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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 .

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.

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.

THE future of Clare’s international airport was finally resolved in December when the new vision for Shannon Airport and Shannon Development was announced in Dublin.

The decision to separate Shannon Airport from the control of the Dublin Airport Authority was confirmed by the Minister for Transport, Leo Varadkar (FG), who said that as many as five thousand new jobs could be created in the new company over the next five years.

It was also confirmed that Shannon Airport debt, understood to be in the region of € 100 million, would remain with the Dublin Airport Authority – but Shannon would also lose any stake in Aer Rianta International.

The new airport authority was been provisionally named as NEWCO. The Minister for Jobs, Richard Bruton (FG) confirmed at the announcement that there would be no compulsory redundancies form Shannon Airport or Shannon Development. The Clare People also reported on December 4 that Clare woman Rose Hynes was being lined up to become the first chairperson of the new airport authority.

The Bellharbour woman, who chaired the Aviation Business Development Task Force that drafted the new airport plan, was rubber stamped into this role later in the month.

At the Dublin announcement the government set a ambitious target for boosting passenger numbers at Shannon by one million over the next nine years, Minister Varadkar telling The Clare People that “if Shannon can’t achieve that kind of growth, then there is no future for the airport”.

However, it’s in the area of jobs that Shannon can expect its biggest windfall with the transport minister revealing that a new international aviation services centre has “the potential to create between 3000 and 5000 jobs within five years”.

Minister Bruton said the airport’s independence, which will see two companies in Shannon provide up to 850 in the coming months represents “a new chapter in regional development” in Ireland.

“The independence of Shannon Airport has been sought for many years,” said Minister Varadkar. “It certainly is a risk, but the risk with doing nothing is far greater. It is an historic decision and it will bring a new future for Shannon Development and Shannon Airport.”

Shannon was formally separated from the DAA on December 31. The government now plans to appoint a new boards for the NEWCO in the new year. The government will also have to address the possibility of industrial actions as Shannon Development workers hav raised a number of worries about the new arrangement.

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.

GARDAÍ in Clare are appealing for assistance in solving a number of burglaries that took place during the Christmas period.

Between 2pm on Christmas Day and 5.30pm on St Stephen’s Day, costume jewellery was stolen during a break-in to a house in Westwood, Ennis. The culprit gained entry by breaking a rear window.

A burglar used the same method of entry during a burglary in Showground’s View, Ennis. The breakin took place between 1.30pm on Wednesday, December 26 and 3.15am on Thursday, December 27.

As well as stealing a 32-inch Samsung television, Playstation3 and eight games, a Hewlett Packard laptop, 3D Panasonic TV, DVD player and key to the patio doors, the burglars also stole a white Toyota saloon (00 OY 1070), which was later, recovered.

Efforts were made to steal the copper piping from a bathroom in a house in Ballina sometime between 4pm on Saturday, December 22 and 10am on Thursday last.

A Triton shower was stolen from the house in Beechgrove Grange Road, Ballina, after the culprit broke in through a rear window.

In Kilfenora, a house on Doctor’s Hill was broken into between 8pm on St Stephen’s night and 8am the following morning. The house and its contents were disturbed but nothing appears to have been taken.

The occupants of a house in Killernan Miltown Malbay were not as lucky. A sum of money, including sterling, and a white Citreon Berlingo Van Sl59 OFF were stolen from this home some time between 8.30pm and 11.40pm on Friday, December 28. The burglars gained entry to the house by breaking a side window and then stole the keys of the van.

In Kilkee, between 2pm on Thursday, December 27 and 10.30am on Saturday, December 29, an apartment on Circular Road was broken into through the rear door. A 32-inch Toshiba flatscreen TV and some bed clothing was stolen.

Meanwhile, Gardaí are looking for any witnesses to criminal damage of a car which was parked outside the Church in Roslevan on Christmas Eve. Three of the car’s tyres were slashed between 7.30pm and 8.45pm.

