Month: October 2006

KILRUSH Town Council has decided to unearth a forgotten by-law in an attempt to curb anti-social drinking on the streets of the west Clare capital.

A by-law banning the consumption of alcohol in public places in the town has never been enforced, according to councillors.

At this month’s meeting of the council, Cllr Marian McMahon-Jones (FG) called for a law to be introduced that would control and regulate the consumption of intoxicating substances in a public place. The councillor made the call after she was informed of an incident where three men sat in the playground drinking alcohol while children played nearby.

“If that was younger people, there would be gardaí on to them immediately,” she said.

The councillor was surprised to be informed that a by-law outlawing such activity had already been passed by the council a number of years previously. “I feel they are already on the books and they were never enforced,” said Cllr Christy O’Malley (FF).

Cllr Tom Prenderville (FF) said, while the council adopted the by-laws, it was a matter for the Garda to implement them.

The town manager and director of services Bernadette Kinsella told the members that the executive could “unearth” the byelaws.

Councillor and local publican Liam O’Looney (FF) told the members that, as a result of public drinking in Kilrush, “We got a very bad negative reaction from tourists. Some I know pulled out of town,” he said.

The council are to invite the local Garda superintendent to address the next meeting.

ANOTHER independent candidate is poised and ready to join the hustings in the next general election, if the Government does not implement recommendations relating to mobile phone masts.

Noel Mulhaire, who is a member of a Mobile Phone Mast Action Group in Ennis, said a candidate had been identified and was willing to run on the phone mast mandate.

He told The Clare People that the Government had time to adopt the recommendations of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Marine and Natural Resources by June 2005, or alternatively another party might include the recommendations in its manifesto.

If this does not happen, eight to 10 candidates will run throughout the country, including Clare, under the BEST (Better Environmental and Safer Telecommunications) umbrella.

The candidates will oppose the proliferation of phone masts in their communities, which they say cause ill health effects.

Mr Mulhaire said the Clare candidate could not be revealed until the other mast groups in the county have ratified him.

Mr Mulhaire refuted claims that the man, from Ennis, would be a one-issue candidate.

He said he would support a number of quality of life issues. The BEST group attended meetings all over Ireland and organised protest marches in Ennis, Toomevara and Fermoy.

Mr Mulhaire said that a number of politicians from different parties walked in the marches and pledged their support but, to date, no action had been taken by the elected representatives.

LOCAL residents living in the Clare Road area of Ennis have claimed that the planned homeless hostel for Ennis “will attract a significant anti-social element to the locality”.

Earlier this year, Clare County Council lodged plans to convert the existing Laurel Lodge on Clare Rd to a hostel for 13 homeless men.

The cost of the project was estimated at €2.1 million. The St Vincent de Paul will operate the building and has told Ennis Town Council that it “will act as a centre of care, support, information and advice to those experiencing homelessness”.

The objection has been lodged by Patrick Donnelly, Ann-Marie Donnelly, Helen Broderick and Christopher Walsh. However a petition in support of the objection has managed to attract only four additional names.

The objectors state that they have “deep and well founded concerns” over the proposed development. They state: “We may be accused of acting in a NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) manner, but this proposal is virtually in our backyards.

“There has been no consultation with local residents by the St Vincent de Paul and they refused to have a public meeting regarding the matter. We are left with no option, but to object in the strongest possible manner to the location of this homeless centre.”

In their objection, the residents state: “We are duty-bound to prevent any development that will bring such dysfunction close to our homes and families and we request planners in Ennis Town Council to have consideration for those of us who quietly live our lives, pay our taxes and do not seek handouts or assistance from the state.

“We do not cause any of the ills of society and we do not want them foisted upon us by others in a residential area.

“Numerous residents including unaccompanied females currently go for recreational walks in the vicinity of the premises and we are concerned that the proposed development will attract person who will cause fears to these persons for their safety and a fear of being interdicted in their walks and at other times.”

The objection refers to “the unpredictable nature associated with a population with a high dependency of drugs and alcohol and consequent likelihood of crime including violent crime, a pre-disposition towards psychiatric illness and all the attendant problems associated with that”.

The objectors also state that “no assessment has been undertaken to determine the best practice location for a development such as this”.

“It appears that it was a case of property available for purchase rather than identifying a location that will best serve the needs of a group with the problems associated with homelessness.

A decision is due on the application later this month.

