Category: News

GARDAÍ have confirmed they are investigating the circumstances in which an Ennis teenager was married by Bishop Michael Cox.

Inspector Tom Kennedy told Ennis District Court earlier this month that an investigation is underway into the apparent marriage of the 17 year-old Ennis teenager and his 18 year-old Cork ‘bride’.

He was speaking after the woman told Judge Patrick Durcan that Bishop Michael Cox married the couple in Birr, Co Offaly in November.

In sworn evidence, the woman said Bishop Cox charged them € 100 for the ceremony.

Bishop Cox had previously attracted controversy when he ordained Sinead O’Connor a priest in 1999 in Lourdes – he is not a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church and is instead a bishop of the Latin Tridentine Church.

In court, Judge Durcan was strongly critical of Bishop Cox.

He said the fact that the couple had paid money for the service was “appalling” and “brings things to the lowest depths.”

“I want to say loudly and clearly that anyone who masquerades as a clergy man and who takes money from young people and imbues in them a mistaken belief that he has married them, is in my view committing the most serious offence”, added Judge Durcan.

Details of the ‘marriage’ emerged at Ennis District Court on December 20 where the boy appeared for sentence.

The teenager, who was described as “naive”, previously pleaded guilty to multiple charges of burglary, theft a and robbery.

He was one of two people who stole a car from Castlewood Park, Ennis last summer.

The teenager pleaded guilty to trespassing on a farmhouse in Lemenagh, Kilfenora last October. He admitted stealing items from a house in the Lifford area of Ennis, also in October, 2012.

He also pleaded guilty to his role in burglaries at houses in Westwood, Ennis on dates unknown between December 25 and 26 (2012) and at Showground’s View, Ennis on dates unknown between December 26 and 27 (2012).

The court heard that after being arrested on a bench warrant, he absconded from custody on December 18 after gardaí stopped at Supermacs, Ennis to get him food.

The boy was due to be transported to St Patrick’s Institution for Young Offenders when he ran from a garda car on O’Connell Street.

Garda James Hanley told the court the teenager was discovered at home where he had used a hacksaw to remove the handcuffs.

Defence solicitor Siobhan McMahon said her client’s immaturity had led him to this point.

“He is happy to settle down in Cork and enjoy married life”, added Ms McMahon.

Judge Patrick Durcan said it upset him “greatly and deeply” that his last case of the year involved the imposition of a lengthy sentence on a young person.

However Judge Durcan added that despite the constant support and help of parents, solicitors and gardaí, the teenager’s list of offences indicates the teenager is becoming a “criminal of the worst kind”.

He imposed sentences totaling 12 months detention.

Recognizance were fixed in the event of appeal meaning the boy will be released until the outcome of any appeal if bail terms are reached.

THE body of the 52-year-old Czech National was found in a laneway beside Supermac’s fast food restaurant on O’Connell Street in May. Mr Josef Pavelka died on a Saturday night, just days after leaving a homeless shelter in Galway. Josef and his friend Piotr Baram came to national attention earlier in the year when it was revealed they lived in a public toilet in Ennis. “Josef is my best friend and he is dead, he is dead. I am sick. I am sick about that,” said Mr Baram.

A Garda spokesman said at the time that gardaí are liaising with Interpol to contact the deceased’s family in the Czech Republic. Mr Pavelka had recently underwent surgery and had severe difficulties with alcohol. He walked with the aid of a crutch.

Recalling his friend’s final hours, Piotr said, “We drink together Saturday. After that he go to sleep in church. Later the church is closed, he must go out. I go to my place to sleep. He go to his place, I don’t know where, O’Connell Street somewhere.”

Mr Pavelka came to Ireland in 2007 and worked in construction industry and as a painter. He and Piotr Baram were fixtures on the streets of Ennis. They could be seen every morning standing in the laneway near Fawl’s Pub on O’Connell Street. The pair lived for a period in a tent in the Fair Green.

They received food and assistance from the Church and the St Vincent de Paul. They were firm friends for seven years. Piotr Baram said his friend had been married with children in the Czech Republic.

He said he thought Mr Pavelka liked football back at home. Mr Pavelka’s plight came to national attention last month after a report from the Probation Services disclosed that he lived for a period in a public toilet. Mr Pavelka appeared in court on public order charges. Judge Patrick Durcan described the situation as a “scandal”. As a result the men secured emergency accommodation at a tourist hostel in Galway. They returned to Ennis two weeks ago where, Piotr says, they slept rough on the streets.