A NEW future of Shannon Airport began to emerge in January with the confirmation by the Minister for the Transport, Leo Varadkar (FG), the airport would remain in state ownership and will not be sold off as part any fire-sale of state assets.

The minister also indicated that any decision on the future of Shannon Airport would have implications for the workers at Shannon, saying that the company “should not be run in the interest of the workers”.

This ruled out the possibility of an all-out privatisation of the airport and the idea of extending a long-term lease, or between 30 and 50 years, to the property sector. Clare County Council welcomed the development saying that it opened the door for the council to have a larger role in the operation of Shannon Airport.

“It is intended that the airports will stay in public ownership but that is not to say that there cannot be private sector investment and involvement in the airports in a way that is not the case currently,” said Minister Varadkar.

“Shannon Airport has a great future as a passenger airport but also as one which is concerned with avionics and aero-industry but the status quo there is not working and the airport is in decline, which is why we need to have a change of policy in that regard.”

The minister was speaking after receiving the Booz report, the findings of which would not be made public until later in the year.

Clare County Council said the news was a step in the right direction.

“Recent comments made by Minister Varadkar concur with the council’s own views. The comments also are in line with the detailed submission made by the council to Booz & Company during 2011. We look forward to playing a key role in the progression of a new framework for Shannon Airport,” said a council spokesperson.

As the year rolled on, it became clear that a separately operated Shannon Airport, with full independence from the Dublin Airport Authority, was the government plan. Shannon Airport officially decoupled from the Dublin Airport Authority later on December 31, 2012, and a new entity, currently called NEWCO, comprising Shannon Airport and parts of Shannon Development will be created.

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.

REPORTER Andrew Hamilton became interested in all things ecumenical during the holy month of November. He reported that the Killaloe Diocese was facing a “crisis” of holy orders, with the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) predicting that the entire diocese will be serviced by a handful of “ShannonDoc priests” in as little as a decades time.

The organisation, which now represents more than 1,000 parish priests in Ireland, said massive changes were required by all the Irish Bishops and the Vatican if this doomsday scenario was to be avoided.

According to Fr Tony Flannery of the ACP, the priesthood is set to become a transient profession in Ireland, with a much reduced number of priest delivering sacrament across many parishes – without having the time to be based in any individual community.

A spokesperson from the Killaloe Diocese told The Clare People , that there had been active moves to engage with lay community in the diocese over the last 12 months – there are some issues which can only be changed at Vatican level.

“Priests in the Killaloe Diocese are already doing the work that three priests would have been doing ten years ago, and this is going to get much worse, very quickly. This is a crisis, no questions about it. In 10 or 20 years time there will be only a handful of priests and they will be just saying mass in an area and moving on – they will be like ShannonDoc priests,” said Fr Tony Flannery.

“The ACP now have more than 1,000 priests in our organisation and it is growing all the time. This is in spite the feeling that priests are being actively discouraged by the powers that be to join. So it shows you that there is a real desire among the priests for change.”

According to Fr Brendan Quinlavin, spokesperson for the Killaloe Diocese, Bishop Kieran O’Reilly had been engaged in a “listening” process over the last 12 months designed to allow lay people to have more say in the diocese.

In a separate story it was highlighted that ordaining women priests was one of the main changes suggested in a revolutionary new document produced by the Diocese of Killaloe as part of the listening process.

The process, which was started by Bishop Kieran O’Reilly last year, involved more than 700 priests and lay church members in the diocese and was viewed as a blueprint for the future of the Catholic Church in County Clare.

The document also recommended the creation of new active roles for lay people in the diocese and fostering a greater appreciation for local priests as two of its other main aims.

The document also highlight the main challenges faced by the church in the Killaloe diocese with mass attendance as low as 10 per cent in some parishes. Other fears also include the prospect of church closures in rural part of Clare, as priest numbers continue to decline.

“This [listening] process is an invitation to engage again and to be an integral part of our future,” said Fr Brendan Quinlivan, spokesperson for the Diocese of Killaloe.” The next step in this process is unclear as many of the recommended changes would require a change of official church doctrine in the Vatican.”