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A FORMER primary school teacher used a suitcase lined with tinfoil in an attempt to steal goods from a supermarket in Ennis, a court has heard. Security staff at Dunnes Stores called gardaí after Mao Kimbadi was caught in possession of the suitcase on December 4 (2011).

Ennis District Court was told that the suitcase had been lined with tinfoil in an attempt to avoid the detection of security devices in the store.

On Tuesday, Kimbadi (39), with an address 12 Linnane’s Terrace, Kilrush Road, Ennis, pleaded guilty to having the suitcase with the intention that it could be used in the course of or in connection with a theft.

Kimbadi, whom the court heard was previously a primary school teacher in the Democratic Republic (DR) of the Congo, also pleaded guilty to charges of theft and handling stolen property.

Insp John Galvin told the court that two men were seen breaking into cars in the College Green area of Ennis on November 13 (2011).

He said when gardai arrived they found Kimbadi and another man outside 86 College Green in possession of a gold pocket watch and 50 US dollars that had been taken from a car. Insp Galvin said gardaí were making enquires at Ennis National school on November 14 (2011) when they noticed two men acting suspiciously in the bushes backing onto Linnane’s Terrace on Kilrush Road.

When gardaí approached the area they discovered a Packard Bell computer monitor, a Compaq hard drive and keyboard, a Sony Playstation 2 and controls, 30 Playstation 2 games and a black bomber jacket with the Audi insignia.

Insp Galvin told the court that Kimbadi admitted to gardai that he knew the goods had been stolen.

Kimbadi was also charged with stealing a bottle of Cercutti 1881 Perfume from Boots Chemist on December 10 (2011).

Solicitor Tara Godfrey said her client, a father of two, moved to Ennis from DR Congo 10 years ago to seek political asylum. She said he worked in a number of jobs including as a chef’s assistant before becoming unemployed when the recession hit two years ago.

Ms Godfrey said the loss of his job coupled with a period of homelessness saw her client engage in heroin use and “petty theft”. She asked the court that if her client was sent to prison a requirement to receive residential treatment should be included as part the sentence.

Judge Aeneas McCarthy imposed consecutive sentences totalling 14 months. He backdated all sentences to January 11, 2012.

SENIOR staff at the Maternity Hospital Limerick are hopeful that the looming staffing crisis will be averted as the HSE promises to fill 16. 5 midwifery positions vacated by recent retirements.

Consultant obstetrician Gerry Burke said he and his colleagues are “delighted that the 16. 5 WTE mid wives are going to be replaced, but he said that for the hospital to operate as safely as possible, the nine additional midwives lost to retirement before the scheme and through death must also be replaced.

“We also need a sensible flexible attitude when it comes to maternity leave,” he said.

There are currently 31 midwives absent due to maternity leave, and seven due to long-term illness.

As the majority of staff in the hospital are females, many in their thirties, Dr Burke said maternity leave is inevitable and the HSE must be flexible when dealing with the issues.

“I do not think it is a safe way to practice to have to rely on locums,” he said.

He said he was now satisfied that the local HSE management understood the issues and it was a work in progress.

Last week the HSE announces that it would be filling 123 essential posts in the HSE West in the area of midwifery, neonatal care and intensive care.

Dr Burke said he hopes to see the new appointments in place in the next two months.

“The matter is now being taking seriously from the Minister down. They are working hard to try to make it right,” he said, adding he was particularly grateful to Clare Deputy Joe Carey (FG) who had taken a lot of interest in the matter.

Deputy Carey, whose young family availed of the hospital’s services in the last few weeks, said that maternity-staffing levels must be maintained, regardless of any current recruitment embargoes.

“I welcome the fact that HSE management has put a plan in place to provide for the full replacement of the 16. 5 WTEs that will leave at the end of the month. I note that Dr Burke and others have expressed their satisfaction with this approach, and that once this matter is resolved, that management will also examine solutions to the other 31 absent staff members.”

AS MANY as 1,222 people have retired from the HSE West since last September, but the HSE said it will employ more than 100 “essential” staff to cover some of the loss.

The health service area, which includes County Clare, has lost 680 people mostly front line staff to the Early Retirement Scheme since the beginning of the year.

