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AS MANY as 70 per cent of Clare householders have now paid the household charge, making the county one of the most compliant in the country when it comes to paying the controversial tax.

The county has also reached the figure quoted by local TDs as the figure that would ensure that Clare County Council could hold on to 100 per cent of its Local Government funding.

However, last month Minister or the Environment, Heritage and Local Government Phil Hogan said the loss of € 247,000 from the third quarter of the Clare budget would not be returned, despite the earlier reassurances.

Meanwhile the remaining 30 per cent identified by the Local Government Management Agency (LGMA) as having yet to pay received reminder letters in the last week.

Clare County Council was charged with issuing the letters, but could not reveal how many letters were posted.

The letters being issued are based on information taken from the Property Registration Authority compiled by the LGMA.

All owners of residential property in Ireland are liable for the household charge on each residential property they own, as of January 1, 2012.

The Government has said that revenues from the Household Charge will be forwarded to the Exchequer, and will be later distributed to local authorities throughout Ireland to support the provision of local services such as public parks, libraries, open spaces and leisure amenities, planning and development, fire and emergency services, and street cleaning and lighting. Changes to Local Government Structure announced last week stated that in the future each local authority would be directly responsible for setting and collecting its own property tax. Niall Barrett, Head of Finance, Clare County Council, said, “The responsibility is on all residential property owners to pay. The amount now due, including late payment fees and interest, is € 127 per property and this amount will continue to increase on the first of each month per property until the charge is paid.” He explained that the LGMA has carried out a comparison between the data on the Property Registration Agency database and those that have registered and paid, or obtained a waiver, in relation to the Household Charge. “The comparison exercise was carried out for a very large number of households across the country with properties that did not match exactly in both databases being listed to receive a letter. “Thus, if the information provided at the time of registration for the household charge does not match exactly the information provided at the time the property was registered then a letter will be issued. “Examples of items that may give rise to such mismatches include the use of abbreviations in one case and not in the other, changes of name due to marriage, changes in spelling of town lands, and the addition of house names to addresses. “It should be noted that a large number of houses are owned jointly by married couples. “This will mean that as each person who is a joint owner is liable for the household charge there will be two letters issuing to such households. The letter will provide contact details for the resolution of any issues arising from the receipt of the letters,” he said.

A NEW offshore organic fish farm planned for the Burren coast will generate almost € 15 million in wages for the people of North Clare and South Galway each year.

That is according to figures released last week by Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM), who say that the jobs created by the € 40 million development will be high paying, sustainable employment with pay “well above the average industrial wage”.

The new BIM figures put the figure for annual direct wages at € 14.7 million, should the twin fish farms be developed to capacity. This would equate, roughly, to the entire Single Farm Payment (SFP) paid to all the farmers in North Clare each year.

Speaking to The Clare People yesterday, Donal Maguire, Head of aquaculture development at BIM, said that spin-off incomes for the area could also run into the millions of euro.

“This fish is a perishable project so it has to be handled and dealt with in the local community. So there is a great business argument for processing the fish in the local area. So you get a massive spin-off employment near these big fish farms,” he said.

“We estimate this as about € 14.7 million in wages for the local community.

“That is in direct and indirect employment concerning the farm but then there is the wider circulation of money when we look at the money spent in local shops, and restaurants and petrol stations.

“These are full-time, year round jobs that will pay way more than the minimum wage. They will pay more than the average industrial wage, so these are good jobs. It will also create an extra hundred million more in exports for the country which we don’t already have.”

The BIM also confirmed that all money needed to get this projects off the ground would be payable from the operating company and not the state.

“Basically, we do all the heavy lifting in creating the means for this to happen; in getting the aquaculture license and the foreshore license, but all the major spend in actually getting the project physically off the ground comes from the operator,” continued Donal.

“It’s not money for nothing. IT is a big undertaking and requires a lot of effort from different aspects of the state to achieve it. Also, we have had to do a lot of design work to ensure that a farm of this size would not have a negative environmental impact.

“We’ve looked at this really closely and we are confident that this will not cause a huge impact.”

CARERS in Clare continue to face obstacles when applying for carers allowance, and that is before any budget has announced.

In the last number of weeks, one carer reported that when she applied for the € 204 carers allowance to look after her mother at home, she was refused. Instead, she was offered a € 730 nursing home subvention.

