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A Tipperary man who verbally abused gardaí in Shannon after a vodka drinking spree has been sentenced to two months in prison.

Luke Gray (24), with an address at 128 Ciamaltha Meadows, Nenagh, pleaded guilty at Ennis District Court on Tuesday to charges of intoxication and provoking a breach of the peace.

The charges arose out of a public order incident in Shannon town centre on October 13. Another man, Daniel Harty (32), of 73 Rossbracken, Shannon, also pleaded guilty to two charges of intoxication and provoking a breach of the peace. The court heard both men had been drinking to celebrate a christening.

Gardaí encountered Mr Gray at 1.25am in Shannon Town Centre, where he was roaring and shouting. Inspector John O’Sulivan said when asked to leave the area, Mr Gray told gardaí to “f*** off” “I’ll kill ye all”. Insp O’Sullivan said the father of five was “highly intoxicated.” Mr Gray has nine previous convictions.

The court heard that Mr Harty was also highly intoxicated but didn’t direct offensive language at the gardaí. Defence solicitor Jenny Fitzgibbon said Mr Gray had been drinking vodka prior to the incident. She said her client had a poor memory of what happened and that he was very repentant. Judge Patrick Durcan noted that Mr Gray had committed the offence three months after he had received a community service order. He said Mr Gray should be “ashamed of himself ”.

He added, “He decided to go a on a spree of alcohol consumption, consuming vodka which clearly doesn’t agree with him.” Judge Durcan said he had no time for people who interfere with the work of State agencies.

He imposed a two month prison sentence and fined Mr Gray € 250. Recognances were fixed in the event of an appeal. Judge Durcan said he considered a community service order but that would have a made a “mockery” of the community service regime.

Mr Harty, a father of four, said he was ashamed of his actions on the night. He apologised to gardaí and to the court. He received a 100-hour community service order. A VICTIMof domestic abuse last week questioned why her husband received a suspended sentence at Ennis District Court. Eddie Sherlock (32), with an address at 70 Dun na hInse, Ennis pleaded guilty onWednesday to a breach of a court imposed safety order. The court heard that Mr Sherlock struck his wife with a walking stick and told her that he would cut her face with a Stanley knife during the incident on October 19. The court heard that Ms Sherlock ran to a garda checkpoint that was near the couple’ s house to get help. Defence solicitor John Casey told the court that his client would say that the event wasn’ t as dramatic as the version outlined in court. He said Mr Sherlock “aplogised unreservedly” for what happened to his wife. “The relationship would appear to be pretty toxic,” he added. Mr Casey said alcohol was not a factor in the incident and that Mr Sherlock would be better of staying away formhis wife. Judge Patrick Durcan said the facts of the case are appalling.Addressing Mr Sherlock he said,“You should be ashamed of yourself, terribly ashamed.” He noted Mr Sherlock’ s early guilty plea and decided not to activate three month suspended sentence previously imposed a court. For the breach of the safety order, Judge Durcan imposed a three month suspended sentence. He also ordered Mr Sherlock to stay away fromhis wife. “If I meet you again, you’ ll br incarcerated for the longest period possible,” he added. At the end of the case, Ms Sherlock asked why her husband received another suspended sentence. “What does that mean?”, she added. Judge Durcan said Ms Sherlock could raise the matter with gardaí.

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.

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 loss of the Aer Rianta International to the Dublin Airport Authority is a further nail in the coffin of Shannon International Airport.

That is according to the former Director of ARI, Liam Skelly, who believes that the Shannon-grown business would provide essential financial support to the ailing airport.

He believes it was unfair to hand over the ARI to a profitable Dublin Airport when Shannon is struggling for survival.

“Aer Rianta International was always known as a Shannon operation,” said Mr Skelly.

The former ARI Director said that Shannon Airport had been “fiddled” out of up to € 400 million in the last decade as it did not get its fair share of ARI profits and sale of assets.

Aer Rianta was set up in Shannon at a time when the three main airports in Ireland – Shannon, Cork and Dublin – were run by independent boards.

It began with the first ever dutyfree and a mail-order department. It was through the airport’s association with Aeroflot that the fuel farms were set up during the fuel crisis of the 1970s.

The Shannon-based Aer Rianta then put in a successful bid to open the first duty-free in Russia at Moscow airport, before expanding to airports all over Russia.

In the 1980s, ARI bought the Great Southern Hotel Group and later invested £30 million in Birmingham Airport.

Mr Skelly believers that the sales of those assets – the Great Southern Hotel Group for € 265 million and the Birmingham Airport shares in 2006 for € 325 million – were not divided evenly between the airports and Shannon did not get its much needed share.

Instead, the money went to the DAA, which was managing the three airports.

“That went to build terminal two in Dublin,” he said.

“A lot of stuff that belonged to Shannon went to Dublin and there was no one on the streets protesting. It went to an airport in profit and this airport was abandoned down in the west of Ireland,” he said.

“Sometimes I get really sad that a vibrant airport has fallen into absolutely nothing at the moment,” he said.

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.

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.

PROSPECTIVE home owners in East Clare can shelve the idea of buy- ing a small family home and instead pick up an entire housing estate, for just € 400,000. The partially finished estate, which is located less than a five-minute walk from the centre of Killaloe, contains two completely finished show houses, 14 houses which require some work, two in shell condition and nine at the foundation stage. Taken all together, the guide price values the estate at just under € 15,000 per house. But that’s not all, the sale also includes a second 6.3 acre site where planning permission had previously been granted for 50 houses. The entire 10-acre property is being offered to the market jointly by Harry Brann and Savills of Cork. Speaking to The Clare People yesterday, Denis O’Donoghue of Savills said there has been a lot of interest in the site since it came on the market last Wednesday. “The interest levels have been really really high, both locally and from all over Ireland. We haven’t got a serious offer yet but we have a large number of people coming to take a look at the estate over the next two weeks,” he said. “The estate is located right in the village of Killaloe. It is about a twominute walk to the river and you’d would certainly be in the middle of the village after a five-minute walk. This really is a unique opportunity for someone. “The notion of owning an entire housing estate of houses in a location like Killaloe for this price really is something that has captured people’s imaginations.” All development contributions have been paid on the estate and phase one works also have access to mains services, which would facilitate a quick completion for that section of the project.

AS MANY as 500 jobs could be created off the North Clare coast over the next 12 months through the construction of Ireland largest ever organic fish farm.

The farm, which will located around five miles north/west of Doolin, is being put forward by the Irish Fisheries Board, Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM), who are currently aiming to begin spawning at the farm in the Autumn of next year.

According to BIM, the project will create 350 jobs directly through the operation and maintenance of the farm and a further 150 jobs through support industries locally. BIM are about to open a period of public consultation in relation to the development and will send a final application for a licence to government after that.

“This is a very real project and something that we are hoping to be able to put in place quite soon,” said Donal Maguire, Head of the Aquaculture Development Division at BIM.

“We would expect that the benefits of this project would be felt from Doolin north, all the way up the Clare coast.

“This is a very exciting project for fisheries in Clare and indeed for the whole West of Ireland.”

Ahead of the opening of public consultation, some opposition to the project has already been voiced – both in North Clare and the Aran Islands.

One North Clare fisherman, who asked not to be identified, said that there were fears that the fish farm could cause pollution and impact on the existing fishing in the area.

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.