Author: admin

THE Clare branch of the Samaritans has received a major funding boost after ©€26,000 was raised for the service, by organisers of alOk walk held in April. The cheque was pre- sented to members of the Samaritans in Ennis, last week.

SU slomr-NbecKO) Mee COMA VDL Gn. chem rO ms Eihio awareness of the issues surrounding suicide. It was the second year of the event and brings to almost €50,000 the amount of money raised by the walk for the Samaritans.

The event was organised by three local people Keith Molloy, Sasha O’Brien and Clare O’Brien. The money will be used to cover the costs of running the Samaritans centre in

Ennis which are estimated at around €1,000 a week.

A spokesperson for the Samaritans thanked the organisers and said the money would go towards maintain- ing a 24-hour service at the centre.

“We really want to thank the people who did this. It is an amazing amount of money to raise and it will be really helpful to us running the service. We are constantly having to maintain the centre on Kilrush road”.

The spokesperson added, “The walk was for suicide awareness and it really gives you an indication of the concern and interest that exists out there about suicide”’.

Sasha O’Brien, one of the 10k walk organisers has already been com- mended for her efforts to generate

greater public discussion on suicide. Earlier this year, she was nominated for a Pramerica Spirit of Community Award, for a series of projects she undertook as a Leaving Cert student at Colaiste Muire, Ennis, to raise sul- cide awareness.

The Pramerica Spirit of Commu- nity Awards programme recognises and rewards post-primary/second- level students for volunteer work car- ried out in their communities.

Sasha received help from her un- cle Keith Molloy and aunt Clare O’Brien.

Meanwhile the Samaritans are set to benefit from money raised from a different type of event over the week- Nee

The “Malin Head to Mizen Head

Challenge’ saw local man Peader White travel from one end of Ireland to the other, setting of on Friday and returning back to Ennis on Sunday.

Peader’s choice of automobile for the three-day journey was a 1956 vintage Morris Minor. It is the sec- ond time the keen vintage car enthu- siast undertook the challenge. Last year Peader raised almost €2,500 for the Samaritans, by taking the same journey in a 1950 Austin A40 Somerset. The car had previously been used in director Tim Burton’s big screen version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

AFTER immense fundraising ef- forts, Clarecastle woman Lorraine Reynolds is preparing to help chil- dren in one of Europe’s poorest countries.

In September Lorraine will travel to Moldova to work in the Hincesti Children’s orphanage with the Irish charity Outreach Moldova.

The orphanage is home to 395 disa- bled and orphaned children, all of whom are girls.

Already, through various fundrais- ing initiatives Lorraine has raised €4.500 for Outreach Moldova.

In order to raise costs for the trip, a fundraising night will be held in

Powers Bar in Clarecastle on Friday are

€1,000 must be raised for the cost of flights and board, while a further €1,000 goes towards the orphanage.

Lorraine was drawn to the idea of traveling to Moldova after reading an advertisement in a newspaper. The mother of two said she was a little nervous but is now looking forward to the trip.

“T have never done anything like this before and I am glad to be doing it. | was nervous at the start. Moldova is the second poorest country in Eu- rope. A lot of the children there have been abandoned. It will be hard, but when you have two children of your own, it makes you think that it’s good

to give something back.

In Hincesti, Lorraine will work in the orphanage helping with feeding the children and organising excur- sions. Lorraine and her fellow volun- teers will work from 9 to 7 each day from Monday to Saturday and stay in an on-site dormitory.

Outreach Moldova _ concentrate on all aspects of the children’s care from medical and surgical to build- ing and renovation, to improve the environment in which they live. The Dublin based charity has implement- ed and supervised the incorporation of social, educational and care pro- grammes with local staff to provide the care these children need.

There are two full time Irish ad-

ministrators living in the orphanage to oversee all work carried out by both local staff and Irish volunteers.

Outreach Moldova employs over 275 Moldavian staff including 12 full time doctors, 30 full time nurses, six physiotherapists, two speech thera- pists, and a dental team, all provid- ing 24 hour a day care, 365 days of the year. Over 150 carers, a dance teacher, 15 teachers, 12 classroom assistants and four play assistants supplement this medical team. All programmes are funded by the peo- ple of Ireland.

Lorraine added, “It’s going to be the experience of a lifetime. They say that when you go there once, you will want to go back again”’.

THE urban/rural divide and the posi- tion of the west of Ireland as a central driving force in forming the identity of the modern Ireland are two of the main themes of Wild Honey, the fourth Burren Annual Exhibition, which comes to the Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan next month.

