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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.”

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.

CYBER-bullying is more common in rural areas of North Clare than in Dublin City, according to digital media expert Brendan Smith.

The proliferation of online- or cyber-bullying in rural Clare is also a contributing factor in the rise of youth suicides in the county.

Mr Smith, who is the outreach education officer at the Digital Enterprise Research Institute at NUI, Galway, will address groups of parents in Ennistymon next week to educate them of the warning signs for cyberbullying.

He also says that high-profile cases, such as the tragic death of Fanore teenager Phoebe Prince, demonstrate just how serious cyber-bullying is for young Clare people.

“This is a hidden world for a lot of parents who are not familiar with Facebook and other social networks. Children in rural areas are being harassed more than ever before. Before, the bullying would stop at school or on the street; now it can follow them into their homes,” he said.

“The home used to be a sanctuary but that is no longer the case. The bullying can take place right in the bedroom if they have a laptop or a smartphone.

“We have been talking to guards and they say that this is now a bigger problem in rural areas than in cities. If you live in North Clare, there is a much bigger chance that you talk to your friends online rather than meeting up with them, as people can do in the cities,” continued Brendan.

“Phoebe Prince is one of the most famous incidents of cyber-bullying but, trust me, every village and every townland in Clare has some form of cyber-bullying going on. It is difficult to say exactly what the level is but I have never come across an area where it wasn’t a problem.”

Brendan is one of a number of speakers who will address teachers and parents at the North West Clare Family Resource Centre in the coming weeks. There will also be free talks about teen mental health, teen use of drugs and alcohol and teen choices – which is about encouraging teens to make positive choices for themselves.

Each talk is free and will take place at two different times, to allow as many parents as possible to attend. For more information, including the exact times of all the talks, contact Barbara Ó Conchúir, Community Development Worker with the North West Clare Family Resource Centre on 065 7071144 or email info@northwestclarefrc.ie.

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.

THE Government has reneged on a promise to return almost quarter of a million euro to the people of Clare if they increased their payment of the controversial household charge.

The fall out has placed the county’s two Fine Gael TDs in the eye of a storm as they delivered the message from Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan just over a month ago that the cut to the county council’s Local Government Fund was a temporary measure.

In his address to councillors last August, Deputy Pat Breen (FG) said the loss of € 243,000 from the third quarter of the funding allocation would be returned to the council’s coffers.

“You will get back what is owed to you before the need of the year. I don’t think the council should worry about that,” he said.

His colleague Deputy Joe Carey said, “The money is not being cut. It is being withheld.”

“We don’t have to face the cuts if we get the allocation up to 70 to 75 per cent. I got that assurance from Phil Hogan,” he added.

On Friday the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government confirmed the money would not be paid back to Clare County Council under any circumstances but as the county surpassed a 65 per cent payment rate it would not be further penalised during the last quarter of the year.

Deputy Carey told The Cla re People yesterday (Monday) that while the reduction is “disappointing” the overall allocation was € 10.8 million. “The reduction is two and a half per cent within the budget,” he said.

He added that reassurances given to the council by him and his colleagues was done in “good faith”.

“Notwithstanding that, at that meeting I said if Clare County Council got up to 75 per cent there would be a reimbursement, it is still only in the high 60s,” he said.

Since then he said the budgetary situation had changed.

Deputy Breen said he was disappointed, frustrated and angry.

“I am disappointed with the fact he assured us funding would be there and then I got informed that the department cannot deliver on promise,” he said.

He added that he “always tells the truth” and the information was given in “good faith”.

“The return of the household charge is not as good as it should be,” he added which impacted on the loss of the funding.

Asked if his relationship with Minister Hogan was now strained, he said he had a good relationship with all ministers and this was not a personal decision by the minister.

He added however, “I am going to have strong words with Minister Hogan.”

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.”

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.

FOUR groups have so far expressed an interest in taking over patronage of a primary school in Shannon.

Shannon has been identified by the Department of Education and Skills as one of 44 areas nationwide to be surveyed with a view to determining parental preferences regarding school patronage in those areas.

It is proposed that surveys will be conducted in by the Department during the autumn in 44 identified areas to determine parental preferences regarding school patronage.

Clare VEC has already expressed an interest in assuming patronage. Three other groups – Educate Together, An Foras Pátrúnachta and The Redeemed Christian Chruch of God – are interested in becoming school patrons in Shannon.

CEO George O’Callaghan said, “Shannon is designated as one of the areas, which primary school we do not know. That has not yet been identified.”

The issue of school patronage was raised at the September meeting of Clare VEC.

Mr O’Callaghan told the meeting that the Department would run a number of public advertisements prior to the start of the survey process. He explained that the surveys would also be conducted online.

In June, Minister for Education and Skills Ruairi Quinn, announced an action plan in response to the report of the advisory group to the forum on patronage and pluralism in the primary sector.

The survey process is expected to take up to 12 months and any patron age application would be taken up by the new Local and Education Training Boards, that will replace VECs.

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.

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