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THE last Saturday in January has emerged as the new D-Day for hopes of traditional music enthusiasts in Clare to bring Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann to Ennis in 2014, which – if successful – would bridge a 37-year gap to when the event was last held in the county. The Clare People has learned that Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann chiefs have brought forward the date for the Ard Comhairle of the organisation to make a decision on where the 2014 showpiece of the traditional music year takes place.

Traditionally the decision is made every September, but the decision to put what Comhaltas chiefs called “the special application” of Derry to host the Fleadh for the first time to a vote last January is set to be continued for the second succesive year.

“This is a good thing,” said a spokesperson for Clare Comhaltas, “because if the Ennis bid is successful, it will give a longer lead-in time to organising what is a huge undertaking to stage this international event.”

And key figures within the county organisation of Comhaltas are hopeful that Clare’s role in helping bring the 2013 Fleadh to Derry will result in a successful Ennis bid. Last January, this view was aired by Michéal Ó Riabhaigh of the Abbey Branch of Comhaltas, which is spearheading the campaign to bring the Fleadh to Clare, when he defended the decision to withdraw Ennis’ bid in favour of Derry.

“The decision we took to withdraw our bid was a risk worth taking and a gesture worth making. I would hope that the sacrifice that we made this time around will be appreciated when Ennis bids for the Fleadh in 2014,” he said.

Last September, Ennis narrowly lost out to Cavan on being host town for the 2012 Fleadh. In a three-way contest involving Ennis, Cavan and Sligo, Cavan won the right to host the festival for the third successive year on a 14-13 vote.

Ennis, Sligo and Derry were the three competing centres to host the 2013 Fleadh until the surprise move by the Abbey Branch of Comhaltas to withdraw the bid bring the festival to Ennis for the first time since 1977.

Now Ennis is set to go head-tohead with Sligo, with Drogheda also mooted as a possible late entry into the contest. The Ennis application is backed by the strength of traditional music in the county as showcased in the recent Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann in Cavan where the county won 134 medals in 42 categories. This was higher than any other county. 30/09/2012

ONE in every eight second-hand cars in Clare have been clocked and reads significantly less mileage than they have actually travelled.

This means that almost 6,000 Clare motorists are driving vehicles which are worth much less than they think – and could also be close to a dangerous equipment failure.

According to figures compiled by Cartell.ie, 5,357 Clare cars have had their mileage tampered with. It is not illegal for a person to change the mileage on their own car – which means that the equipment to tamper with odometers is easily available within the industry.

It is illegal to sell a vehicle under false pretenses however, but it is difficult to assertain the true mileage of a vehicle without carrying out a full diagnostic on the vehicles engine.

The figures were obtained by calculating the number of Clare drivers who discovered a mileage discrepancy in their vehicle when the checked against official records on the Cartell.ie website.

“I think the number of cars that have been clocked in Clare would shock a lot of people, but you have to remember that it is not illegal to clock a car in Ireland. If it is a private sale, there is very little danger for a person who wants to clock their car and sell it on to someone else,” said John Byrne of Cartell.ie. “The equipment is easily available and it is a lot more prominent that people realise. Some people don’t see the problem with it, it has become the accepted standard in a lot of places and they don’t see it as being an issue.

“Clocking in itself is not illegal. But it is illegal to sell a car as one thing, when it really is something else. But that is very difficult to catch. The National Consumer Agency manages to prosecute approximately one person a year, which is a drop in the ocean.”

Cars which have been clocked are potentially dangerous to the driver.

“There is a safety element in all of this. You could be driving along the motorway and all of a sudden you have a drive failure on your car. That is a dangerous situation to be in and it is something that you won’t expect if your car has 100,000 more kilometres on the car than you think,” continued John. A win t ry fe e l t o t h e we e k, d u ll, win d y a n d we t a t t im e s, b u t we sh o u ld e sc a p e t h e b ru n t o f t h e lo w o ve r t h e c o u n t ry.

THE Merriman Hotel in Kinvara is going on auction again this week, with the guide price set at just € 400,000, or € 12, 500 per bedroom.

The 32-bedroom hotel, located in the very centre of Kinvara, was auctioned already this year but that deal was not brought to completion.

On that occasion, the hotel was sold to the highest bidder for a price of € 610,000 and it remains unclear whether it will reach those heights again.