CLARE erupted in celebration as the county’s hurlers were crowned AllIreland champions after an epic two game series against Cork.

Darach Honan’s goal in the dying seconds ensured a 5-16 to 3-16 win for Clare over the Rebel County in the All-Ireland final replay played under lights on an unforgettable Saturday night in Croke Park.

Teenage forward Shane O’Donnell became an overnight sensation after scoring a first half hat trick. O’Donnell also scored three points as Clare’s pacy and skillful brand of hurling illuminated a final hailed by many as the greatest of all time.

Cratloe’s Conor McGrath scored a wonder goal at a crucial period in the second half to put Clare on the road to victory.

All this after the first game between the counties ended in a draw earlier in the month. Despite dominating the game, Clare could not shake off a dogged Cork side who edged a point ahead in the final moments.

But in one of the most dramatic passages of play in All-Ireland history, corner back Domhnall O Donovan burst up field to swing over the eqaulising point deep in injury time to leave the sides all square (Clare 025 Cork 3-16) at the end of a pulsating encounter.

It meant the counties had to do it all over again three weeks later. By the time the replay rolled around, Clare had already secured a second successive All-Ireland under 21 title following a comfortable victory over Antrim.

Thousands of Clare fans mobbed the pitch as captain Paul Flanagan was presented with the trophy. Days later Clare were celebrating again as the county claimed its fourth senior All-Ireland title.

Goal scoring hero Shane O’Donnell was the man everyone was talking about afterwards.

“If I had a dream last night that I was going to score 3-3, I’d have woken up and said that’s ridiculous. I’d have been happy with one. It’s the stuff of dreams since I was five or six when I picked up a hurley,” he said.

The Éire Óg player was only told he would be starting instead of Darach Honan when the team gathered for their pre-match meal in St Patrick’s College.

“The last few weeks in training have been good to me. The week before the 21 match and from then I’ve been going well. You just hit a patch of form and I got it at the right time and I got put on,” he added.

Ballyea superstar Tony Kelly was superb on the day, scoring three vital points.

“The saying goes, ‘make hay while the sun shines’ and it’s been shining now for the last couple of years and long may it continue,” he said

Patrick Donnellan joined the short but illustrious list of Clare men who have captained their county to AllIreland glory.

“Surreal, absolutely surreal, you feel like you’re watching yourself do it. It’s the only way I can describe it,” said Donnellan of climbing the steps to receive the Liam McCarthy trophy.

“It absolutely unreal and just rewards for the amount of effort that those lads have put in all year to get their day in the sun and we had it this day.”

Close to 30,000 people packed into the Fair Green in Ennis to welcome home the All-Ireland champions. “The recession can go to hell” declared Davy Fitzgerald to the jubilant crowd.

“In 1995 I was privileged and honoured to be part of something special in the Banner County. I was lucky to play with a bunch of players that were exceptional. I was lucky to be led by a manager that was exceptional, so I was. Them guys are what led the way to this success,” said Fitzgerald.

“But the one thing I want to say tonight, we enjoyed our time in 95 and 97 but it’s now the time for 2013 and these exceptional players.”

A SPATE of aggravated burglaries targetting elderly people living in the West Clare area was a cause of huge concern in the community in the new year, as gardaí believed the culprits had local knowledge of their victims.

In a holiday attack, two elderly brothers were targetted in their home in Lack West Kilmihil during the weekend before Christmas.

At least two intruders, yielding iron bars, broke into the frightened men’s home between 2am and 3.25am on Saturday, December 22.

They terrorised the elderly occupants and forced them to hand over what was considered to be a sizeable amount of money. The thugs then fled in a car.

The only description available to the gardaí of the intruders was “that they were big”.

“A car with a loud exhaust was heard near the scene at the time,” a Garda spokesperson said.

This crime was very similar to burglaries committed in Moyasta on December 8 and in Boolyneaska Kilmaley on December 6. Again, older people were targetted and robbed.

In the Moyasta incident, three individuals broke into the farmhouse of two elderly sisters and demanded money.

The trio broke down the door of the rural house in Kildymo, Bansha, near the seaside town of Kilkee, between 10.30pm and 11.30pm on December 8 and entered the premises where the women had lived all of their lives.

