Category: News

IT promises to be a big year on the railways – the West Clare Railway that is as entrepreneur and enthusiast Jackie Whelan moves further down the track towards his dream of having a commuter and tourist service linking Kilursh and Kilkee for the first time since the famous narrow gauge railway was closed in 1961.

“I want to have the track between Moyasta and Kilkee laid this year,” Whelan told The Clare People as he acknowledged that “2011 is a year when we really want to move our plans forward”.

Yes, the West Clare Railway project that has been Whelan’s dream for well over a decade is set to get on track in a big way over the next 12 months, with the first major step only a matter of weeks away with the publication of the new County Development Plan.

“The Development Plan will give the West Clare Railway the same designated status as the Cliffs of Moher or the Burren,” said Whelan of a move that will put the railway project on track for major development works in 2011.

“It’s been a long journey,” he admitted. “The NRA stopped us from crossing the road at Moyasta Junction and that put us back. I don’t think the NRA have even seen the place and were just working off maps. When you’re dealing with them you’re dealing with faceless people. An Taisce had no problem with it, while the NRA blamed the county council over the speed limit on the road. Now finally we’ll have the speed limit issue sorted out by May.

“And I’ll have the museum finished by the end of the year. I have a batch of railway engines and carriages that you wouldn’t see anywhere in Ireland, while the big thing is laying the track to Kilkee and Kilrush. With the train going in both directions we could bring old age pensioners to Kilkee and Kilrush for free. That’s what I want to do.”

Whelan has spent well over € 500,000 on the project so far, restoring the old Slieve Callan engine, laying tracks and sleepers on nearly three miles of track towards Doonbeg and towards Kilkee.

“We can do this from our own resources,” he revealed. “The only grant we got was from Leader for the engine restoration, while the biggest cost of all has been time. Shannon Development has said that if we could get numbers up to 25,000 a year we’d get grant aid.

“The potential is huge. There is capacity for West Clare to carry 30,000 to 40,000 passengers a year at its ease. There is huge interest in west Clare, because it’s the only railway that has retained its name in the minds of people because of the Percy French song. This year I want to get the track laid to Kilkee and a couple of more years have it going to Kilrush. With grant aid it would be a lot quicker.”

Not that Whelan is afraid to press ahead if the knock on the door bearing grant aid doesn’t come. “A task force has been set up in Clare to create jobs and they’ve never come near me,” he revealed. “This will create jobs,” he added as he looks to 2011 with confidence.

ROGUE developers and unfinished estates might be more associated with the present economic crisis that Ireland finds itself in since the collapse of the Celtic Tiger, but State Papers released this week under the 30-year rule show that the Fianna Fáil government of 1980 was confronted by similar problems, with grassroots members of the party leading the charged all the way to the Taoiseach’s office

It meant that the problem was passed over to Clare’s Minister for the Environment of the time, Deputy Sylvester Barrett, for consideration by Taoiseach Charles Haughey after a slew of complaints about unfinished estates landed at the cabinet table.

Fianna Fáil members complained directly to Mr Haughey about developers – many of whom were party backers – after they had left many new housing estates unfinished and then abandoned them. Confidential files contained in the 1980 State Papers reveal that a memo was issued to Minister Barrett about the scourge of private developments that were left unfinished around the country. The memo, that was also circulated to other members of cabinet made specific mention of Fianna Fáil’s promise during the 1979 Local Elections campaign that “developers will have to foot the cost of completing estates one way or the other”.

At the time there were 120 unfinished estates across, many of which had serious safety concerns attached to them. “Frequently housing estates are left unfinished by builders, many of whom are known Fianna Fáil supporters,” one letter passed on to Minister Barrett by Haughey claimed.

In response to grassroots anger about unfinished developments, Mr Haughey deflected criticism of his government by saying it was ultimately the responsibility of the local authorities involved to police developers

However, Mr Haughey also pledged some government action as those concerned had been forwarded to Deputy Barrett, who in his capacity as Minister for the Environment also had responsibility for all matters local government.

THE CLARE music scene has needed a hero for a long time. Leaving traditional music entirely to one side, recent years has seen the county struggled to produce a band or artist for other to point to and say, “look at them, they made it, so maybe we can too”.

This is no trivial matter – one only has to think about the amount of north Clare musicians in their mid30s who are playing their songs today because of the success of The Stunning and the real impact that success can have on a scene in brought into full focus.