Along with the 32 bedrooms, the hotel also boasts a bar with the capacity to seat 200 guests, a dining room with licence capacity for 100, a kitchen, study, entrance hall and private secure car parking.

During the property boom, a number of luxury six-bedroom houses in Kinvara sold for more than € 1 million, or roughly € 170,000 per bedroom.

If the Merriman reaches its previous auction price of € 610,000 from earlier this year, it will be sold for just over € 19,000 per bedroom.

The auction will take place on Friday, September 28 at 3pm at the Victoria Hotel in Galway unless it is previously sold.

The property is being brought to auction by O’Donnellan and Joyce Auctioneers.

Meanwhile, property prices continue to fall across Clare, according to the Myhome.ie price change index.

Of the 48 houses whose asking price changed in the county so far this September, 46 reported a reduction in the asking price.

The largest drop in asking price was for a large thatched property in Doolin whose asking price fell by € 150,000, from € 500,000 to € 350,000.

SERVICES will be cut in the county to cover the € 240,000 withdrawn from the council coffers by the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government.

Last August, council members agreed to continue with services as planned under the budget adopted at the beginning of the year, on re- assurances from the county’s Fine Gael Oireachtais members that the money cut from the third quarter of the budget would be returned.

Now the council must take an axe to services during the last three months of the year to make up the unplanned shortfall.

The county’s councillors were angered on Friday when it was announced that the money would not be returned as promised.

Instead it must face a meeting on Monday where it will be asked to consider cutting certain vital services in order to balance the books.

Former mayor of Clare Tommy Brennan (Ind) proposed last August to go ahead with the budget as planned given the reassurance from the Government members present, and this week he was angry at the u-turn.

“I am calling on them [TDs] to see the Minister and return the money to Clare County Council. A lot of services will be cut back otherwise,” he said.

Mayor of Clare Pat Daly (FF) described the minister’s decision as “totally wrong”.

“The council is living on the edge at the moment.

“The last thing we need to do it cut services and there is a real danger that this could happen.”

He added that there was a real danger that those that did not pay will not pay the household charge now.

“Two thirds of people have paid the charge and they are being penalised by this man,” he added referring to the minister.

“He has let down his Fine Gael colleagues, especially Pat Breen and Joe Carey in a big way.”

Fine Gael councillor Joe Cooney was equally incensed by the decision.

Describing it as “desperate” and “unbelievable”, he fears for the future of essential public services.

“My belief is that minor and local roads are going to suffer, and we are asking people on those roads to pay taxes and household charges,” the councillor added.

Cllr Joe Arkins (FG) said he was concerned that there was “now no incentive on Clare County Council, Clare county councillors or the householders of Clare to contribute to the charge.”

CARRIGAHOLT has been waiting 40 years for a public sewerage scheme, but the withdrawal of Government funding for the project means the picturesque village now has an indefinite wait for this essen tial service.

The € 1.5 million allocated to the project in 2008, jointly with Labasheeda, has been rescinded, despite promises that the money was ringfenced for the work.

Carrigaholt postmaster Pat Gavin described the wait as a disgrace.

“We have no bus service, no roads, no sewerage system and they want us to pay € 100 – for what?” he asked.

“Carrigaholt is at a standstill and there can be no further development until we get a sewerage scheme,” he said.

Carrigaholt and Labasheeda joint sewerage scheme was on the 20062008 Water Services Investment Programme (WSIP). A considerable amount of design work was carried out on it by Clare County Council up to and including 2009.

The local authority re-submitted it to the department of the environment as part of the 2009 ‘Assessment of Needs’ which fed into preparation of the 2010-2012 (now re-designated as 2010-2013) WSIP.

The Department did not include the project on the list for 2010-2012 however, despite allocating funding as far back as 2008.

“In our submission to the DECLG (Department of the Environment) for the 2011 Annual Review of the WSIP, we re-submitted the Carrigaholt element alone, on the basis that there are designated shellfish waters off Carrigaholt and that the DECLG had prepared a Shellfish Water Pollution Reduction Plan which in the council’s opinion warranted re-inclusion of the scheme as a pollution reduction measure.

“However the DECLG didn’t accept our submission,” explained Sean Ward, senior engineer with Clare County Council.

He added that it was impossible to say when the scheme would be back on the Department’s books again.

