Month: January 2014

A MOTHER has spoken of the terror felt by her family when their home was the target of a suspected gun attack in Ennis last week.

Shots were fired at a family home in the Cloughleigh area of the town in the early hours of New Year’s morning. No one was injured in the attack but windows and the front door of the house were damaged.

A husband and wife and seven children including a one-year-old girl were in the house at the time. A 46-year-old man was questioned and subsequently released without charge.

Gardaí in Ennis yesterday issued a renewed appeal for information.

They are interested in a grey saloon type car that was seen leaving the area at the time with two occupants on board. A garda spokesman said that investigations into the matter are ongoing. A large downstairs window and door remained boarded over at the house yesterday.

In her sitting room, the mother of eight, who was present in the house on the night, relived the horror of the attack.

The couple were upstairs watching television having just returned from a New Year’s Eve party when they heard the sound of windows breaking, according to the woman.

“We looked out and saw three men well known to us driving a silver private car. We shouted down at them,” she said.

The woman, who did not want her name to be published, said shots were then fired at the front door and at the upstairs bedroom window where her husband was standing while “rocks came through the sitting room win- dow”.

The couple’s daughters (ages eight, three and 16) and one-year-old grandchild were asleep upstairs at the time. Their three sons were asleep in a downstairs bedroom.

“We were terrified but the kids were probably more terrified,” the woman said.

The incident may be linked to a recent court case in Ennis, which the family had no direct involvement in.

The woman says the family’s car has previously been damaged while she says her son was the victim of a serious assault in Ennis last June.

She said, “We feel like our lives have been taken away from us. We are afraid for our children.

“We know nothing about any feuding that’d be going on in this town. We have nothing to do with anything like that. My husband has never been in trouble in his life. All we want is justice for this.”

Members of Ennis Town Council will meet in private today to discuss the incident in Cloughleigh.

Independent councillor Paul O’Shea yesterday warned that lives will be lost if violent incidents in Ennis do not stop.

MORE than € 100,000 worth of damage has been inflicted on Lahinch Seaworld which will remain closed to the public until further notice. The facility was hit with a severe flood on Friday morning as flood waters from Lahinch Golf Club and the Liscannor Road Car Park, overflowed into its control room – severely damaging both the structure of the building and the swimming pools facilities.

Manager of Lahinch Seaworld, Joe Garrihy, said that his team are work ing hard to get the facility up and running as soon as possible.

“We have extensive damage to our plant room, to the boiler house, to the cinema and the multi purpose hall. The big systems in the plant room and the boiler house, like the heating system for the pool, had been submerged in about three foot of water. So that is a big problem,” said Mr Garrihy.

“The flood actually came from the Golf Club side. There was so much flooding in that area that it eventually flooded down to ourselves. So we had it coming at us from both directions.

The damage comes at the worst possible time for Seaworld, as this is their busiest time to secure new members for the gym and pool.

“We need to reopen again as soon as possible. This is the busiest part of the year for people in the fitness sector, so it is a big blow. We are going to be closed until next Monday [January 13] at least,” continued Joe.

“Once the heating is off it can take as much as much as a week to get the water to heat up again and to get the water filtered properly. We are targeting that week at the moment but we can’t say for sure.

“We need to be back up and running soon. We service around 30 school in the North Clare area and they need somewhere to swim. Membership is our core business, and if they don’t have somewhere to go they will either go somewhere else or give up on out new years resolution.

“We are all really determined to get this back on track. We have had a great response from the public – local people and people from all over the country. Everyone is really determined to get this back on track and I’d like to thank everyone from all their support.”

THE face of Whitestrand beach in Miltown Malbay could be changed forever as the weekends storm ripped away a 50-year-old sea wall and washed large sections of the beach and nearby land into the sea.

According to local landowner Noel Shannon, the beach and surrounding areas have been left devastated after this once-in-a-hundred-year storm.

“It is absolute devastation up here at the moment. The sea wall has been washed away and caravans have been hit and damaged. Most of the sea front at the Whitestrand has been wash away and the rest is covered with rocks. I was just there this minute [Monday morning] and the place is a disaster,” he said.

“The biggest issue is the concrete sea wall, which has been just swept away. I’ve never seen anything like it. That was was holding the sea back; it’s been there for 40 or 50 years.

“There has been a lot of attention for other areas, and rightly so, but the Whitestrand is a very popular spot for young swimmers and for lifeguard training and it needs to be looked at and given some attention.”