The annual exhibition, which this year will be curated by Michael Dempsey, features the work of nine Irish and international artists who have at some stage based their work outside of “The Pale’.

The exhibition will be opened on August 18 by Mike Fitzpatrick, cura- tor of the Limerick City Art Gallery and Ireland’s Commissioner for the

Venice Biennale 2007, and will run until September 29.

“Wild Honey offers the viewer the possibility of studying the relation- ship between reality and visual cli- chés of working outside The Pale,’ said Michael Dempsey.

“The selected works reflect and interpret the cultural and political changes that Ireland has undergone since the 1990s. They investigate the collective imagination of a genera- tion of artists living in a ‘new’ soci- ety caught in its own past, but none- theless looking to the future.”

Each year the Burren College of Art invites a prominent art world fig- ure to curate a number of artists of his or her own choice for an exhibi- tion of national significance.

Based in Galway, Dempsey has in- troduced many prominent artists to a west of Ireland audience. As found- ing curator of the “Tulca’ season of visual art in Galway, he developed new hybrid ways of approaching cultural production within commu- nities.

‘Naturally, the sources for each artist’s work include real places and personal imagery, as well as images created by the media, popular culture and even urban/rural myths. Like the avant-garde artists of the 1960s and ‘70s, they respond with skepticism or downright rejection to the idea of visual representation of a reality of ever more elusive complexity. Their survival strategies involve navigat- ing real and imagined territories –

geographic, political, economic and social.”

The exhibition will include work from Stephen Brandes, Dorothy Cross, Blaise Drummond, Patrick Hall, Ronnie Hughes, Fergus Mar- tin, William McKeown, Isabel Nolan and Niamh O’ Malley.

‘““Michael’s idea for this exhibition expresses one of the central interests of the Burren College of Art; how the seemingly peripheral west is in fact central to Irish identity,” said Timo- thy Emlyn Jones, dean of Burren Solero wa uae

‘We are deeply indebted to the Arts Office of Clare County Council for its invaluable support of this exhibi- tion, without which the exhibition could not have taken place.”

TRADITIONAL music is once again coming to the fore in north Clare this July and August with the beginning of a number of weekly events organ- ised by Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eire- AMOR

The Seisiun series of Summer mu- sic, dance and storytelling evenings has opened for the summer in En- nistymon and Corofin, with crowds of local and tourists in attendance to soak up some traditional Irish atmos- je) aston

“We have a total of about 25 musi- cians each night. The evening starts at 9pm and goes on to Ilpm. Well, it’s Supposed to finish at 11pm but we would often run a few minutes over

because of all the talent on show,” said John Moloney from the Ennisty- mon Branch of Comhaltas.

“The first hour is structured. We have music, dancing singing and storytellers. Then at 10 we break for some tea and a bite of brac. The second hour is totally informal. We give people the chance to get up themselves and sing a song or have a dance. It’s totally casual and eve- ryone is welcome to join in in the oe (one

Ennistymon’s Teach Ceoil is the venue on Monday evenings, while the emphasis shifts down the road to Corofin’s own Teach Ceoil on Thurs- day evening. Indeed sessions will take place in 32 venues throughout the country during the months of

July and August.

The Seisiin series prides itself on achieving the highest level of authen- ticity and avoiding any of the gim- micks that are sometimes associated with traditional Irish music for tour- TSA

“It is a really authentic experience. It’s an old-fashioned trad night. It’s like being invited into an old-fash- ioned Irish kitchen for a cup of tea, a song and a dance. It’s great for the locals but it’s even better for the tour- ists. We had a group of Norwegians in last week dancing and singing away, continued john.

“We run classes here during the winter in music, step dancing and set dancing. The Seisitn gives the people doing the classes a chance to

show off their stuff. We would get a lot of their parents and grandparents in to have a look and see how they have been getting along and what they have been learning.”

Admission costs €10 including tea and light refreshments. For more information, contact John Molo- ney (Ennistymon) at 065 7071467 and Peggy Liddy (Corofin) at 065 toe LOre

AN incredible 92 years in the mak- ing, Irish-American artist Ruth Mc- Namara-Duff stages her debut Irish exhibition at the Kenny Gallery in Lahinch this week.

Born in 1915, Ruth has worked as a professional artist in California all her life.

It was during a trip to her ances- tral home in Clare, however, that the creative seed for her latest series of work was sown.