Asked if this flies in the face of Government policy, Minister for Social Protection, Joan Burton said that the process is in a transitional phase.

“We are spending a lot more money on carers and we are giving carers allowance to a lot more people, including the half-way carers allowance, so we have managed to ringfence the budget to increase the number of people receiving it. That is in recognition…of the job the carers do and how vital that is, not just for the person they are caring for but indeed for the whole community,” she said.

“We have been changing the IT systems in the department in relation to all the applications for things like car ers, disability and domiciliary care allowance. And, basically, what we are doing is developing better and faster IT systems. While we are doing that, we have to have the old system and the new system running parallel so there have been some delays but certainly we are now getting into the backlog. The time it is taking has come down significantly. The fresher applications have not been facing anything like that,” she told The Clare People .

The National Carers Strategy, published earlier this year, promised to recognise, empower and support family carers. However, the Carers Association said Ireland’s 187,000 family carers are now facing cuts to home help hours, home care packages and vital support services.

In the 2006 census, 4,507 carers were recorded in Clare. Six years on, the number is likely to be significantly higher. According to the Carers Association, many people don’t recognise themselves as carers when it comes to the census as they believe they are “just looking after a family member”.

“We are calling on Government to stop praising carers with words, while punishing them with cuts. It’s time to turn rhetoric into reality,” said Catherine Cox, spokesperson for The Carers Association.

“Carers across the country are very fearful of what this budget will bring, with further threats of cuts to household benefits packages, free travel for carers and services for young adults with disabilities on reaching 18. All of these, against a backdrop of suspension of housing adaptation grants and increases in the costs of care in the home, are pushing many carers over the edge,” she said.

ACADEMICS, students and oil companies from all over the world have begun to travel to the Clare coast to get an up-close glimpse of Clare’s rare “sand volcanoes”.

A large number of these rare volcanoes, which were formed more than 300 million years ago, have been preserved along the Clare coastline but are incredible rare elsewhere in the world.

The sand volcanoes are created when large amounts of sand and mud are released in a short space of time, such as at the mouth of a large river.

When a large amount of material is deposited, water can become trapped between layers of sediment.

Eventually this water is forced upwards, bringing with it sand and mud which flows to the surface and deposits material in a cone shape, similar to a volcano.

These structures are sometimes turned to stone when large amounts of pressure are applied to them and, in very rare instances, they can become exposed again.

The Clare coast from Doolin down to Loop Head has one of the highest instances of preserved sand volcanoes in the world.

“People in the geology community have been aware of these in Clare for a while, especially people in the oil companies who come here to study them and how they might impact on oil exploration,” said Dr Eamon Doyle of the Burren and Cliffs of Moher Geopark.

“There is only a number of these in Clare but they are quite rare worldwide. These things are still forming in different places in the world, like the Mississippi Delta, but to get them preserved like this is very rare.

“There is a stretch from Doolin right down to Loop Head where they are at a number of different locations. They formed when Clare was much further south – close to the equator – and the Clare coast would have been very far underwater.

“Since then, we have been moving slowly north and there has been an uplift as well as a certain amount of erosion. “It is this rare set of circumstances which has made and preserved these sand volcanoes in Clare.” Groups come from all over the world to view the sand volcanoes. Dr Doyle visited a number of sand volcanoes along the Clare coast with two of Ireland’s leading experts on the subject, Professor Pat Shannon and Peter Houghton from UCD, last week.

NEXT Monday will be a day to remember for a group of over 100 runners drawn from throughout the county who will take to the starting line of the Dublin City Marathon under the Clare Crusaders banner.

The athletes, who range in age from their 20s to their 60s, will be taking part in the gruelling 26-miles and 385-yard test as a fundraising exercise for the Clare Crusaders Clinic which was established by the late Howard Flannery.

This year will see the biggest ever number of Crusaders to take part in the marathon after local organis- ers set a target of having over 100 people clad in the distinctive orange Crusaders garb for the Bank Holiday Monday event which will have over 10,000 participants.

“We knew from the start that we wanted to bring in a lot of new people to the event this year,” says Ronan O’Reilly who, along with Siobhán O’Reilly, assumed responsibility for organising this year’s Clare Crusaders team.

