This article is from page 55 of the 2006-01-03 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 55 JPG
SHANNON rolled out the welcome mat for half of the Chilean refugees who fled to this country in the wake of the military coup which ousted the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in 1973.
According to records released as part of the opening of the State Archives, 99 of a total of 25,000 people forced to flee the country came to Ireland and about half of these settled in Shannon.
Garret Fitzgerald, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, informed the Dail on February 20, 1974 that the refugees would be admitted to Ireland. The remainder of the refugees who came here went to Galway, where the Committee for Chilean Refugees had hired the Continental Hotel in Salthill.
Bairbre Ni Giollarnath of the Refugees committee wrote to Dr Fitzgerald at the time, outlining how a whole football team had been taken from their homes and disappeared.
And according to the archives from the same year, Clare residents were concerned that the purchaser of Mutton Island could have been a front for the CIA as a secret military base.
In fact, the island was purchased by a Mrs Husty, who then transferred it into the name of her family company, The Vancouver and Delaware Corporation of Washington.