I think that everyone who loves Clare music hopes that 2011 is a very big year for C!TIES. The Ennis band have promised a lot and, up until now, have delievered everything they’ve promised. The release of their split-single vinyl with Guilty Optics in November is evidence enough of that.

The best thing about C!TIES is that they are that most illusive of melds – a band that is both truly alternative but still has the potential to achieve mainstream success.

“For the first EP, we were in my garage in one of my old houses, and so this time around we had the whole studio. Sean is studying all the sound recording stuff so he was able to pretty much record the whole thing for us,” Sean from C!TIES told The Clare People in an interview last month.

“This is our second paid release. It’s getting pretty heavy at this stage. The last stretch of gigs for Stress, Debt and Chest Pains’ vinyl, was to older crowds than what we are used to playing. We are used to playing in pubs to people roughly our own age – 17, 18, 19, 20 – getting drunk and dancing around the place.

“But we had a more sophisticated type of audience – people were more appreciative of the music as opposed to going mental. And then when we had them coming up afterwards and buying the record, and saying we were great and stuff. It was something else.”

FORMER US president Ronald Reagan famously toasted his Irish roots when drinking a glass of stout in Ballyporeen in 1984 during his controversial state visit to Ireland, but four years previously it was to Clare and not Tipperary that the then White House aspirant looked to when embracing his Irishness for the first time.

Early in his campaign for the presidency, Reagan had shown little interest in tracing his Irish roots, but the State Papers from 1980 reveal that all changed when the Republican Party candidate discovered that his connections with Ireland descended back to Killaloe and the High King of Ireland, Brian Boru.

Reagan revealed his interest in his relationship to the most famous Clareman of all-time in a phone-call to Morgan Llywelyn, the acclaimed author of Lion of Ireland that was published earlier in 1980.

Details of Reagan’s phone-call to Llywelyn that occurred a matter of weeks before he was inaugurated as president came to the notice of the state after the American-born writer gave a detailed account of the conversation to Ireland’s ambassador in Washingthon, Clareman Con Howard.

“At 1.30pm on Christmas Eve I was working in my study when the telephone rang,” wrote Ms Llywelyn. “This is Ronald Reagan. When I picked myself up off the floor, the President elect told me he had called to say how impressed he was with the Lion of Ireland . ‘I just wanted you to know that you are interfering with the transition process dreadfully because I sneak away every chance I get to read your book’, Reagan said.

“He had obviously read the book thoroughly and with high retention, for he can quote chunks of it. He was warm and friendly, easy to talk with. He told me he has found much that is thought-provoking and analogous to current situations in Lion, and that he was grateful to have knowledge of that distant ancestor of his. He indicated that some of Brian’s strategies and philosophies had impressed him deeply.

“He is interested in learning more about Ireland and the Irish. He wants to know the positive things; like so many others, he had heard for too long only the negative.

“The incoming president is half Irish and glad of it, according to his own words. With so many other ma jor and immediate problems vying for his attention, he has taken the time to express a sincere and personal interest in Ireland,” concluded Llywelyn in her letter to the Dysart-born Irish ambassador, who was associated with another famous literary figure in Clare history – Brian Merriman, in whose honour he founded the Merriman Summer School in 1967.

WHEN the Ballyvaughan Farmers’ Market reopened back in 2003 it became just the second operating farmers’ market in Clare. Now, in just seven short years, it shares the stage with more then 20 regular markets which take place throughout the county during the summer months with some even carrying on all year round.

The markets are being driven by three main factors; an increased awareness of food miles and the environment; an increased demand for quality “slow” food and an increased interest for local people to grow and make more of the things they need to live their life.

“Markets seem to be popping up all over the country in recent years. There has been a lot of talk over the last decade over the quality of food that we are consuming and this notion of “food miles” seems to be talked about more and more. People have caught onto the idea of being eco-friendly by eating local foods,” said Tracey Kelly of the Ballyvaughan Farmers’ Market.

“We have also become so much better at doing what we need to do. We have learned how to grow better and how to make all kinds of things like cheese and other things which has helped to drive the development of the farmers market movement. People have really bought into the ideas.

“People who come to farmers’ markets are also very very loyal. Even the visitors are loyal in that they will visit farmers’ markets wherever they are on holidays. It doesn’t put them off, in fact they are dying to see what we have in the farmers’ market in Ballyvaughan that they don’t have in their own markets back home. So it’s something that is growing all the time and it looks like the interest both from customers and producers is increasing all the time.”

