Category: News

THE legacy of Michael Cusack is being felt as far away as Warsaw thanks to the work of fellow Clare man, Eoin Sheedy.

The Ogonnelloe native was part of a small group of Irish ex-pats who set-up Poland’s first GAA club last year and will return to Poland after his Christmas break later this week to take up the position of Club President of Cumann Warszawa.

Sheedy moved to Poland on a temporary basis more than two years ago but after enjoying a six month trial in Warsaw has decided to put down some roots. In recent time a flood of Irish emigrants have allowed him to realise his dream of setting up Poland’s first GAA club.

“It is unbelievable how it has turned around. When I was going over there first the whole plane was filled with Polish people – I’d be the only Irish person on the plane most of the time. That has changed big time. I go on the plane now and I’d know half the people on the plane and know that they are Irish lads travelling back and forth for work. A lot of the Poles have gone back and a lot of the Irish are now going over there looking for work,” says Eoin.

“When I went over there first I used to head down to the Irish pub, the only one that was in the place, and you might be there on your own. But now there might be 20 or 30 lads at all the matches, no matter who is playing. In the last year I have seen a massive influx.

“There are a lot of lads over there working on the roads. Lads are saying that construction is finished in Ireland so they decided they would try the hand in Poland.”

Cumann Warszawa completed their first season in 2010 and now have both a ladies’ and a men’s team.

“I always had it in my head to start a club. I had worked in Stockholm and they had a club there but in the beginning it wasn’t feasible, there wasn’t enough people. But then more and more people started coming so we decided that we would give it a go,” continued Eoin.

“The club doesn’t play hurling be cause the skill level is just too high and I haven’t played football before in my life but I’m kicking away now and it’s great craic.

“The European teams are 11-a-side and we have enough now to field a men’s and a women’s team. We play in the Eastern European league with Budapest, Prague and Vienna. We actually won the European Shield Competition back in October – we have some fantastic footballers over there at the moment,” Eoin claimed.

CLARE TD of 20 years and former senior cabinet minister, Síle de Valera, was at the centre of AngloIrish storm over the hunger striking prisoners in the Maze Prison that was only calmed by an apology being issued to the British government by Taoiseach Charles Haughey.

Irish State papers from 1980 released under the 30-year rule have revealed that Haughey stepped in to calm any discord in Anglo-Irish relations pertaining to Northern Ireland by sending a personal apology to British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, following remarks de Valera made in support of hunger strikers in the H-Blocks.

Deputy de Valera made her remarks at a bye-election rally, at which Charles Haughey was present, denouncing the conditions in the Maze, words that set in train a chain of events that ultimately forced the Taoiseach to issue a personal apology to Mrs Thatcher.

“I did refer to Mrs Thatcher at the time as being callous,” recalled Ms de Valera years later. “I still believe that she was in terms of her approach to that whole question of the hunger strikes. Even if you were to look at it from a purely humanitarian point of view, leaving aside the political aspects of that, I was very disappointed that she should take that stance. And it was interesting at the time that I was asked by some members of Fianna Fáil to apologise to Mrs Thatcher for calling her callous,” she added.

Ms de Valera’s support of hunger strikes led to her being part of a three-person Dáil delegation to visit Bobby Sands in the Maze when he was 51 days into his protest in 1981. The others were Dr John O’Connell and Neil Blaney.

“I think it’s important to remember – Bobby Sands said it to us that day we were there that he wasn’t just fighting for the demands of the Republican prisoners at the time, but those demands should be followed through to those who were Loyalist prisoners too, and that’s something that’s always forgotten,” said Ms de Valera.

Asked if she was moved by him, she said, “I think all of us were. From a human point of view, here was someone who knew they were very close to death. It was a horrible death. I think it could’ve been prevented, I think it could’ve been prevented by giving some of the demands”.

Meanwhile, Ms de Valera’s public show of support for the hunger strikers contrasts sharply with the British government’s view of what it called “unofficial” Fianna Fáil policy on the republican protests in the Maze.

Papers from the British National Archives have revealed that Mrs Thatcher told her cabinet colleagues that “Mr Haughey had regrettably not been willing to condemn the hunger strike in public, but he had made clear in private that he did so; he had not sought to argue that the strikers’ demand for political status should be met; and he accepted that there was nothing more that the British authorities could offer them”.

This claim by Mrs Thatcher has given added substance to the notion that it was Mr Haughey who privately insisted that Ms de Valera apologise for her remarks, but in the intervening 30 years she had refused to confirm or deny this.

“It wouldn’t be fair to name (them) but some senior members of the party,” Ms de Valera said in 2006 when announcing her decision to retire from frontline politics after the 2007 General Election.

When pressed further about whether Charles Haughey had asked her to apologise to Mrs Thatcher, she replied, “We’ll leave that to one side now”.

Ironically, it was Ms de Valera who played a crucial role in Mr Haughey’s rise to the leadership of Fianna Fáíl in September 1979 when she used the platform of the annual Liam Lynch Commemoration in Fermoy to launch a scathing attack on Taoiseach Jack Lynch’s policy on the north.

“If our political leaders are not seen to be furthering our Republican aspirations through constitutional means, the idealistic young young members of our community will become disillusioned and discontented. I look to our party and particularly our leader to demonstrate his Republicanism. If we are to be true Irishmen and Irishwomen we have a solemn duty to seek the freedom of our country,” she said.

Ms de Valera’s address, coupled with the attack of Dr Bill Loughnane TD on Jack Lynch’s leadership in July 1979, helped precipitate Lynch’s decision to resign as leader of Fianna Fáil in December of that year, with Charles Haughey beating George Colley in the subsequent leadership vote.

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.