RYANAIR is to start a new route between Shannon and Madrid starting on November 23.

This brings to 26 the number of low fare routes operated by Ryanair at its Shannon base, which over the coming 12 months will deliver 1.7M passengers from the West of Ireland.

Announcing the new route, Peter Sherrard, Ryanair’s Head of Communications said: “Today we announced our 18th European base in Madrid and we are delighted that Shannon will be among the first of our European airports to benefit. Passengers throughout the mid-west will now enjoy direct, year round low fare access to the immensely popular Spanish capital.”

Ryanair now serves four Spanish destinations from Shannon and this new route, Sherrard said, “will deliver thousands of additional visitors from the Madrid region to the West of Ireland.”

Seats on this new route are available from €12, taxes included and Ryanair said they are urging passengers to book immediately “as fares this low to Madrid will not last long.”

In welcoming the new route Martin Moroney, Director Shannon Airport said: “We are delighted with this announcement.

The further expansion of the Ryanair network represents a strong vote of confidence in Shannon.

“I believe Madrid will prove a hugely popular business and leisure destination with travellers from the region, by providing regular low cost access to central Spain, in addition to providing the West of Ireland tourism sector with an opportunity to increase the number of Spanish visitors to the region.”

FIGURES released by the main tourism operator in the Midwest show that it failed to capitalise on the record growth in passengers at Shannon Airport last year.

According to accounts returned by Shannon Heritage to the Companies Office, visitor numbers at the company’s visitor attractions, including Bunratty Folk Park, recorded a drop from 629,233 in 2004 to 625,615 last year.

This comes against the background of record growth at Shannon Airport where 3.3 million passed through the airport in 2005 – an increase of 900,000 on any previous year.

The launch of Shannon as a hub for Ryanair in May of last year is a large contributor to the massive rise and today, Ryanair serves 26 European destinations from Shannon.

However, the figures from Shannon Heritage show that across its top attractions a drop in visitor numbers were recorded last year.

In all, the company operates eight-day visitor attractions and four evening entertainment venues around the Shannon Region.

The figures show that visitors to Bunratty Folk Park dropped from 324,903 in 2004 to 316,813 in 2005, while the numbers at the Bunratty Banquets dropped from 69,171 in 2004 to 66,999 in 2005.

The O’Brien’s Tower attraction at the Cliffs of Moher was one of the few visitor attractions to buck the trend with numbers increasing from 78,365 in 2004 to 81,283 in 2005.

Despite the drop in numbers, Shannon Heritage’s accounts show that the company recorded an increase in profits from €139,659 in 2004 to €196,458 in 2005.

The accounts show that the company also increased its turnover from €11.3 million in 2004 to €11.9 million in 2005.

The company now has accumulated profits at €734,059.

PARENTS, staff and students of Seamount College in Kinvara have appealed to the Sisters of Mercy to give them time to come up with with a rescue package for the school following last week’s announcement that it is to be phased out over the next three years.

Hundreds of locals attended a crisis public meeting in the village on Friday evening to discuss the “shock” announcement that the school was to be wound down.

“Our primary concern at this point is for time and space to sort this out,” said Jane Joyce of the Parents Committee. “We all know that Kinvara needs a school. We know that Gort is full and Oranmore is full so we don’t know where our children are to go.”

Serious concerns have also been raised at the manner in which the announcement was made.

“It is unprecedented that the ASTI were not informed of the closure until the announcement was made on Thursday,” commented school principal Eileen Mulkerins on Friday night.

Ms Mulkerins went on to dispute the reasons given by the Sisters of Mercy for closure of the school, stating that student numbers are increasing and far in excess of the 150 mentioned by the Department of Education, that facilities were up to scratch and that the curriculum being provided was more than adequate.

The campaign to save the school has been given the complete backing of the three remaining Sisters of Mercy remaining at Seamount.

“The closure comes as a great shock to the resident Sisters of Mercy, and they are devastated,” said Sister Pius, a retired teacher at Seamount. “We hope that this meeting will put pressure on our headquarters in Ballinasloe to give a clearer message about their decision.”

Seamount College was set up by the Sisters of Mercy in 1921. The school is located on grounds donated to the Sisters of Mercy by a local woman on the condition that a school be established.

CLARE County Council is investigating claims that a leading Irish cruise boat company has told customers to dump toilet waste directly into the River Shannon.

