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MAGIC mushrooms located in the Burren could hold the key to tackling world hunger in the coming years. Scientists have discovered that networks of microscopic fungi play a key role in aiding plants to extract and process nutrients from the soil, it emerged.

According to Dr Ray Woods of the British organisation Plantlife, intensive farming, fertiliser and human intrusion have destroyed these fungal networks across Europe, with the Burren’s wild grasslands now considered as a fungal “arc” for the future of European farming.

Studies showed that these tiny fungi can help plants to fight off disease and can even allow for the flow of nutrients from one plant to another over large distances.

“We are just starting to learn how vital these fungi are for growing crops. They are intimately connecting with well-known plants, such as hazel, using 50 or 60 different types of fungi to grow,” said Dr Woods.

“The wild flowers of the Burren are a perfect example of this. There are so many different plants and flowers there and none of them ever seem to dominate.

“In the Burren, you have one of the last unimpacted areas of grassland anywhere in the world. It is really one of the very few places in the world where research into fungal networks can still be done. It is an arc for these fungi.”

One of the most important abilities of these fungal networks is helping plants to extract nitrogen from the soil.

At present, virtually all world agriculture is built on the use of large amounts of industrialised nitrogen fertiliser, which is made using large amount of oil.

As global oil supplies continue to dwindle, the use of oil in producing fertiliser is considered by many to be the biggest challenge facing world agriculture in the next 50 years. This has prompted many people to examine the role that the intact Burren fungal networks could have on world agriculture.

“People are already coming to the Burren [to study the fungi] but it is difficult at times to know who is coming and what they are doing. You come across people from universities in Germany, Holland, Ireland and the UK in the Burren,” said Stephen Ward of the BurrenBeo Trust.

“If they are doing original research, then chances are they would contact an organisation like the BurrenBeo Trust because we can be helpful.”

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.”

CARERS from all over Clare took to the streets of Ennis in December to raise their concerns about budgetary cuts to the Respite Care Allowance. More than 50 people too part in the impromptu including parents of young children with disabilities, older parents of adults with special needs and full-time carers of the elderly.

One of the organisers, Niamh Daly, said that a similar protest organised in Dublin by the Carers Association was an indication at how upset people were but, as most carers cannot travel to protest, the carers of Clare decided to have their

say on their own streets.

“Carers cannot all get to Dublin but, at the end of the day, we have to have our voice heard,” she said.

Many more Clare carers were unable to attend the protest as the people they care for are house-bound and therefore could not come to En nis.

It is not just the cut to the respite grant, however, that is affecting Clare’s carers. Family carers, providing unpaid care to family mem- bers and loved ones, have been seriously affected through the number of cumulative cuts, including the cut to the Household Benefit Pack- age, increases to the prescription charge from 50 cent to € 1.50, the new carbon tax on fuel and the drug payment scheme threshold increase from € 132 to € 144. The Carers Association said it was extremely disappointed with the level of reduction of over 19 per cent in the respite grant paid to over 77,000 family carers, 20,000 of whom receive no other support from the State for providing full-time care for a family member from their own resources. The grant is designed to be used by carers to buy in home care or pay for residential respite care for the caredfor person in order to give the carer a much needed break from their caring role. However, many carers are using this grant to pay for necessary therapies and services for those they are caring for. Despite intense pressure from lobby groups and concerned citizens the government has, to date, help strong on the issue of the Respite Care Allowance. It is as yet unclear whether the Cares Association or other interested organisation will host more protests or other actions in 2013. Wed02January13

THE number of people born on Clare soil swelled by one in May when baby Eirinn Christina Robbins Logue came into the world on the side of the road in Corofin.

Eirinn’s parents, Caralyn Robbins and Phil Logue, were about to drop their two older children at their aunt’s house at Laghtagoona in Corofin before carrying on to hospital in Galway, when Eirinn decided that her big moment had arrived.

The momentous birth took place on the road outside Caralyn’s sister Crystel’s house, with dad Phil acting as a more than capable midwife.

“By the time I got to the driveway, I couldn’t even drive up to the house, I had to stop right there. I was like a headless chicken,” said delighted Phil.