A frightening ordeal then began for the two ladies in their 80s as the robbers ripped the phone from the wall and demanded money from them. There was very little money in the house and the thugs eventually got away with a small amount of cash from the old age pensioners’ purses. The three who had targeted the two vulnerable older women in their own home covered their faces during the robbery. Gardaí believe there may be a connection between at least two of the three burglaries. They are appealing for anyone with any information to contact them at Kilrush and Ennis Garda Stations.

THE number of young Clare girls who are purposely cutting themselves every day has increased dramatically since 2009, prompting fears of a epidemic of self harm in the county.

According to figures obtained by The Clare People in May, the number of Clare girls deliberately cutting themselves jumped dramatically in 2010 and has remained high ever since. This has prompted fears of a self harm epidemic amongst Clare school girls, with fears also being raised about the possibility of copy cat cutting.

According to the National Register for Deliberate Self Harm, 100 Clare girls and women received hospital treatment because of self harm in 2009, with 186 hospital visits taking place in total. In the same year, 96 Clare boys and men required hospi- tal treatment, with a total of 172 hospital visits taking place.

These figures are broadly in line with national and international averages, with girls generally engaging in self harm slightly more than boys. However, in 2010 and 2011 the number of Clare girls self harming jumped dramatically, with 124 and 120 girl receiving hospital treatment respectively.

Cutting is the most common form of self harm, however poisoning and alcohol abuse is also common, especially amongst males.

“It has become more and more common among school girls,” The Clare People was told.

Girls as young as 12 years old are cutting themselves, or injuring themselves in some other way, with hundreds requiring hospital treatment for their self acquired injuries each year.

RYANAIR never left Shannon but its presence in Clare’s international airport was back with a big bang in October thanks to the low-cost airline’s new target of one million new passengers as it geared up to reach 2007 levels when its traffic numbers reached a record 1.9m.

This vision and commitment of the low-cost airline for Shannon was sounded out at the airport on October 24 by deputy chief executive Michael Cawley, at the announcement of eight new Ryanair flights out of Shannon that will commence in April 2014.

“My ambition for Shannon,” said Mr Cawley, “we talked about one million passengers. I wouldn’t lessen that in any way. We can move on. 300,000 is a very good start – this is a very significant step, almost doubling our business,” he added.

In 2011, Ryanair pledged to grow traffic numbers in Shannon by one million, provided it secured the same incentive deal that was being afforded to Aer Lingus by the Dublin Airport Authority at Dublin Airport.

Now the commitment of delivering 300,000 new passengers to Shannon as early as 2014 comes on the back of the announcement of new routes to Berlin, Munich, Krakow, Paris, Nice Fuerteventura, Warsaw and Faro as well as increased frequency on the Stansted route.

“I think we have to walk before we run. I would characterise the an- nouncement as running fairly fast,” said Mr Cawley. “As the economy grows from a very low level, we would see great opportunity as well as putting new spots on the map. It provides us with a platform. “Once these can be bedded down and successful we can grow more. We take one step at a time. That is critical in our business too. We bed down what we have and we move on. This is a very big step,” he added. The Ryanair deputy chief refused to disclose the terms of the new deal, but said, “Shannon wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t good for them; Ryanair wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t good for us. All we want is Shannon to be competitive and they have been competitive on this issue and we have a very good understanding. We have met in the middle on that – the tax has been a critical ingredient in making it happen. We are committed for a good number of years under this deal, so is the airport. “We have 30m more passengers that we want to allocate to airports over the next six/seven years – we want to be with people we can ring up and say ‘are the terms the same as the last time’, ‘can we extend it further’. “I would be very disappointed, now that the shackles of the Travel Tax are removed, that Shannon doesn’t participate, at least pro-rata or possibly more so, in that 30m expansion. We are here to stay, we are here to grow,” he added.

DO NOT resort to moneylenders. That was the stark message to people facing financial pressures this January, a message that was to be repeated again and again through out the year.

As Clare families faced into the toughest financial weeks of the year, financial advice groups warned that illegal money-lenders should be avoided at all costs.

Twenty years after it was set up to counteract illegal money lending in West Clare, MABS (Money Advice and Budgeting Service) asked families under severe financial pressure not to opt for this form of short-term loan.

By the end of 2012, numerous financially-stressed families in Clare had turned to unscrupulous money-lenders, who would charge huge interest rates and threaten them if they did not pay up. As these lenders are not legal, organisations such as MABs cannot negotiate with them on behalf of the person taking the loan.