THEY may have been St Flannan’s College old boys and senior ministers in the Fianna Fáil government, but past-pupil and party fraternity didn’t stop Sylvester Barrett and Michael O’Kennedy from having a stand-off at the cabinet table and a major disagreement on the direction and financial needs of housing policy in 1980.

As Minister for Finance, O’Kennedy had control of the purse strings, but Minister for the Environment Barrett felt his department needed more money to offset what he forecast would be a huge shortage of social housing as the 1980s progressed.

Minister Barrett took his concerns and demands for an extra £30m over his budgetary allocation for social housing to the Department of Finance, warning his ministerial colleague that unless money was forthcoming new house building levels wouldn’t be able to cater for the growing demand.

Minister Barrett pointed out that “demand was so high that new house prices had virtually doubled between 1977 and 1979”, while he also warned of unrest over the housing shortage.

“The number of houses to be completed in 1982 and 1983 will be lower than in any year since 1972,” warned Minister Barrett in making his case for extra funds for the sector. “There will be growing unemployment in the building and associated industries and widespread unrest among persons who have arranged to purchase or improve houses with the aid of grants and with loans under the local authorities house purchase and improvement loan schemes.”

However, the Minister for Finance was unmoved and wasted no time in hammering home the point to his ministerial colleague that “all government departments had been warned that the scope for additional allocations this year was practically nil”.

“Despite this, the policy of the Minister for the Environment appears to be to challenge all of the main budgetary allocations within his de- partment’s ambit,” added Minister O’Kennedy as the stand-off between the two government departments escalated.

Meanwhile, the Department of the Taoiseach was keeping a watching brief on the two rowing departments before delivering another hammer blow to Minister Barrett’s housing policy in response to figures that showed the number of home improvement grants had jumped from 11,000 in 1977 to 30,000 in 1979, while the cost of administering the scheme had risen from £7m to £35m in the same period.

The home improvement grants scheme was abolished on January 21, 1980, with a final cut-off date for grant applications under the scheme being February 1 – ten days that brought the system to its knees as some 45,000 applications flooded in.

SET for further success in 2011 are local food heroes and exporters, The Burren Smokehouse.

The Clare artisan smoking business is about to add top-end British store, Fortnum and Mason to the list of people who will be stocking their products.

Owner, Brigitta Hedin-Curtin is upbeat about the coming year and confident of cracking new markets for her excellent artisan product.

“We’re currently working with Fortnum and Mason to provide them with our products under their brand which is great for us because their brand is in demand in the high-end of the market,” she told The Clare People .

The Smokehouse is also about to launch a new multi-lingual website and will be concentrating on mailorder business in the coming year.

The website gives the company a very lucrative route to market and gives it an added presence on the international food stage.

Brigitta is off to the organic fair in Nuremberg this month and will be showcasing their organic range at this, one of the biggest food gatherings in Europe.

“Organic is a very important market and we are also workng with Bord Bia, who are marketing strongly in the US. We have a small presence in the US but we have some new leads that we are following up on.”

Having just recently got Kosher status, the Smokehouse now plans to exploit this as a major selling point in the US and particularly in the high-end delis and restaurants of New York.

There are leads and possibilities which we are following, including the Arabic market, which is a big market,” said Brigitta.

The Smokehouse, which is based in Lisdoonvarna, opened in 1989 and employs 17 people with a turnover of € 1.3 million.

The artisan smokehouse produces a premium quality, organic product range which are 100 per cent Irish and smoked using a closely guarded recipe

There are more than 50 products now on the market, including Hot Smoked Irish Organic Salmon with Honey, Lemon and Dill, Whiskey and Fennel and Lemon and Pepper. The Smokehouse also smokes trout, mackeral and a whole rang fish.

The Smokehouse has won the Good Food Ireland Producer of the Year award in 2009 and Blas na hÉireann Gold Winner in Seafood Products 2009.

TOURISM is a global industry. If the Irish tourism sector is to play its part in the recovery of the Irish economy in 2011, a number of factors beyond the control of Irish business, the Irish public and even Irish politics will have to be counted before the much hoped for return of the international tourist can take place.

Despite the global nature of tourism, there are a number of resolution which, according to Michael Vaughan, head of the Clare branch of the Irish Hotel Federation, could help the local tourism sector in the year to come.