““T visited Ireland in 2000, and went to the Cliffs of Moher. I was amazed at the beauty of them. I said, ‘when

I get home I’m going to paint LOO Cliffs of Moher’. I didn’t do quite 100 of them but it was a great inspi- ration to me,” she said.

“T have done a number of oils and watercolours of the cliffs. Even though they are similar in lots of ways, they are all very unique and CHES Keno) 0 me

Ruth’s grandmother, Ella Kennedy, left Clare at age 14, during the fam- ine, and sailed to San Francisco on a mammoth voyage through the Straits of Magellan on the southern tip of South America.

It was there that she met fellow Clare emigrant James McNamara,

who worked mining for gold in Grass Valley, and the pair gave birth to sev- en children, including Ruth’s father Owen.

“This journey is almost like I’m completing their journey back to Clare again. It’s like the end of a large circle. In a lot of ways, this trip is for my father,” she said.

“T feel that I wasn’t born myself un- til I was 40. I don’t think that I really found myself until then. You do get a different perspective on life.

“Right now, I am so eager to do things and to paint. I have a lot of canvases at home in my apartment and I know exactly what I want to do

with them.”

In total, Ruth has painted the Cliffs of Moher more than 60 times. She will show 15 pieces at the exhibi- tion, which she shares with Irish art- ists Tom Greaney, Roger McCarthy, Mary Horan, Michael Hanarahan, Deborah Donnelly, Marie Noonan McDermott, Carmel Madigan, Una O’Brien, Kate Beagan and Simone Walsh.

The exhibition features a wide range of styles and mediums and opened in Kenny’s Gallery Lahinch on July 21.

For more, check out www.lahin- chartgallery.com.

WHILE the poor weather is having a direct effect on the incomes of the thousands of people in the tourism and agriculture industries in Clare, it is also having effects, both directly and indirectly, on thousands more.

Reports on the ground indicate that Clare publicans have had a slower trade than normal so far this year, but only marginally so.

“Obviously it is down a bit but noth- ing compared to places like Dingle, where they are reporting close to a

50 per cent drop. It’s down a bit but not dramatically so, and it’s nothing that could not be levelled off with a good run at the end of the year,” said Michael Martin of the Clare Vintners Association.

“All we can do is hope for four or five good weeks and see what hap- pens. We were obviously getting wor- ried in June and at the beginning of July but things are starting to pick up again.”

However, those Clare people with shares in the C&C drinks group have lost more than 20 per cent of their in-

vestment in the company as its shares have plummeted in the last month.

In excess of €500 million has been wiped off the value of the company in a matter of weeks as a result of the poor performance of its headline product, Bulmers. Bulmers, or Mag- ners in the UK, is regarded by many consumers aS a Summertime drink and sales have been hit badly as a re- sult of the poor weather.

Meanwhile, people who suffer from mental illnesses such as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), are not adversely effected by poor weather

condition. SAD is a form of depres- sion brought about by the change of seasons and affects roughly three per cent or almost 4,000 people in Clare.

“From our own experience here in Clare, it does not seem that there is an increased incidence of SAD dur- ing times of bad weather,’ said Denis Creedon, Director of Nursing for the Clare Mental Health Service

“Indeed, we haven’t heard of any weather-related increase in any men- tal health issue as a result of the weather, not in Clare at least,’ Ms Sie (oy ecy-s(ee

BUSINESSES in north and west Clare stand to lose millions in rev- enue due to bad weather over the summer periods.

Expert insiders claim that tourism numbers have already dropped by as much as 25 per cent in coastal areas this year, while numbers in Ennis and Shannon are reportedly on a par

to last year’s figures.

‘The impact could be as much as 25 per cent year-on-year. The de- crease is in the domestic market, the people have just not been coming,” said Michael Vaughan of Vaughan’s Lodge in Lahinch.

“It’s a problem from Kilkee right up to Lahinch, Liscannor and Bally- vaughan. It is hitting the hotels, the restaurants and the holiday homes.

In living memory, I cannot remem- ber a summer as bad as the one we are having.”

Indeed, the poor numbers holiday- ing in the west have seen a number of hotels being forced to drop their rates, despite large increases in ex- penditure due to inflation and in- creased fuel charges.

“I don’t think people are being let go yet. But extra people are not be-

ing taken on in the same way as they would in other years,’ continued Mr Vaughan.

“The CSO figures show that the people between 35 years and 45 years are not holidaying in Ireland and that is the sector who we are missing on the ground.