“David Ghilardi came up with the idea of 100 people to take part in the marathon and we knew we had to go for it. Our motto became ‘Think Big, Believe Big, Act Big and the Results will be Big.’

“And it worked. The whole 100 drive gathered a life of its own. More and more people started showing up for the Saturday morning training sessions. We got calls from all over. The more people that joined, the more that wanted to join,” adds McMahon.

The 100 drive means that the Clare Crusaders group will be one of the largest taking part in what will be the 32nd annual Dublin City Marathon.

“How will we feel in Dublin, seeing 100-plus people in orange on the steps of Buswells Hotel for a photograph before the races, all willing to put it on the line for a great cause?” says McMahon.

“I think overwhelmed is the right word.”

THE full recognition of the Mol an Óige Steiner National School in Ennistymon is once again unclear, despite it appearing a mere formality a year ago.

The school, which has been Clare’s fastest growing primary school in recent years, has complied with a number of conditions laid down by the Department of Education over the last four years.

However, it has emerged that officials from the department wrote to the school’s board of management seeking written assurances in relation to the “curricular objectives” of the school.

It has also emerged that a number of extra reports concerning the school have been commissioned by the department – and neither the school nor its patron body were aware of the extra reports being commissioned or been allowed to view or respond to them.

The school’s board of management wrote to the Minister for Education, Ruairí Quinn (LAB), earlier this month, highlighting the extra “secret” reports and requesting that some progress be made on the issue as soon as possible.

“We now request on behalf of the children, their parents and the staff of our school, in accordance with the process agreed between the Department and our Patron Body, that the process moves to the next step whereby the parents, the Board and the Patron Body may make their submissions to you, the minister, so that you may then move towards granting our school permanent recognition,” said the statement.

A deputation from the school met with officials from the Department of Education in Dublin last week. However, it is as yet unclear if any concrete progress was made at this meeting.

Mol An Óige began with just seven students in 2005 and has grown to 124 students over the last seven years.

The school secured Lifeways Ireland as a patron a number of years ago.

THE number of flights coming into Shannon Airport continues to drop, despite a general turnaround in the fortunes of Irish airports. According to new figures released by the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA), an average of just 55 commercial daily flight movements took place at Shannon Airport during the month of Septem- ber. This figure represents a reduction of 7.3 per cent on the same month in 2011. This comes in the context of a mini-revival in the airport sector in Ireland generally in recent months, with both Dublin and Cork airports showing positive figures in the late summer and early autumn. Trends nationally over the last three months have shown a dramatic turnaround, with Dublin Airport largely responsible for this. Indeed, figures for Dublin Airport in September show a 5.5 per cent increase compared to the same month in 2011. Cork Airport has also recorded some gains in recent months, while Shannon Airport has recorded ongoing reductions every month this year. While the IAA figures represent the number of flights coming through Shannon Airport and not the number of passengers, it is not good news for the Clare airport, especially with Knock Airport moving closer to passing it out as Ireland’s third biggest airport. The Mayo airport has opened a number of new routes in recent months, including regular flights to Barcelona, Frankfurt, Milan and Paris. The numbers travelling through Knock Airport grew by more than 10 per cent last year to around 700,000 people. While the exact timetable for the decoupling of Shannon Airport from the Dublin Airport Authority has not been finalised, it is now a possibility that Shannon Airport may begin its time as a standalone airport as Ireland’s fourth most used airport, and not its third.

MORE Travellers live in Ennis than any other town in Munster, while the county capital ranks as third nationally among towns when it comes to being home to members of the Travelling community.

These are just two statistics in the seventh bulletin report from the 2011 National Census of Population entitled ‘Religion, Ethnicity and Irish Travellers – Ethnic and Cultural Background in Ireland’ that presents a profile of the various religions in Ireland along with more detailed results on ethnicity and Irish Travellers.

The report, which was published on Thursday last, shows that there are now 533 Travellers living in Ennis – the highest number of any town in the province and third in Ireland behind Tuam which is home to 669 Travellers and Navan which has a Traveller population of 625.

Irish Traveller households have a significantly lower home ownership rate than the general population with one in five (20.2 per cent) households owning their home compared with 69.7 per cent for the gen- eral population.