“It was me that delivered the baby. Caralyn was standing up, she had got out of the car to try and get into the house, so she was standing up leaning on the door of the jeep. She said ‘the baby is coming, the baby is coming’.

“Sure enough, the baby’s head was already out. She told me that the baby was coming right then so I cupped the baby’s head in my hand. There was a big whoosh and the baby came flying out and I caught it.

“Crystel was on the phone to the 999 operator, who was giving us advice, and she then came over and helped wrap up the baby and we handed it up to Caralyn. Out of the three of us, I think Mum was the most calm. Myself and Crystel were panicking but Caralyn was the most calm of all of us.

“I really have to give my sincere thanks to Crystel, I don’t know what I would have done if she wasn’t there, and Peter and the rest of the ambulance crew and paramedics and also the 999 operator for their professionalism and for taking care of us so well.”

According to Phil, his partner Caralyn had a dream last week that the baby would be born in the car on the way to the hospital and the baby would be born a girl. Weighing just over six pounds, baby Eir- inn is fit and healthy and is already being doted on by her four-year-old sister Isabelle and her three-year-old brother Aiden.

Figures released by the Central Statistic Office (CSO) last week revealed that the number of people born in County Clare have plummeted since the removal of maternity facilities from the county’s hospitals in the late 1980s.

“This is the first of my children to actually have been born on Clare soil and that is something that we are very happy about,” continued Phil.

“I think if we hadn’t already decided on a name for Eirinn, we would have called her Clare, but we already had the name picked.”

CLARE County Council revealed that they would examine eight unfinished housing estates in the county in April where they believe that safety and security has become a serious issue.

The local authority has also con firmed that it believes that half of the county’s Category 4 ‘ghost’ estates should no longer fall into this category, which is the worst category of estates.

According to the local authority, only three of the six housing developments that have been classified by the Department of the Environment as unfinished and developer-abandoned, or Category 4 estates, should still be in the category.

The council say that they intend to contact the Department of the Environment and inform them of their opinion on this.

Speaking at last night’s meeting of Clare County Council, Director of Services, Ger Dollard said that the local authority is deploying “quite a lot of resources” to the issue of the Category 4 developments and said that safety was the responsibility of the developer.

He was responding to a joint motion put forward by Cllr John Crowe (FG) and Cllr Paul Murphy (FG) which asked for details on the condition of so-called ghost estates in the county.

“It is the responsibiity of the property owner, the developer or the receivers to ensure that the site is secure and safe,” said a council spokesperson.

“The council has written to developers and receivers with housing developments on the unfinished list, explaining to them their responsibilities in relation to the safety of the site.”

Speaking on last night’s motion, Cllr John Crowe said that some Clare estates were in a “very, very bad condition”.

“There are estates which are not even one-quarter finished and no place for children to play in. There are open drains and other dangers,” he said.

PLANS to create a university campus in Ennis have been sunk – following a decision by the Limerick Institute of Technology (LIT) to pull out of the ambitious Munster Technological University project.

The project would have seen the amalgamation of LIT, Cork Institute of Technology and IT Tralee into a single university with 25,000 students.

The Munster Technological University plans included the creation of a campus in Ennis which would have offered lectures, initially through video conferencing, while a Clare-based academic staff was being built up.

In a statement last week, LIT confirmed that it was no longer interested in an amalgamation with the Cork and Tralee ITs.

“Following the address by Minister Quinn TD of all higher education leaders at the end of last month and the publication of new policy documents by the HEA, LIT has reviewed its future position in the higher education landscape. A decision has now been taken to prioritise collaboration with partners in the regional cluster (LIT, University of Limerick, Mary Immaculate College and IT Tralee) and to pause further development of an earlier proposal to apply for designation as a technological university with Cork IT and IT Tralee,” said a spokesperson.

“This decision, which was unanimous and has met with broad support among external and internal stakeholders who were informed immediately, reflects the ambition of LIT to set the standard for a strong Institute of Technology sector.”

LIT’s decision to pull the plug on the Munster Technological University has been met with some criticism – not least from the institute’s own lecturer Dr Frank Houghton, who said it will foster the continuation of a “twotiered” education system.

“The decision is short-sighted and will harm both the institute and the people of the mid-west in the long term. We live in a highly unequal society, characterised by a two-tier education system at third level,” he said.

