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DIPLOMATIC efforts are being made to get the Princess Royal – better known as Princess Anne – to visit Loophead Lighthouse in 2013, as part of the Clare contribution to ‘The Gathering’ initiative that aims to bring 300,000 extra tourists into Ireland. The Clare People learned in August that Clare County Council, local West Clare representative, Cllr Gabriel Keating (FG) and Deputy Pat Breen (FG) were spearheading this campaign after the Princess Royal wrote to the local authority in praise of the groundbreaking tourist initiative that has operated at Clare’s most westerly point over the past two summer seasons.

Princess Anne’s correspondence was sparked by a letter she received from Clare County Council last month, with Director of Service, Ger Dollard revealing “We wrote to Princess Anne and told her about Loophead and its success. We did this because Princess Anne is a pharologist, which is someone who takes a special interest in lighthouses and she was invited to come to Loophead,” added Mr Dollard. The Clare People has seen Princess Anne’s reply, which was written on her behalf by her private secretary, Captain Nick Wright. In the letter, Captain Wright said Princess Anne “was glad to hear that the opening of Loophead Lighthouse was an outstanding success”.

He added, “All visits overseas, including of course to the Republic of Ireland, are co-ordinated by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. As such, there are no plans at present for the Princess to visit. Should matters change, we shall bear your kind invitation in mind.”

Now, the campaign to bring Princess Anne to the lighthouse is being taken up by Deputy Pat Breen, on behalf of Loophead-based councillor, Gabriel Keating.

Through his chairmanship of the Dáil Foreign Affairs committee, Deputy Breen is to approach British Ambassador to Ireland, Dominick Chilcott about beginning the diplomatic process of extending an official invitation for Princess Anne to come to Ireland.

“Enda Kenny officially opened the lighthouse to start this year’s tourist season at Loophead on May 18,” said Cllr Gabriel Keating, “and the aim is to have Princess Anne to do the same in 2013 when we have ‘The Gathering’, because she has taken an interest in what we are doing with the lighthouse,” he added.

HOUSE values in Clare have more than halved over the past five years as the unprecedented property price crash continues unabated in every corner of the county, The Clare People revealed in October.

This is one of the key statistics contained in a new report published early in the month, which claimed that the prices for houses across a range of sizes in the county have plummetted by just under 53 per cent since the peak of the property price boom back in 2006/2007.

The claim was made by Daft.ie in its latest House Price Report. The study for the third quarter of 2012 has shown the continued acceleration of the property crash in the county, even though it is running at a slower rate than the rest of the province apart from Limerick City.

The average price of a house in Clare in October was € 144, 524, which translated into at 52.9 per cent drop from the peak of € 306,845.

These latest figures. produced by Daft.ie economist Dr Paraic Kenna of NUI Galway. showed that there had been a quarterly fall of 4.8 per cent in the county’s house prices and a drop 19.5 per cent in the past year – this is the biggest year-on-year drop since that property crash started to kick in back in 2008.

Prices in Munster outside the cities fell by 6.8 per cent between June and September, the largest quarterly fall since the crash started.

In Munster, only Limerick County, Tipperary and Waterford City now have lower average houses prices than Clare.

Daft.ie also gave a breakdown of the new average asking prices of housing units in the county, which graphically illustrated the extent of the property crash over the past five years.

The asking price for a one and twobedroom units was € 83,000.

This figures rose to € 124,000 for a three-bedroomed house, € 191,000 for a four-bedroomed house and € 223,000 for a five-bedroomed house.

A LONG-AWAITED rescue centre for the Doolin Unit of the Irish Coastguard is the next top priority of the Department of Transport, according to Minister for Transport, Leo Varadkar (FG).

Speaking at a joint Coastguard/ RNLI event on Sunday, December 30, Varadkar named Doolin as the next station-house for construction, once a new building for the Killybegs Unit of the Irish Coastguard has been completed.

Construction is already well underway on the Donegal station, with work set to be finished early in 2013. With no new cuts to coastguard funding announced in last month’s budget, this could leave the way open for the start of construction in Doolin later in 2013.

A campaign for a new station at Doolin has been ongoing for almost two decades and has been delayed on a number of occasions over the years because of planning issues, difficulty in acquiring land and uncertainty about funding for the project.