Meanwhile, the people of Carrigaholt remain in the same development limbo it has been constrained by for the last 40 years.

LABASHEEDA is a village on the Shannon estuary, an area of high environmental sensitivity, yet its people are asked to survive a recession, develop the area and care for the environment without any sewerage scheme.

And despite more than a half a century of promises from different governments and plans and funding being allocated by the second last Minister for the Environment, the plans have been cancelled and the money taken back.

This is of little surprise to the despondent local people, who have spent the last decade working with planners, the county council and government departments in developing the plan for the village.

Among those involved was local school principal, Liam Woulfe.

“I’m convinced that it was never a runner from day one, and the Department of the Environment were merely playing with figures and statistics just to show that a number of projects were being considered, to look good in Europe,” he said.

“They constantly changed the conditions relating to the type of system to be installed, and Clare County Council, in good faith, would have to go back to the drawing board. We were being regularly told that the money was ‘ringfenced’, a term I don’t want ever to hear in use again, it just seems to mean that the funding is never really there in the first place,” he added.

The “ringfenced” money for the Labasheeda and Carrigaholt Scheme has now disappeared and the goalposts have changed again, so much so that the council can no longer apply for a scheme for Labasheeda.

Sean Ward, Senior Engineer with Clare County Council told The Clare People , “The rules governing the 2011 Annual Review did not give us any leeway for re-submission of the Labasheeda element of the scheme.”

“As neither of the two villages (Carrigaholt or Labasheeda) was included in the new WSIP, the budget allocated in 2008 is no longer available. Clare County Council was reim- bursed by the department for the design and other planning costs, which it had incurred up to the time the scheme was dropped from the Water Services Investment Programme (WSIP),” he said.

The engineer was not confident of a resolution to the situation anytime soon.

“Unless and until the scheme can be reconsidered as part of any 2014onwards WSIP, it isn’t possible to say if and when a sewerage scheme can be built in either Carrigaholt or Labasheeda,” he said.

THE current chief executive officer of County Limerick VEC will head up the new board that will take over the functions of Clare VEC.

Sean Burke has been named as CEO Designate of the new Education and Training Board for Clare and Limerick.

The new board will be an amalgamation of VECs in Clare, Limerick city and Limerick County.

The September meeting of Clare VEC heard that that the new Education and Training Boards (ETB) would be established in the early part of 2013.

The current CEO of Clare VEC, George O’Callaghan has been named CEO Designate of the new city of Cork and Cork county ETB.

Mr O’Callaghan, who has worked as CEO for seven years, said he is looking forward to his new role in Cork.

He said, “It will be a challenge. There will be a lot of work involved, amalgamating the new VECs, they are two fairly large VECs. It’s not going to happen for another six to eight months at the earliest so I’ll still be in Clare for that length of time.”

Mr O’Callaghan said he enjoyed his time working in Clare.

“It was fantastic. The staff are fantastic and the people here are great to work with. The committee have always given me great co-operation down the years.”

Implementing the 2001 Vocational Education Act, the growth in adult education and improvements to school facilities, are among the main changes Mr O’Callaghan has helped oversee during his time with Clare VEC.

He said, “All the schools have very modern facilities. That was part of our objective as well. We were very anxious to get that up and running and I’m very happy that we have got that done. We have achieved three major extensions for three of the schools in the county as well.”

Mr O’Callaghan will be leaving Clare VEC as it prepares to undergo major structural change. He believes the county will have a strong influ- ence on the new ETB.

He said, “The challenge for Clare will be to maintain what it has got. It’ll be a large part of the new entity as well. There are 110,000 people living in Clare. There are over 2,300 post primary school pupils in the VEC here and we have something like 4,000 to 5,000 adults here as well. It will make up quite a large part of the new entity as well. So it will have quite a large influence on the new entity as well.”

ANTI-HOUSEHOLD tax campaigners in Clare are claiming a victory today after Clare County Council decided to stop asking grant applicants for proof of payment of the house- hold charge. This is despite Clare County Council’s insistence that the letters were discontinued because they had worked – and allowed the local authority to reach the 65 per cent compliance rate demanded by the Department of the Environment.

