is currently operating from a section of the Clare Heritage and Genealogy Centre in Corofin and poses none of the environmental threats which prompted the campaign against the Mullaghmore Centre.

According to head guide Sheila Murphy, visitor numbers to the facility have been good throughout its first two weeks in operation, with an encouraging number of visitors and local people using the service.

“We have six national parks in Ireland and the Burren National Park is the only one that hasn’t has an information point or an interpretive centre and this is the first year that we have an information point available to the public,” she said. “It is nice to have a place that both locals and tourist can come in and get information and have that service available to them. A lot of the shops in the village and the locality are often asked for information about the Burren and the National Park and they have nowhere really to direct them to.

“I think that this is a complementary development to the Burren Centre in Kilfenora. At the moment we are just an information point but there are plans to have more interpretation in the centre in the future. The Burren is a big area and everyone want to work together to promote it.

“We have three guides in the centre and we can organise free walks on demand if people come in and ask for that and we will also host a free walk every Sunday, which is more aimed at families. It’s a free service and open to anyone who want to use it.”

The new NPWS information point will continue, seven days a week, until the end of September but plans are already in place to run the service for the entire summer season in 2012.

The information point is open from Monday to Friday from 9.30 to 6pm and on Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 6pm.

AN ENNIS woman now living in London has recalled the “psychotic” scenes that developed near her home when riots flared across England last week.

Actress Denise Gough (31) lives in the Hackney area of London, which suffered from rioting and looting last week. Speaking on Wednesday, as law and order was being restored to the city’s streets, Denise described the damage done to homes and properties as “awful”.

She said, “I was at home on Monday all day and I noticed there was lots of helicopters and it was kind of noisy. I didn’t leave the house ‘til about 4pm and when I walked out my front door there were loads of buses that had been abandoned, lined up on the street. Then further down there were rows of police in riot gear.

“It’s quite grim. There is a really strange atmosphere. People don’t re- ally know what to expect. Yesterday there were people boarding up their shops. It was really sad to see all these small shop owners having to board up their buildings. It was really depressing. Then I heard last night in the area near me, London Fields, there were people being pushed off their bikes and being robbed. It just kind of seems like a free-for-all.”

Denise has lived in London for 16 years, acting in a string of theatre and TV roles. She said the scenes of last week’s riots were unlike anything she has ever seen in the city.

She explained, “The damage was awful. There’s a shop near the area where I used to live, which is on a place called Clarence Road, they just destroyed it. They even took his milk and his microwave from the back of the shop and these are people that have worked for years. That’s the sad thing. It’s not big conglomerates that these guys were targeting, these were small family shops.”

Denise added, “People say it’s young kids with nothing to do and I do understand the frustration of the government cuts in the poorer areas. The Government has slashed the funding for initiatives for keeping young kids out of gangs, but you can’t justify a mass mugging. That’s what happened. People stealing things like cigarettes, alcohol, phones, trainers; they’re all going down the sports shops nicking trainers. It’s so bad. It just looks psychotic.”

A TRAINED legal professional, who launched her own business after losing her job in an Ennis legal practice in December, is one of 50 people who have already signed up to take part in Ireland’s first Open Fair event which will take place in Ennis later this month.

The organisers of the Open Fair say that 50 of their 100 stalls have already been taken and are urging budding Clare business people to contact them as soon as possible to reserve a place.

The event, which is the brainchild of general election candidate Jim Connolly, is aimed at start-up businesses and aims to show Clare people that there is a future for new indigenous businesses in the county.

Ennis businesswoman Niamh O’Brien opened her own clothing business in Lifford earlier this year after she lost her job in a local legal firm.

“I could see that work had been fizzling out over the last two years and just before Christmas it was time for me to go. I was always very creative and artistic and that was something that I had left behind when I went to study law. I bought a dress a couple of years in a very fancy shop and I knew myself that I could have made the dress myself,” she told The Clare People .

“I bought myself a couple of books on sewing and I was away in a hack after that. I started on some alterations at the beginning, as my bread and butter, but I like to do the creative side of it so that is what I do now. I like to reuse clothes as much as I can, so I’m always ripping up shirts and making dresses out of them that sort of idea.