Mr Shannon, who operated the nearby Whitestrand Caravan Park, and says that he has lost a considerable amount of the land to the storm – with massive waves simply washing sections of land into the sea.

“There is a lot of ground lost to the sea and there is an awful lot of work that needs to be to done to get the Whitestrand up and going for the tourism season. Parts of my land are no longer there anymore, they have washed into the sea,” he said.

“The council [Clare County Council] were out to us over the weekend but there is not a lot can be done until the storm blows over.”

LAHINCH businessman Antoin O’Looney, who was pinned by raging waves against the wall of his bar for almost half an hour on Friday morning, braved the elements again last night to protect his business through the last of the storm.

Mr O’Looney, who owns O’Looney’s Bar on the Lahinch Promenade, risked his life in the early hours of Friday morning to enter his premises, which had been breached by the storm.

Just after 6am on Friday, he tried to enter his premises but became trapped as heavy waves and storm surges pinned him against the outside wall of O’Looney’s Bar and Restaurant.

“I ran over but I was pinned to the door, I couldn’t get in. The waves were so powerful, I was pinned there for about 20 or 25 minutes. If I had stepped out to try and get in any of the door I would have been swept away; it was that big. There is a wal kway between our two buildings on the prom; the water in that walkway was up to chest level at this time,” he said.

“The storm had popped the two front door of the bar. So in came the water, which covered the bar area and then it filled up the basement. The crew from the fire brigade helped me to close back the doors and secure them.

“They [the fire brigade] were incredible. Within an hour or two hours they had the basement fully pumped out. There was a lot of damage done, especially to the electronics. The basement contains the public toilets, the prep kitchen and the offices and there were a lot of computers, cameras, alarms, things li ke that which were severely damaged.

The storms is the worst to hit Lahinch in recent years and has been described by many as a Perfect Storm.

“It was a combination of three different things: you had a very high spring tide, which is a 5.2 metre tide; you had a very strong gale behind it; and you had a massive surf running as well. Those three things rarely happen altogether, and when they do they can cause savage distraction,” he said.

“I don’t remember a storm li ke this ever. It’s funny though, this building has been built to withstand a lot of punishment and only for the doors opening I would have come out of this scot-free.”

Mr O’Looney said last night that he plays to ride out the remainder of the storm in his premises.

“I will be here tonight [Monday night] for sure. I need to. If anything breeches and you can get to it quickly and stop 80 per cent of the water from getting in, you can save yourself a lot of trouble in the long r un.”

MONITORING of sections of the River Fergus described, as a “concern” will continue in Ennis after the town was spared the worst affects of flooding.

Water levels peaked in the river on Saturday after heavy rainfall on St Stephen’s Day sparked fears of a repeat of the widespread flooding that hit the town in December 2009.

On that occasion residential areas and parts of the town centre suffered major flood damage when the river burst its banks.

Ennis Town Council says that while river levels were “significant” in recent weeks, they were below those recorded during flood events in 1999 and 2009.

Senior executive engineer with Ennis Town Council, Eamon O’Dea explained, “If we have no heavy rainfall over the next two to three days, it will drop off. The Fergus peaked two days ago, but if you look at levels in Ballyalla Lake, it is slowly starting to decline.”

However the council, working alongside Clare County Council and the Office of Public Works are implementing precautionary flood measures along the lower section of the Fergus, below Knox’s Bridge.

“The Ennis area is at a precautionary level. We are implementing measures such as over-pumping at different locations on the lower River Fergus. We have one or two areas of concern along the lower section,” Mr O’Dea said.

Spring tides did result in brief flooding on a section of the old N18 road in Clarecastle on Friday morning.

Work on phase two of the Ennis Flood Relief Scheme between Bank Place Bridge and Doora Bridge is ongoing at locations around Ennis.

It is anticipated that when completed, the works will lead to the protec- tion of 849 residential and 425 nonresidential properties on completion.

Defences including enhanced river walls, pumping stations and new drainage systems are included in the project, which is aimed at protecting Ennis against a 100-year flood event.

Works carried out during phase one at Mill Road and Woodquay are credited with preventing widespread flooding of Ennis town centre in 2009.

Though it is thought the works so far prevented major flooding in the town centre, the exact areas to have directly benefited from the improved defences will not be known until the scheme is certified as completed by the OPW.

Under the latest scheme of works, new ramps and walls are to be constructed at the two entrances to Clare Mart, while a new wall is to be constructed at the rear of properties between Aldi and Clonroad.