A letter was sent to the Emerald Star cruise hire firm last month by a Dublin customer of the Carrick-on-Shannon based company. The documented was also circulated to local authorities with responsibility for the Shannon and Lough Derg, including Clare County Council, although it is not clear by whom.

It details observations and complaints about the company under a number of headings including service, cleanliness, training, equipment and health and safety. Under the last heading however, the author claims to have been told by staff to dump the contents of on board toilets into the Shannon.

“Having enquired about pump out stations for waste matter we were specifically instructed by our ‘trainer’ to dump the contents of our toilets directly into the Shannon. When I expressed disbelief and disgust at this, we were informed ‘everyone does it’.

“No instruction was given as to where to dump our waste, just dump it. Watching children swim and fish around me on the cruise, knowing what was in the water, sickened me.”

Clare County Council has confirmed it received the letter and the claims will be fully investigated and they will “take whatever action is deemed necessary.

An Emerald Star spokesman confirmed they are also investigating the claims including the allegation that a staff member issued instructions to dump toilet waste into the river.

“This matter is being investigated but we cannot comment on the contents of a letter between a private individual and the company. The wider issue of the disposal of waste and the provision pump-out stations is currently being discussed by a number of boating companies and Waterways Ireland. There are a large number of people involved in these talks including local authorities.”

Clare Green Party county councillor Brian Meaney said that he was horrified by the claim that people are advised to dump toilet waste into the Shannon.

“This is a horror story and should be investigated thoroughly by all the relevant authorities. This is the second representation in relation to sewage being dumped into the Shannon I have received. We have to remember that everything that goes into the river upstream comes down into Lough Derg.”

A MILTOWN MALBAY mother has told The Clare People about her frustration at having two daughters within the orthodontic system.

Her first daughter, now 16 years old, was assessed and found to need orthodontic treatment in May 2004.

Two and a half years on, the teenager still has not had a follow-up call to make an appointment for treatment.

In the interim, the west Clare woman’s second daughter has become part of the slowmoving system.

This week, at the age of thirteen and a half, she has been assessed for orthodontic treatment.

This young girl has also been found to need treatment immediately, but her mother knows from experience there is a long wait ahead for both of her children. So annoyed by the system is she, that she is now preparing to lobby her local TD.

This family is not alone. As many as 30 per cent of the teenage population in Clare need orthodontic services.

Once a dentist suspects treatment is needed, a child is sent to an orthodontist for assessment. This occurs from the age of 12 onwards. During an assessment, the patient is categorised as Category A (very serious) B (quite serious) and C (requires urgent work, but is not as serious as A and B).Children with a category B problem have a traumatising wait of up to five years just to begin treatment once assessed.

TEENAGERS in Clare are waiting up to five years for essential orthodontic services; while those considered less serious are forced to go private or just not have their teeth treated at all.

The HSE Mid West Consultant Orthodontist Ted McNamara places the responsibility for the backlog squarely at the door of the Department of Health and what he describes as vested interests in the dental profession.

Mr McNamara has called for the recommendations of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children of 2005 to be implemented immediately, so that the teenagers throughout the Mid West can have their teeth treated efficiently.

The committee recommended that a training programme provided by a number of orthodontists in the former Mid Western Health Board that had been stopped, be reinstated immediately.

“These services went under numerous inspections and were the subject of independent assessment and were commented on in glowing terms,” it said.

A review into this service began in April.

Mr McNamara told The Clare People that it was difficult to recruit dentists to the service because no one wanted to work in the public sector. Previously they worked there because they were offered training in orthodontics.

He was appointed consultant to the region in 1985, the first ever, at a time when there was approximately 5,000 children on the waiting list.

“I would have made no inroads into the problem on my own so I got the dentists to help based on an American model where therapists were trained to do some of the routine work.”

This system was replicated in Dublin, Galway and Cork and during the next 14 years proved very successful, according to the head orthodontist.

In 1999 the Mid West orthodontist system won a gold medal for its service beating off competition from orthodontic schools and services throughout Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales.

That same year however the orthodontic service changed, as the Irish authorities decided that the training could no longer continue in the same format.

The change has seen the loss of the service in Shannon.

The loss of the dentists in Cork has left teenagers with appliances left without follow-up treatment and exposed to dental rot and gum disease, he said.