“It’s a struggle at the moment but I am still going and events like this Open Fair are great to help me get my name out there and show people what I can do. The idea of being able to network with people in a similar situation to me and just to get the products out there is a great benefit to me.”

The Open Fair will take place in the West County Hotel in Ennis on August 28.

The West County have offered the space for the Open Fair free of charge and also have a number of outside stalls available should the hall become full.

THE Clareman, who is Ireland’s Consul General in New York, can play his part in stimulating economic growth through job creation and tourism, a Civic Reception that was held in his honour in Kilrush was told on Friday night.

On what was his first official visit to his the west Clare capital since his appointment as Consul General for Ireland, the Kilrush-born Noel Kilkenny heard his achievements and many years service in Ireland’s diplomatic corps lauded by the local town council.

Surrounded by family and friends, the Mayors of Clare and Kilrush as well as agencies such as the West Clare Task Force, Shannon Development, the Mid West Regional Authority and members of Kilrush Town Council, Mr Kilkenny said it was “a very special occasion to be honoured in my native down as Consul General”.

Mr Kilkenny’s role in helping foster an economic upturn was highlighted by a number of speakers at the Civic Reception that took place in the Vandeleur Walled Garden in Kilrush.

These included current Mayor of Kilrush, Cllr Ian Lynch, his precedessor Cllr Liam Williams, who moved the motion that Mr Kilkenny be honoured with a Civic Reception and Clare County Manager, Tom Coughlan.

“I am confident that many opportunities will materialise into sustainable job growth,” said Mr Coughlan. “I want to thank the Consul General personally for affording so much of his time to the Clare delegation when we visited New York as part of the St Patrick’s Day Festival. “Our time there was spent meeting with business people and devel- opment agencies, in our continuing efforts to seek enterprise development for county Clare. Already I am heartened by the number of business enquiries. I am also very pleased to note that tourism figures for the first half of this year are up considerably on last year’s figures and this is very encouraging. “The key to Irish economic growth, particularly in the short term, will be foreign direct investment. US investment is, and will continue to be, a critical element of the Irish economy. It is imperative that the representatives of the Irish government abroad reinforce the message that Ireland is open for business,” the county manager added. “When the Clare delegation visited New York last St Patrick’s Day, the Consul General took a lead role in introducing the delegation to many business executives and hosted a number of meetings to ensure that business contacts would be maximised,” said Cllr Williams. “The Consul General was extremely generous with his time and ensured that every avenue for business development, job creation and tourism potential was explored. The Consul General has an insatiable appetite for all things Irish, as is evident from his current role in assisting Irish people and promoting Irish culture and the arts in the United States,” added Cllr Williams.

“BUT generally I think it is to do with the place that that we are living, the expectations that we have for life and how things – like the recession – are affecting that,” said ACCORD counselling manager Stephen Cummins.

“Things like the recession have put people under a lot of pressure – not just financial pressure but also time pressure if someone is out there trying to make ends meet or save a business.

“A lot of times, couples who had been working hard through the good years have found that they have been thrown back together, with one or both losing their job. If people are in each other’s faces more often than they had been before, that can be a very awkward situation for them – something that can take a bit of getting used to.”

A total of 12 local relationship counsellors are employed at the ACCORD office on Harmony Row in Ennis. The service is open to all couples – both married and unmarried – who feel that their relationship would benefit from some professional help.

Besides the effects of the recession, distrust brought about by one partner’s activities online is the fastest growing cause of marital instability, according to ACCORD. With many people unemployed and finding themselves with spare time and the widespread availiblity of broadband enabling people to browse online, the temptations here can cause unrest, says Stephen.

“People can be attracted into it quite innocently but the danger is that it can take over your life. It can be very innocent – people going online to buy things without really realising that they cannot afford it, for example.

“The problem is when this becomes a secret compulsion, and a wife or husband is not aware that their spouse is going online and spending money,” continued Stephen.