Planning permission for a new rescue centre at Doolin was granted in 2010. The centre will include a new two-storey rescue centre on the site of the current facility as well as a single-storey, three-bay boat and vehicle store.

The current station is prone to flooding and is too small for the Doolin Unit to store all of its rescue equipment and boats. This means that some of the unit’s crafts have to be stored off-site, creating the possibility of a delay in responding to some emergency situation.

“Funding for the Coastguard has been protected for the second year running in the Budget. Similarly, funding for the RNLI and Mountain Rescue will be maintained at current levels through to 2016,” said the transport minister.

“These are essential services and much of the cost is met by volunteers. But I particularly want to pay tribute to the huge number of volunteers who save lives every week of the year. Without these volunteers, it simply wouldn’t be possible to provide the same level of emergency response.”

The 2012 Irish Coastguard statistics were also released on Sunday and showed that the year had been the busiest on record for the service. Nationally the coastguard saved 161 lives and recovered 88 in thousands of operations over the last one month.

While individual number of the Doolin and the Killaloe units of the Irish Coastguard have yet to be released, the Shannon based Coast Guard helicopter recorded its busiest year on record with 191 missions.

The coastguard also fielded a total of 325 hoax calls from members of the public, a figure described my Minister Varadkar as “unacceptably high”. A we e k o f m ild we a t h e r a n d a lo t le ss ra in t h a n we h a ve b e e n e xp e rie n c in g o ve r t h e p a st we e k o r so .

HOUSEHOLDERS in Clare are being exposed to radiation doses that are the equivalent of having three chest x-rays a day, a shocking new study conducted by the Radiological Protection Institute (RPII) of Ireland and released in July revealed.

The statistic emerged from a new radon investigation in the county, which found that one in five homes tested by the RPII registered high levels of the gas, with a number of dwellings in the county containing over five times the acceptable levels of exposure to the cancer-causing substance.

And, the findings revealed that the county capital of Ennis was the county’s chief radon blackspot, which prompted the RPII to sound out new appeal on all householders to carry out radon tests on their dwellings.

“It is a serious problem,” an RPII spokesperson told The Clare People, “because 11 homes in the county have been identified as having radon gas levels above the acceptable levels in the past five months”.

Two homes in Ennis had up to five times the acceptable levels of the gas, while another six in the county capital as well as two in Clarecastle and one in Tubber levels up to three times the acceptable level.

“Tens of thousands of homeowners in Clare have yet to test for radon and among them are many hundreds that are unknowingly living with a high risk to their family’s health,” said RPII scientist Stephanie Long.

“Only a small fraction of homes in Clare have been tested for radon. Our research shows that, of those that have already tested, there is a large percentage with high radon levels and so we are urging homeowners to take the radon test.

“It is really important for people to test their home for radon as this is the only way of knowing if your family is exposed to this cancercausing gas,” she added.

Radon is the second biggest cause of lung cancer after smoking and is directly linked to up to 200 lung cancer deaths each year.

SHANNON’S ability to be transformed into a strategic freight logistics hub that would have direct connections to some of the world’s global logistics centres was highlighted following a major think-tank that took place in London in July.

The Mid West Regional Authority (MWRA) and the Irish Exporters Association (IEA) sounded out Shannon’s potential after meeting with international freight logistics experts in London this week to promote the mid-west region as a strategically located and sustainable freight logistics hub.

Through its participation in the EU co-funded Weastflows project, the MWRA chaired the meeting in London to discuss methods to promote the major North West European freight Gateways in terms of their connectivity to other European Gateways and onwards to the major global logistics hubs in the United States and Asia.

“The importance of an effective and well-managed Gateway for freight movements cannot be overstated for a peripheral European region, such as the mid-west,” explained Liam Conneally, Director of the MWRA.

“The Limerick-Shannon Gateway is at the heart of the region and is an important contributor to the economic development of the mid-west. Ireland’s exports continue to rise in 2012, despite the challenges faced by our key export markets, and our exporters rely on an efficient transport system to move their products within the North West Europe area and beyond.