The average number of rooms in Irish Traveller households was 4.3, compared with an average of 5.5 rooms for all private households in 2011.

Almost one in three Traveller households (30.3 per cent) with a total of 886 persons who were living in mobile or temporary accommodation had no sewerage facilities in 2011.

As a whole, the county has a Traveller population of 855. A breakdown of these census returns show that there are 203 private households among the county’s Traveller population, while there are 789 permanent housing units and 23 temporary housing units in the county.

The census returns show that there are many ethnic groups living in the county, which is evidence of the way a multicultural society has developed in Clare over the past number of decades.

There are 1, 332 people in the county that the Central Statistics Office have classified as being of an African/Black background, 1, 267 of a Chinese/Asian background, 1,025 of a mixed background and 9, 574 of a non-Irish white background.

THE Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton (Lab) was in Ennis on Friday to see the formation of a new organisation that will give a voice to those in receipt of social protection payments.

The Labour Minister even addressed the inaugural meeting of the Alliance of Social Protection Recipients at the Temple Gate Hotel.

The Alliance was formed to give “a voice and a platform to people in Clare who avail of social protection payments and services.”

However, the organisation formed in Clare has ambitions far beyond the county boundaries.

The new Alliance asked the minister to set up consultative groups in each region that will have more than 60 per cent of its membership made up of welfare recipients. Supported by Citizens Information Centres, these groups should meet quarterly and report directly in October to the Minister on their findings, the group maintans.

There are over 10,000 people on the live register in Clare and thousands more on 50 different types of welfare payments across a wide spectrum from children’s allowance to the old age pension.

Dermot Hayes, Chair of the Alliance of Social Protection Recipients, said that many of the rates have been cut in the last four years for vari- ous reasons or the rules have been changed for qualification.

“Welfare recipients have come under a harsh spot light in the last few years. One of the solutions to the big crisis proposed by various wellheeled pundits in the media is that the state pays far too much in welfare,” he said.

As an example, he referred to the former head of the University of Limerick Dr Edward Walsh whose various radio interviews suggest that welfare in Ireland is too generous. “Dr Walsh should remember that his retirement salary is generous and supported by the tax payer,” added Dermot Hayes.

“Fuel and food increases of 7 per cent are causing great hardship and should be a stark warming to Government. We will have to re-examine the tax shelters that have developed over the last 15 years that allow the very wealthy to pay only nominal tax while enjoying the fruits of government spending on roads, water and other services,” he said.

TWO FEUDING Ennis families are giving the county town a bad reputation it does not deserve according to Clare’s senior member of An Garda siochana.

At Monday night’s meeting of the joint policing committeee in Kildysart Chief Supt John Kerins described as ‘appalling’ disturbances by feuding families in the town within the last forthnight but said the gardai were determined to get on top of the issue.

To date eight people have been arrested in connection to incidents at the Maid of Erin roundabout last Sunday night week during which a garda was injured.

The Chief Supt said that more arrests would be made in the coming weeks in connection to anti-social behaviour outside the Cathedral in Ennis following a recent wedding.

Crime statistics for the county so far this year show that most crimes figures are remaining steady or decreasing with the exception of weapons and explosive offences which had increased by 32 per cent.

This figure is in the main due to the Traveller fueds according to the Chief Superintendent.

Mayor of Clare Pat Daly told the same meeting these poeple have to be stopped:

“They are gurriers. I don’t the law is strong enough, I think it is time to get them out of the town of Ennis and locked up forever,” he said.

The garda chief agreed that the incidents reflect poorly on Ennis’s reputation despite the statistics proving otherwise:

“This gives the town a bad reputation it does not deserve.

“The statistics show that it is one of the most peaceful towns of its size in Ireland,” he told the public meeting.

Cllr Joe Cooney relayed how a person moved to Ennis from East Clare and bought a house.

Due to anti-social behaviour on the housing estate that person was forced to move back to East Clare, rent a house and continue to pay a mortage for a house he could no longer live in.

“ It is not good enough,” he said.

Chief Super Kerins assured Cllr Cooney that gardai would be issuing asbos (anti-social behavioural orders) to the culprits in the coming weeks and the issue would be brought before the courts.

He explained however that it was difficult for the gardai to deal with the issue as they cannot lawfully enter a private house unless a crime is being committed.