Recent reports nationally suggest that online gambling and addictions to internet pornography are having detrimental effects on marriages – most likely, says Stephen, because couples do not discuss their problems.

“Communication is the real key. Real communication can help a couple to deal with an awful lot of other difficulties. But if you can’t communicate properly together, how can you deal with other issues? People can take each other for granted – but they just need to realise that no one has the perfect marriage and everybody needs to work at it,” he added.

ACCORD is the largest relationship counselling agency in Ireland. Their Ennis offices can be contacted on 065 6824297.

A BELARUSSIAN infant who’s life-saving operation was paid for by money raised by the Burren Chernobyl Project in Clare has finally returned home this week – safe and well after her year-long ordeal.

The parents of baby Eva Razenkova were told last November that their 17-month-old daughter would be dead before Christmas if more than € 20,000 could not be found to fund a life-saving operation for their daughter.

After spending their life savings to get Eva the tests which diagnosed the condition, her parents, Yuri and Veronika Razenkova, came to the Burren Chernobyl Project for help. The couple had already raised more than € 20,000, or the equivalent of 15 years’ salary for the average worker in Belarus, to go towards the operation but had exhausted all their avenues of fundraising.

After an intensive fundraising effort the Burren Chernobyl Project were able to donate € 20,000 to help save Eva’s life – € 10,000 from money raised in Clare in just two weeks and a further € 10,000 from the group’s own emergency response fund.

Baby Eva went under the knife in a Belgian hospital Wednesday, December 8, in an attempt to correct a cholestatic hepatitis along with a number of cardiac abnormalities which, specialists say, would have killed the infant before Christmas if left untreated.

The operation, which was risky in its own right, was a success and after recuperating in Belgium for the last number of month, Eva, who has just turned 2 years old, was able to return with her family to Belarus last week.

Eva’s patents, Yuri and Veronika, have expressed their thanks to the Burren Chernobyl Project and to the people of Clare for their support that they have received.

“It was such an incredible response. We knew that we could always rely on the people of Clare to come up with the goods in an emergency situation like this, but Eva’s parents just can’t believe that so many strangers from Ireland have given so generously to help their daughter,” said a spokesperson from the Burren Chernobyl Project.

THE NUMBER of cars seized by gardaí has increased by almost a third so far this year, compared with last year. So far this year, 304 vehicles have been seized by gardaí, compared with 240 during the same period in 2010.

The cars were seized mainly due to them not being taxed, if those driving them were not insured, or because they had serious mechanical defects.

“A lot of those would be driven without insurance or defective or company cars being driven by crimi- nal gangs. There is no doubt this has resulted in preventing serious crime. The legislation is there to seize cars without insurance or tax,” said the head of the Clare Garda Division, Chief Superintendent John Kerin.

He said that gardaí are considerate when seizing cars that are not taxed and drivers are given every chance to ensure the tax is paid.

“The tax would be out a long time before the gardaí would seize a car. If the tax was out for one or two or three months because of the recession, there would be an understanding,” he said.

He said that the increase in seizures is “partly due to the recession. People can’t afford to tax them. There are a lot of young people who were working on building sites and who are now unemployed but still have the cars,” said Chief Supt Kerin.

The figures have emerged in the wake of figures from Clare County Council showing that 102 cars were abandoned during the whole of last year.

“Clare County Council has a procedure in place from receipt of complaint to resolution, involving the issue of a warning letter to the relevant vehicle owner and removal if the abandoned vehicle remains in place past a specified period of typically seven days,” said a council spokesperson.

Meanwhile, thefts from cars are on the decrease in County Clare, by 28 per cent. So far this year, there have been 89 thefts from cars, compared with 123 last year.

Gardaí are attributing the decrease to increased vigilance.

“We have placed a lot of emphasis in the past couple of years in putting patrols in place in tourist areas,” said Chief Supt Kerin.

A PILOT ferry service connecting Ballyvaughan and Galway City looks set to be established early in 2012 after initial feedback from the Spyria Partnership feasibility study has given a thumbs-up to the ambitious project.