“Furthermore, if Ireland is to meet its commitments in terms of reducing CO2 emissions, the region needs to learn the best methods for en- couraging modal shifts from road to more sustainable forms of freight transport,” he added. “The Weastflows project is seeking to improve and enhance freight logistics in North West Europe on a West-East axis. The project brings together experts from all sectors of the freight industry to work towards connecting and improving sustainable supply chains for the movement of freight. During the recent meeting in the UK, the MWRA promoted the LimerickShannon gateway, which as the most western gateway in the project has a key location for freight movements.”

Linda Newport, EU Projects Officer with MWRA, explained that the benefits for the mid-west region in participating in the Weastflows project include an opportunity to improve the connectivity from the region to the major North West Europe transport corridors, as well as an opportunity to test out the latest in innovative approaches to freight transportation via participation in pilot projects.

“The mid-west region is strategically located on the west coast of Ireland and is an important logistics hub in Ireland with the Shannon Estuary and Shannon International Airport. The Limerick-Shannon gateway is at the heart of the region and is an important contributor to the economic development of the region.

“Through our participation in the Weastflows project, the MWRA will work with the Irish Exporters Association and other partners to establish the Limerick-Shannon gateway as a sustainable gateway and improve links with the Seine gateway, the Liverpool-Manchester gateway and the London-Thames gateway, among others. It is anticipated that the results of the project will feed into the regional planning processes,” she added.

PRESIDENT of Ireland, Michael D Higgins did not call himself a Clare man during his first official presidential visit to the county in June, but his brother and sister both agreed it was safe to consider him “one of our own”.

Ireland’s first citizen, who spent his formative years, from the age of five to 19, living in his parental home of Ballycar, Newmarket-onFergus, would not describe himself as a Clare man but a man with many associations with different counties.

“Yes, indeed, I associate myself with Clare. There are many origins I have that are very simply understood,” he said.

“My father and my grandfather and my greatgrandfather have been associated with County Clare since time immemorial. I am glad to say in the 1901 census, in the townland of Ballycar, there are four families of Higgins. And once again, as a result of my brother’s [John] activities and his sons, there are four families in Ballycar again.”

The President explained that his mother came from an area near Charleville in Cork and her family continue to live there.

A former TD for Galway West, he described how the city accepted him as a migrant and its mayor twice.

“Galway is where my own fam- ily have been born and rared,” he added.

While the president maintained his life experiences have been made up of many counties, including the city of Limerick where he was born, all have a common thread of both rural and urban life. It is these experiences that have formed the ninth President of Ireland, who admited that coming back to Clare as the country’s first citizen was like coming home.

A PROBLEM resident was accused of taunting neighbours plagued by anti-social behaviour in November by claiming he would buy their homes if they want to leave a troubled estate.

The man, a convicted criminal, made the claim in a letter delivered to homes in the estate in Ennis.

Residents suffered numerous instances of anti-social behaviour and raised their concerns in a meeting with senior Gardaí in Ennis during in October.

The situation got so bad for one mortgage payer that it was claimed that he has been forced to leave the area to live in another part of Ennis. Other residents are also believed to be considering leaving.

The typed letter was hand delivered by members of the man’s family to certain homes in the estate.

In it the man boasted that he could afford to purchase homes in the estate and give them to members of his family.

In the letter he refers to a wide circle of cousins who he would like to see move into the estate, if his neighbours felt they wanted to leave.

The letter was delivered after a local newsletter highlighted the pres- ence of Garda patrols in the area.

A delegation of residents of the estate had raised their concerns during a meeting at Ennis Garda Station. The week after this report a Traveller resident in that Ennis estate hit back at what he said was racism at work.

The man rubbished claims by residents that he had been the cause of anti-social behaviour in the estate since he moved some months ago, or that he had been the reason a person moved out of the estate.

“The only thing that’s happened in the five months I’m living there is the young kids took a football and kicked it around the green.

“Children is children. That’s been the size of it,” he said.

The man, who admitted that he had sent a letter to some residents in the estate offering to buy their houses if they wanted to sell, told us that the letter was ‘sarcastic’ in parts.

“I was sarcastic in the letter. I admit that. The bit about the horses eating the grass was sarcastic. I know that.

“But they think they’re better than me. They haven’t taken the time to get to know me. They judged me because I’m a Traveller. And that’s racist,” he says.