“We know that there is a real status difference between universities and the institutes of technology in Ireland. This decision reinforces that division and copper fastens elitism in Irish education.”

Dr Houghton also said that he has “serious concerns” over LIT’s expansions plans and its attempts to build links with foreign universities in an increasingly globalised education sector as a result of this decision.

CLARE County Council voted unanimously to place an explicit ban on hydraulic fracturing or fracking in the Clare County Development Plan at the January meeting of the local authority.

More than 50 West Clare residents and members of the Clare Fracking Concerned group packed the public gallery of Clare County Council for the meeting to express their support for moves by the elected members of the local authority to ban fracking in Clare.

Despite a number of procedural objects from the executive of Clare County Council, the councillors voted unanimously to amend the County Development Plan to specifically ban fracking – making Clare the first county in Ireland to take such a step.

Councillors also voted unanimously to write to the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Pat Rabbittee (LAB) asking that the process of fracking be banned in Clare.

This follows a motion put forward by West Clare councillor Gabriel Keating (FF) calling for a ban to fracking in Clare.

Speak on the proposal Cllr Joe Arkins (FG) said that fracking was “raping the natural environment” for the benefit of “gamblers” in the petroleum industry.

“I say this as a land owner but in reality we don’t own the land, we hold it in trust for the next generation. It is bad enough that we have managed to bankrupt the next generation never mind poisoning the land as well,” he said.

Meanwhile, in a separate motion, Cllr Brian Meaney (GP) criticised what he described as a lack of support from the executive of Clare County Council to change the County Development Plan to include a specific ban on fracking.

“We need to put into action the words that we have said today. I completely reject the directions coming from the executive of Clare County Council regarding the change of the County Development Plan – I reject this out of hand,” said .

“This actions bring Clare into the spotlight of the petroleum industry’s attempts to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Clare is the bottom of the barrel for these people. We have an opportunity to send a clear signal that we are not willing to participate and sit idly by.”

Despite the unanimous vote of Clare County Council, the County Development plan had not been altered with council official stating that to include an explicit ban on any activity in not within the scope of a development plan.

LESS than a third of Clare’s voters went to the polls to vote on the Children Referendum on Saturday November 10, the lowest turn out in 11 years. Despite the turnout being lower than the national average, the number in favour of changing the constitution was slightly higher, with 61.7 per cent voting yes. As many as 79,905 Clare people were entitled to vote, 197 less than the last referendum. Just 25,808 people from the Banner chose to exercise their democratic right however. As many as 15,868 people voted for the amendment, with 9,846 voting against. There were 94 invalid votes. The county has a history of not going to the polls on questions that would affect the constitution in recent decades, but the November turnout was surpassed only by the weak showing during the first Nice Referendum, the abolition of the death penalty and the criminal courts referendum. In June 2001, just 30.83 per cent of the people of Clare voted on those three referendums. When 49.8 per cent of voters in the county turned out for the Stability Referendum at the end of May voter apathy and lack of information was criticised for what was then the lowest turn out in the county in almost a decade. Six months later it would appear that apathy and lack of engagement has grown to the point where 17.8 per cent more of the county’s population decided not to vote. The drop in voter turnout is significant when compared to June 1999 when 60.05 per cent of the Clare electorate turned out to vote for “Recognition for Local Government”.

In March 2002, just 39.29 per cent of the Clare electorate turned out to vote on the Protection of Human Life in Pregnancy, with 47.05 per cent voting on Nice 2 that October.

The largest turnout for a referendum in recent years in Clare was in June 2004, when 64.6 per cent voted on the Citizenship.

From then until the Stability Referendum the turnout remained over 50 per cent in the Banner county, with 52.48 per cent voting on Lisbon 1 in June 2008, 56.9 per cent voting on the second Lisbon referendum in October 2009, while 56.12 per cent voted on the House of the Oireachtais Inquiries and 57.95 per cent on Judges Remuneration during the Presidential election in October 2011.

While the turnout on Saturday was disappointing for the Government, it still considered it “a historic day for children”.

Speaking at the count centre at the Court House in Ennis after returning officer Pat Wallace declared the Clare result of the Children Referendum, Deputy Pat Breen (FG) said, it was “a truly historic day for our children”.

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.”