“We need the British people to rediscover the value and confidence to travel to Ireland again because we have lost as much as 25 per cent of that market. As well as lending us their money they could do better still and come over here and spend some of their money with us again. That would be a huge boost to us. Germany and America in 2010 seems to be good prospects – America really seems to be bouncing back and while it’s hard to know for sure there seems to be an increase of as much as 10 per cent on last year so far which is a good sign. Germany also has a renewed buoyancy so if we work to make sure that the product is right and the price is right they we could see a bounce in the German visitors for next year,” said Michael.

“In terms of what the government could do they could always spend more money promoting the country. Every euro that is spent promoting tourism brings € 4 back into the economy which is a good return. I’d like to see a better regime when it comes to local authority charges when it comes to businesses. That is a big ask I know, because local authorities are strapped for cash at the moment.

“I think a good summer weatherwise would be a big boost for the tourist sector. I know that is asking the God above to do us a favour but that would be a real boost for us. A good summer always makes a big impact for us, at least you can guarantee a few good weeks of trade.

“What could happen and what we would very much like to see is that people who have money might come out and spend that money. There are people in the country who have money. We would hope that these people would come out in the national interest and spend a bit of money in whatever way they see fit – whether they would be buying a bowl of soup or sandwiches in a cafe or whatever. There is a lot of money out there but people are thinking that they shouldn’t be spending money because there is a recession. But it’s a strange situation, spending money is exactly what we need them to do.”

As well on a national level and international, there are things within the county of Clare itself which could bring about a boost for the local tourist trade in 2011.

“The town of Ennis is critical to us and we’d like to see a big festival in the town. There has been a lot of talk about getting the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann back to the town but either way we’d like to see more activity. I’d like to see more going on at Glór especially if it could be expanded to let it take conferences.

“That would be a huge boost to the county for us to be able to take conferences of about 500 people in the county. If we could also see the coming together of tourism interests to help each other out,” continued Michael.

“I’d like to see that proposed bridge down in Kilkee being built. Loop Head and west Clare generally is such an undiscovered part of the county and it would be great to have an iconic tourism project located down there. The people who have brought Loop Head to the forefront in recent deserve their just rewards and they deserve to continue on and to see the benefit of their labours in the months and years ahead.”

GARDAÍ are hoping that after eight years, there may still be some information which can help them solve a brutal Clare murder.

Relatives of the late Sean Poland are mourning the eighth anniversary of his death. They are also appealing for anyone with information about the car-dealer’s death to come forward.

Gardaí are hoping that the time of year may jog someone’s memory of the New Year’s Eve eight years ago when Mr Poland was shot at his home.

The 39-year-old was shot dead during an armed raid at his home in Blackwater on New Year’s Eve 2002. Several arrests have been made in connection with his killing but noone has ever been charged. Mr Poland’s partner Joanne Lyons, 42, was tied up by the killers, who arrived at the house just minutes after the couple returned home from a night out. It is thought a deal made by Mr Poland in a city centre pub earlier that night may have been linked to his killing. The gang also escaped with about € 1,000 in cash from Mr Poland’s home. The attack shocked the country and sparked calls for greater control of firearms. It is believed criminals from the city were responsible for the murder and more than 20 people have been arrested to date by gardaí investigating the killing,

In 2004, gardaí in Limerick had arrested nine people in connection with the murder of the 39-year-old man.

The seven men and two women were arrested in early-morning raids across Limerick city. They were questioned and released without charge.

The previous year, two men and a woman were arrested but also released without charge.

Sean’s sister, Marie Horgan says that they are still hoping for a breakthrough in the investigation especially with the establishment of a dedicated cold case unit to look into old crimes.

The family make the appeal on each anniversary and last year, Sean’s brother Ray appealed for anyone with information about the killing to come forward.

“I know for a fact that somebody knows something. I would appeal to them to come forward with that information because we still don’t know who did it or the reasons why,” he said.

“Sean was an innocent man and. He was only 39 years of age and he should still be alive today. Some people deserve it, but he didn’t, and, really, there has been no closure for us,” he added.

Ray said that Poland this time of year was particularly difficult for him and his family.

“It is tough and the pain is still there. A lot of other cases seem to have been solved in the meantime but we haven’t got any answers. There doesn’t seem to have been any movement at all,” he said.

A Garda spokesperson confirmed that the murder investigation remained open, but said there had been no significant developments over the past 12 months.

“If anyone has information they can contact us in confidence,” he said.

Anyone with information about the murder pf Mr Poland can contact Henry Street Garda Station at 061 212400 or the Garda confidential line at 1800 666111.