There are two other orthodontists working with the consultant in the Mid West with one more to be appointed in North Tipperary in the near future.

AS the last of the evacuated Crowe Street families returned to their homes over the weekend, life in Gort slowly began to approach something close to normal.

The majority of the 50 displaced households returned home on Wednesday evening but, due to an extended forensic examination, the six houses closest to number 67 Crowe Street were forced to wait until the weekend.

“Most of the people moved back AT this stage, we don’t know what lessons from Abbeylara, the Garda implemented in the closing stages of the Gort siege.

That’s because there was no independent verification of what caused members of the Garda’s Emergency Response Unit (ERU) to open fire on Anthony Burke. All we have is the Garda’s version of events. All we know for sure is that Mr Burke was shot in the chest and badly injured.

But while there is a dearth of hard facts, there are numerous questions.

One of the most significant of these is why the ERU’s less-than-lethal beanbag rounds apparently failed to incapacitate Mr Burke. into their houses during the week but I know one family who lived very close and only went back last night (Saturday),” said one Crowe Street resident.

“It was hard for them to go back – it was just outside of their wall that the man fell. It’s a big shock for all of us.

His wife and children were evacu ated over their back wall.”

The HSE’s Critical Incident Response team arrived in Gort on Thursday. They are continuing to offer counseling services to anyone Was it a technical glitch? If so, why were the ERU equipped with beanbags at-all? After all, the Patten Commission on policing in Northern Ireland found such “impact devices” to be “tremendously” unreliable.

Equally, was it to do with the ERU’s weapons training? According to Fine Gael’s Justice Spokesman, Jim O’ Keefe, the ERU has had to use Defence Forces’ firing ranges since the Garda’s “tactics town” in Templemore was demolished and the firing range in Dublin was closed down.

Was the decision to close these facilities taken at the highest levels of the force? If so, is it credible to expect the chief superintendent headeffected by the siege.

“It will be tough for the people living close by. The police were not going to do anything about the broken windows and doors, but they have decided to replace them, so it won’t be so much of a reminder,” continued the Crowe Street resident. “People are gob-smacked that this would happen with him. He was a very quiet fellow. He had a few drinks, maybe sometimes he had a few too many, but he was a lovely quite man. There were never any ing the internal enquiry to objectively criticise his own superiors, in a rigidly hierarchical organisation like the Garda?

Other questions surrounding the Gort siege derive out of what has been independently established about what happened at Abbeylara. The Barr Tribunal heard that when ERU members killed John Carthy, they were following their training and instructions to open fire on the central body mass or torso of the target. They did so in the belief that there was a clear danger to the lives of other gardaí – a clear requirement of Garda regulations in the use of firearms. rows or any police cars arriving up at the house.”

As the dust begins to settle, locals are now beginning to focus on how the siege was handled by gardaí and how the reputation of Gort will be affected by the media attention.

“People have been talking about Abbeylara and talking about Gort but you have to be in close proximity to it to really know what was going on. There was no other way of doing it. The police were very open and transparent and let us know what was hapMr Justice Barr subsequently found that the positioning of gardaí at wrong locations exacerbated any threat that existed to the life of gardaí.

At Gort, did scene commanders position their personnel in the safest feasible locations?

The Barr report also found, on the basis of evidence from international policing experts, that had the ERU been equipped with two specially trained firearms support dogs to attack John Carthy as he left his home, it was “likely” that he would be alive today.

These dogs, known as “non-compliant” dogs would be “of great value” in a future “Abbeylara type situpening every step of the way,” continued the resident. “We had a man here from The Sun offering money to anyone who had a photograph of him. We have had enough of that kind of scum.”

“This is not a small incident, it is very serious but this is a strong community and we will take it in our stride,” said Niamh Clune of GRACE.

Gort locals wishing to speak to a HSE councillor should contact 0949372882. ation”, the report concluded. So, how near is the ERU to receiving “noncompliant” dog support?

Finally, two of the ERU’s dark navy Isuzu Trooper jeeps drove at great speed along the Gort Road in Ennis, in the direction of Gort, at approximately 9.30 a.m. on the morning of the siege.

Were these jeeps carrying the first ERU teams to the scene? If so, were the people of Gort at greater risk in the ten hours it took the ERU to arrive?

And was the reported movement by gardaí, of journalists to a position well out of sight of the siege, at 9.50 a.m., linked to the ERU’s arrival?