“It is thought that people in this age group may not be coming on holidays because of the increases in mortgage interest rates.

“I don’t think that this will have a long-term effect on the tourism product in Clare. It is an industry of swings and roundabouts, things op- erate on a cycle and will usually level themselves off over the course of a year or a few years.”

Meanwhile, a spokesperson from the Clare Tourism Forum told

PHILIP O’Reilly, Property Plus has taken on a 2,300 sq. ft. family home, located at Claremount, Clarecastle, guiding at €600,000.Approximately 1.5 km from Clarecastle village and just two km from the Ennis bypass link, this property, which occupies a 0.6 acre site, would make a perfect family home.

The internal accommodation com- prises a very spacious entrance hall- way, with understairs storage and direct access to the family room, reception and kitchen/dining rooms. The reception room has solid yellow birch, polished wooden flooring a bay window overlooking the landscaped

front garden and a large picture win- dow overlooking the rear gardens, there are also sliding double patio doors on the gable end overlooking surrounding countryside.

The kitchen/dining room has ce- ramic flooring, solid white oak wall, base and display fitted units with laminate work surfaces and ceramic tiled splash backs. There’s an inte- erated fridge/freezer and dishwash- er, electric double oven and ceramic hob. There is access from the kitchen to the family room, the utility and the attached garage. Meanwhile the dining room has double sliding patio doors leading to a large flagged patio area and the rear garden.

The formal dining room has solid

wooden flooring, ceiling coving, a corner feature fireplace with gran- ite base and wooden surround a bay window overlooking the front gar- den. Also on the ground floor is a well fitted utility room, a guest WC, and a garage (which could have al- ternative use as a home office or play room).

Upstairs, there are four large bed- rooms and the family bathroom. The master bedroom is en suite and all four bedrooms have fitted ward- robes.

Outside, there’s a large patio area to the rear, with countryside views.

For full details contact 065 6844448.

CRUEL pet owners took dumping to a new extreme when they flung a Iit- ter of kittens into a recycling bin.

The tiny creatures were only saved from their fate when their desperate cries were heard by a pub manager who went to investigate and found them dumped among the cardboard boxes.

Tailrace Bar manager John Ryan said the dumping of the helpless kit- tens was “the last straw” in the Par- teen pub owner’s decision to install concealed CCTV cameras to catch people dumping every kind of rub- bish at the recycling bins in the car- park.

“It was pouring rain and they were soaked through. I’d say they were about four weeks old. If they had been left there, they would have cer- tainly been killed by dogs or foxes or, if they had escaped that, they would have died of cold or starved. I can’t understand how someone could do that, just dump live animals and walk away.”

Animal welfare concerns have con- firmed that if the person or people who dumped the kittens is found, they will be facing prosecution for cruelty to animals as well as a litter- ing fine.

John and his staff at the pub adopt- ed the three tiny kittens and fed them baby formula until they had fully recovered from their ordeal before finding kind homes for them.

“We christened them all ‘Lucky’ because that’s what they were,” said John.

‘When they recovered, they took to following us around, bawling up at us for food. It was a heartless thing to do to dump them.”

The serious issue of dumping has plagued John and pub-owner, Ger Mulconry.

“People dump bags of household rubbish that have nothing to do with recycling or they bring their bottles but throw down the boxes and bags the bottles came in. We’re constantly filling our own bins that we have to pay to have collected with the rub- bish people dump there.”

As well as household rubbish, bags, boxes and now live kittens, John has also had to pick up dead dogs.

But footage from the hidden TV cameras — which can cover the whole car park — could be used to prosecute dumpers who don’t respect the facility.

“It’s what has to happen — that or the whole thing will have to go be- cause we’re picking up after people every day,” said John.

THE SOUTH East Clare show is now considered to be one of the top ten agricultural shows in Ireland and the 17th annual show at the weekend didn’t let the side down.

With 24 classes in the horse show event this year, 27 classes in the cat- tle section and 13 classes in the dog show, none of the four legged friends felt left out.

The home industries section was a major attraction as always, with the collective talents of the bakers, pre- serve makers and flower arrangers

of South East Clare making a lovely spread and a delicious task for the judges.

New to the show this year was the vintage classic cars day out, which was a big attraction.

As well as a festival atmosphere, there was the Best Dressed Lady competition, the Little Miss, the Bonny Baby and the Fancy Dress competitions.

Show Chairman, Pat Hayes thanked everyone involved in organising or helping on the day, particularly the landowners and main sponsor Tom Marsh.