People are particularly vulnerable to this type of lending at this time of year and Paul Woulfe from Clare Citizens Information said this is leading to worry and depression.

“Many people parked their problems and money concerns coming up to Christmas so the next few months are going to be difficult.

“People also borrow on the run up to Christmas and add to credit card and store cards debt which adds to the problem now,” he said. “There is help out there as long as people do not panic,” he said.

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, The Clare People reported in May.

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 times 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 or 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.

“It is so strange that they don’t seem to have the records I want considering all the other records that they gave me. I am still hopeful that they can be found. If I could get my years back, if I could look at these and ask what they were doing. I was butchered, that’s what happened, like a lot of other women.

In April, Ellen and other members of the Survivors of Symphysiotomy (SOS) group received the news they were waiting for. The Government passed a bill which would see some redress provided to the victims of symphysiotomy. It is unclear what form this redress will take and whether the full release of HSE records will be part of the redress process.

IT WAS Bah Humbug and goodbye to any curse that Biddy Early might have over the Clare hurling on the last Saturday of September when the All-Ireland was won, but there was no keeping the bould Feakle woman down in the earliest days of October.

All because while the county was still on a natural high following the All-Ireland final victory over Cork, the county was preparing to enter the stratosphere with the news that a new form of cannabis has been named after famous Banner witch, Biddy Early.

The seed, one of five new strains developed in recent years by Magus Genetics in Holland, was described as growing to between 1.8 metres and 2 metres high and is ready for harvest in early October.

Selling and buying cannabis seeds is currently legal in Ireland but cultivating these seeds for person use of sale is a criminal offense. The Biddy Early strain has been specially bred to allow it to grow outdoors in a European climate.

Biddy Early is synonymous with Clare hurling because of the 81-year curse which the East Clare woman placed on the Banner county.

According to the Marijuana.com website, the Dutch company chose the Biddy Early name because her connection with witchcraft.

“Biddy Early is named for a 19th century woman accused of witchcraft, whose story became the subject of folk ballads and entered Irish legend. Magus, from the Latin for ‘priest’ or ‘sorcerer’, felt kinship with Biddy Early’s plight given the similarity between the witch hunt hysteria in times past and the current war on drugs.

“Biddy Early is the first variety that Magus Genetics specifically formulated for outdoor gardening in temperate regions. Although an even mix of sativa and indica, this plant exhibits the strong lateral growth typically seen in sativas.

“Biddy likes to branch out. The branches are very elastic and pliable, easily trained or tied like vines to suit the available space. Outdoors, this suppleness makes the plant storm proof or resilient to harsh weather,” the website stated.

The seeds are no longer available from Magus Genetics who have transferred distribution rights for Biddy Early to another Dutch company, Serious Seeds.

IT WAS announced in early January that the West Clare town of Kilrush would be central to the national Famine commemoration, as it had been selected to host the main event.

Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Jimmy Deenihan announced that the maritime town would be the host location for the National Famine Commemoration Day, on a date later announced as May 12.

The annual observance in Ireland commemorating the Great Famine has been organised officially by the Government since 2009. The main commemoration event is held in a different place each year, rotating among the four provinces of Ireland.

Events at the main venue usually include lectures, arts events, and visits to places connected to the Famine.

Local events also take place countrywide, while a minute’s silence is encouraged for schools and workplaces. Kilrush planned a very successful 10-day event.

Then Mayor of Kilrush, Cllr Mairead O’Brien, welcomed the news stating, “Kilrush has historically been very closely linked with and was greatly affected by the Great Irish Famine. It is fantastic to see this link being recognised nationally.”

John Corry, Kilrush Town Clerk, said, “It is a huge honour for the town to host this event in the year of the Gathering and I hope that many visitors from near and far will visit our great town during this Commemoration.”

Kilrush is recognised nationally as one of the locations worst affected by starvation, disease and emigration between 1845 and 1852. The famine years brought much hardship to Kilrush. Evictions, fever and cholera reduced the population of south-west Clare to such an extent that it has never again attained its pre-famine numbers.

Famine author and Clare-based Historian Ciarán Ó Murchadha, who supported Kilrush’s bid to host the event, said, “I can state without any fear of contradiction that although all of Clare suffered grievously, no part of the county endured as much as Kilrush town and Kilrush union, and for such a prolonged period. That being the case, I am delighted to learn that Kilrush will host the next National Famine Commemoration event.”