“At the beginning of the week, Clare County Council implicitly threatened to withhold or delay student grants to those boycotting the unjust household tax, but following a protest by the Clare CAHWT, we have secured in writing a commitment from the council that they will not discriminate in any way against such students,” said Paul Whitmore of the Clare Campaign Against Household and Water Taxes.

“We marched into the council offices to demand a clear written promise from them that they would not in anyway discriminate against non-payers, and would stop sending these threatening forms to grant applicants.

“As a sign of the huge impact of people power, we have now received these guarantees in writing. This is a huge victory for our campaign. Hopefully in the future, the council will think twice before attempting such scare tactics.”

Students form NUI, Galway, GMIT, UL and LIT also staged a protest again the warning letters at the of fices of Clare County Council last week.

“The decision of Clare County Council is short-sighted and ridiculous,” NUI, Galway Student Union president Paul Curley last week.

“Students don’t own houses and linking the payment of the Household Charge to their grants is a cheap shot. We call on Clare County Council to abandon this badly thought out plan and process students’ grant applications as a priority.”

MEMBERS of the Fine Gael party in Clare are to tell the Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan that a carrot rather and stick will reap more rewards in the county when it comes to collecting the household charge.

The loss of almost a quarter of a million euro of council funding last month will not be returned to Clare County Council, despite reassurances from the Minister through the two local Fine Gael TDs that all funding would be paid if a certain threshold was met.

On Saturday, Fine Gael councillors and Oireachtais members met and discussed the announcement following Friday’s developments.

It was agreed that there was little incentive left for the collection of the charge if the council and its public services were to be penalised regardless.

In a statement after the meeting the party in Clare said’

“There is a € 1.5 million shortfall in the household charge collection in Clare from 15,000 households who have failed to pay the legally due charge brought about by the collapse of the economy.”

It said the issue of the refunding of the € 240,000 from the third quarter payments from Government was discussed on the agenda.

“There is a Clare Fine Gael proposal being put by the Oireachtas members to the Minister for his urgent consideration to enable the refund that € 240,000.

“The proposal seeks the refund if a significant further improvement of payment rate is achieved in Clare over the next number of weeks.

“Essential council services need to be funded and unless we all contribute and pay we will fail to improve our collection rate,” it stated.

As the Fine Gael members prepare to meet with the Minister for Environment Phil Hogan on Saturday next at a party fundraising dinner, many admit privately that he has lost credibility with them.

This means any reassurances they might receive will be coated in more salt than the € 100 a plate dinner.

A REPORT that found litter problems at a secondary school in Ennis has been criticized as “ridiculous”. Ennis Community College received a Grade C in the latest report from Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL).

According to the report, “A wide variety of litter was present at this site, particularly over the stone wall. As well as being littered the overall impression was of a poorly maintained environment. It is quite unu- sual to have schools score so poorly in the IBAL Anti-Litter survey.”

The IBAL report was raised at the September meeting of Clare VEC by committee chairman, Cllr Tommy Brennan (Ind).

CEO George O’Callaghan said he understood that the survey was conducted at a time when works, including tree felling, were underway at the college. Cllr Peter Considine (FF) described IBAL’s remarks on the school as “ridiculous comment”.

Committee members Michael Cor- ley said there was a lot of disappointment that the school had been mentioned in the IBAL report.

Clare VEC is to write to Ennis Town Council about the report.

IBAL also identified a litter problem at Ennis bus and rail station.

Staff at the school were shocked at the report’s findings. Speaking at the time, school principal John Cooke said he would like to know when the inspectors visited the school and the criteria used by An Táisce.

He added, “Generally the school is kept very well and litter free, as much as is possible. The students don’t litter. In the school we train and educate them not to litter…As for the litter problem, I can’t understand where they are coming from.”

Ennis has held onto its ‘Clean to European Norms’ status in the IBAL survey, despite dropping 15 places to 31st, among 42 towns surveyed.

There were just five top ranking sites out of a total of ten surveyed in Ennis – combined with two seriously littered sites, this puts Ennis in the bottom third of the towns / cities surveyed.

Speaking last month following the release of the survey, town manager Ger Dollard admitted that Ennis Town Council are often “baffled” by IBAL’s findings. He said that Ennis is regarded as a clean town.

Last month Ennis was named Ireland’s tidiest large urban centre at the annual Tidy Town awards. It’s the fourth time that Ennis has scooped the prize, having won the award in 2006, 2008 and 2009.