While the report in full won’t be published until the middle of next month, The Clare People has learned that the research undertaken by the independent Scottish company will show that tidal conditions are conducive for the service to be established and that there is a demand, both in North Clare and Galway, for the service.

Following the official publication of the report next month, the Ballyvaughan Bay Hop Group will put out a tender, looking for a local ferry owner to operate the service. It is expected that the “hop” will first run for an initial six-week trial basis this spring but hopes are high that the demand will exist to extend the service indefinitely after that.

Once the initial commuter demand has been met, it is hoped that the service could be expanded to ferry tourists between Ballyvaughan and Galway during the busy summer months.

The Ballyvaughan Bay Hop in the brainchild of Ballyvaughan woman Gwen Ryan, who began the project as a means of aiding her own daily commute to and from Galway City. The group itself is a not-for-profit organisation and Gwen is hopeful that a local ferry owner will see the potential for the service, rather that the Ballyvaughan Bay Hop Group having a role to play in directly organising the service themselves.

“We have got initial research back from a company in Scotland and they are very happy that the service that we envision is possible. This is taking into account both the local conditions and also that there is a good demand for the service from the local people. Of course there are some who are not in favour of the service but the majority of people are in favour of it,” said Gwen.

The Ballyvaughan Bay Hop Group has also just launched a small fundraising drive to help pay for the completion the feasibility study conducted by Spyria Partnership. The vast majority of this has been paid through a Leader grant but a small amount of local fundraising is required to pay the balance.

The group are using “crowd funding” to raise the money. The idea of crowd funding is that a relatively large number of people each donate a small amount to fund a community project.

To entice people to donate a number of rewards have been set up for donators, including an invitation to the launch party when the ferry is launched next year to a place on the ferry’s first trip between Ballyvaughan and Galway City.

To donate visit www.ifund.ie/ projects/37/help-us-float-our-boat.

MICHAEL Flatley will not take to the stage when his ‘Lord of the Dance’ spectacular comes to the Cliffs of Moher this September, but he has pledged his full backing to the event, as well as to the Cliffs’ bid to be named as one of the 7 New Wonders of the World.

The world famous dancer disappointed his legions of fans from all over the world at the weekend when he announced that, for the time being at least, he has hung up his dancing shoes.

The multi-millionaire began a series of media events last week highlighting the Cliffs’ bid to become one of the 7 New Wonders on the World.

“He has taken ownership of the Cliffs of Moher’s Seven Wonders bid and also the ‘Lord of the Dance’ at the Cliffs, which is absolutely great news for everyone in this county,” said Oliver O’Connell.

“They say that this can bring € 300 million in tourism to the county so the fact that Michael Flatley has gotten behind it is a major boost. He is a person who just doesn’t have following in Ireland, he can get people from all over the world behind the Cliffs.”

Flatley invited the world’s media to his € 30 million Cork mansion last week in an effort to get support for the Cliffs of Moher bid.

“My reason for inviting everyone was to help these people accomplish their goal. I want to promote Ireland and Irish interests and I feel these people are doing a wonderful thing,” he said. “Last time I danced it was for the Prince of Wales and Camilla at a private function at Buckingham Palace. That was in February. I’ve never danced at all since then.”

Flatley went on to say that while he wouldn’t rule out dancing altogether he “can’t see it” in his future.

Tickets for the ‘Lord of the Dance’ at the Cliffs of Moher are reportedly selling well and organiser have urged locals to buy their tickets soon to avoid disappointment.

“This event will be the most spectacular event ever to take place in Clare – you will never see anything like this again,” continued Oliver.

“Ticket sales are steady and we believe that we can still fill the Cliffs for both nights but this project is about more than money – it’s about a once in a life time event at a once in a lifetime venue. People are getting behind the project and if everyone gets behind it then who knows, maybe something could happen again in 2012. This is a major event – every B&B in North and West Clare is booked up because of this and I have been getting calls from all over the world about the concerts.”

Some 20,000 people are expected to attend the ‘Lord of the Dance’ at the Cliffs on September 1 and 2. The official 7 New Wonders of the World list will be announce on November 11.