The letter he had hand delivered to some of the residents in the estate invited them to have a cup of the tea with him.

THREE Junior Certificate students from Ennis were hailed as heroines by Clare Civil Defence chief Liam Griffin after their quick thinking helped save the life of a woman who got into difficulty after going into the River Fergus to retrieve her dog.

Rice College students Ellen McMahon (15), Aisling O’Sullivan (15) and Eve Copley (15) came to the rescue of a woman, who hasn’t been identified, who was out walking her dog one June evening near Steele’s Rock in the Lifford area the town.

“The three of us were walking past at about 7.15pm, having been up town for something to eat after our Business Studies exam,” revealed Ms McMahon. “When we were passing, the woman was standing behind the wall and the dog was on the steps at Steele’s Rock. We walked on a bit and, when we looked back, the dog was being dragged downstream and the woman had moved to the steps and was calling him.

“Then she went in after the dog and was taken away by the flow of the water down towards the FBD offices. She was very tired because she had swum out to get the dog and the current was so strong there was no way she would have been able to swim back to the steps,” she added.

The three students quickly raced back to get the lifebuoy that’s located near Steele’s Rock and came to the aid of the woman, who was getting into difficulty.

“She had a hold of the dog and we raced up got the lifebuoy and threw it in to her and slowly dragged her in. We didn’t get her name because, after being soaked to the skin, she got a drive home from a passing motorist,” revealed Ms McMahon.

“Their quick thinking helped save that woman’s life,” Clare Civil Defence chief Liam Griffin told The Clare People . “It just shows the importance of lifebuoys,” he added, “because sometimes they get vandalised and the people who do that can cost a life. Luckily in this case, it was there and the girls were able to use it and come to the rescue of the woman.”

ROMANCE was in the air in September as a Canadian dentist travelled more than 8,000 kilometres to track down the love of his life, a Clare woman he met for just two minutes in Ennistymon more than a year previous.

Dr Sandy Crocker from British Columbia put his life on hold for four weeks, as he took an extended break from work to travel Ireland in search of his red-haired Irish beauty.

The story which made international headlines told how the lovestruck dentist was in An Teach Bia in Ennistymon on July 9, 2011, when he noticed the woman who has captivated his thoughts for the last 14 months. He describes her as being in her mid- to late-20s with freckles and redish-brown hair. Sandy spoke to her briefly before she left the cafe, but realised too late that he might have met the love of his life.

“We were on our way to the Cliffs of Moher that morning and we stopped in Ennistymon to grab a bite to eat. She was eating and I didn’t want to interrupt her meal so I waited until I noticed her leaving and spoke to her. I asked her for directions to the Cliffs of Moher,” he told The Clare People yesterday.

“I was leaving Ireland a day later so, at first, I didn’t see the point in pursuing things more – but after she left I decided that I had to. So we paid our bill quickly and myself and my brother started looking for her. We searched the town for an hour or two and couldn’t find her, so we went to the Cliffs but later that evening we came back and looked for her again for another two hours. But there was no trace of her.”

A FULL-SCALE murder investigation began in Clare following the death of a man shot during a wedding celebration.

The victim, who was nRobert Sheehan of Pineview Gardens, Moyross, Limerick, received numerous shots to the head and body while he stood outside the Bunratty Castle Hotel on a September Sunday morning.

He died later at the Mid Western Regional Hospital, Limerick.

The 21-year-old was attending a family wedding in the County Clare hotel, and had left briefly for a ciga rette break.

At approximately 3.40am, at least one gunman approached him and shot him a number of times. The culprit was then driven away in a dark saloon-type car.

Gardaí have confirmed that they are examining a “short type fire arm” found near the scene.

It is understood that detectives are following a number of lines of enquiry, including a link to a large row in Moyross in July during which two men were stabbed.

Two men in their 20s were arrested in Cork later on Sunday morning in connection with the Bunratty incident.

The late Mr Sheehan had come into contact with Gardaí previously. He was sentenced to two years detention in October 2007, after he pleaded guilty to recklessly endangering the lives of Gavin and Milly Murray.

He admitted acting as a look-out as two other men petrol bombed a car in which the four and six-year-old were sitting.