In the former Mid Western Health Board area, made up of Clare, Limerick and North Tipperary, almost 300 staff had retired just one week before the cut-off mark of February 29. The majority of these staff – 205 – retired from the community sector, an area of health care that has been championed by the HSE as the way forward.

As many as 124 members of personnel retired from the Mid Western Hospital Group which includes Ennis General Hospital.

Four members of the ambulance service in the mid-west retired, with four more gone from corporate services.

At last week’s meeting of the HSE West regional forum, Clare member Cllr Brian Meaney (GP) asked if management had any idea of how the retirements would impact on services.

“Where are we going to have a staffing shortfall?” he asked.

Assistant National Director of HR Francis Rogers said that a robust contingency plans were in place to meet the shortfall.

Regional Director of Operations HSE West John Hennessy said the HSE “would be backfilling 123 post, particularly in midwifery, neonatal services and intensive care”.

NORTH Clare businessman Marcus White will fly to Moscow next month to sign a deal that could bring tens of thousands of new visitors to Clare, through Shannon Airport, this year.

White and his father, James White, met with the head of Russian company Pegus Tours in Asia last week and have arranged a second meeting in the Russian capital for April 8 when, it is hoped, contracts can be signed.

Pegus Tours are one of the world’s largest tour operators and currently bring more than 100,000 Russian tourist on package holidays to Thailand each year. It is hoped that this contract could open the door for tens of thousands of Russians to visit Lisdoonvarna each year on wellness holiday tours.

An estimated € 5 million was generated in North Clare last year as a result of the 6,000 German tourists who visited Lisdoonvarna as part of the Whites’ seven-day wellness trip to Clare operated with Trend Tours. It was confirmed last week that 16,000 German tourists had already booked to come to Ireland with Trend Tours for 2012, with a large portion of them coming to North Clare.

“We met a major tour operator in Asia last week and he already brings several hundred thousand Russians into Thailand each winter for sun holidays. We met the owner personally and we have another meeting for April 8 when, hopefully, we can sign contracts to bring Russians into Shannon or Dublin Airport,” said Marcus.

“Russia and China are the markets to go after at the moment. We always go after bulk business and, if we can get this Russian charter into Shannon Airport, then I think that everyone in the area will be very happy.

“This is something that we are do- ing completely off our own bat, without the help of any state agencies. We got the Germans in ourselves, myself and my father, and we now want to get the Russians into North Clare and to go after China after that. This has been done with absolutely no help from anyone else.

“If this starts off, we hope that everyone involved in the tourism business will come in and get behind it.”

James White, who is a former Fine Gael TD for Donegal, will meet with the Minister for Tourism, Jimmy Deenihan (FG), in the coming weeks to discuss speeding up the visa system for Russians visiting Ireland.

EAST Clare could soon become Ireland’s destination of choice for canoe and kayak trails following new proposal to first map, and then open up the scores of rivers and lakes in the area to tourists.

North Clare canoe enthusiast and businessman, Fergus Brogan, is currently at an advanced stage of negotiations with LEADER and the Clare LDC and, all going well, a canoe trail could be up and running in area before this summer.

“There was a book published last year, the first major list of canoe trails in Ireland, and there was not one trail at all in Clare. That got me thinking. It is crazy that a place like Clare, that has so much water, has no real canoe infrastructure. There is 30 lakes within a 10 mile radius of Peppers Pub in Feakle – 30 lakes and not one of them has ever seen a canoe,” said Fergus. “That is just one area. This is a major major resource that is not being tapped at the moment. I would estimate that there must be more than hundreds of lakes in East Clare alone – along the path of the Scariff River. I am going to be the first person to paddle the full length of the Scariff River.

“I know that the English tourists would absolute love to come to East Clare and go canoeing with their family. I am talking about an area between the M18 and the River Shannon – this is an area which at the moment has very little tourism and something like this could really get it going.”

Fergus is hoping to begin by developing between 10 and 20 recognised canoe routes in East Clare. This would require mapping the routes as well as collecting some valuable information for the canoeists such as the distance and time needed for each route, a details description of the routes and any points of interest or facilities along the way.

“I have been talking to LEADER and they do seem keen about the idea. The beauty about this is that with a very reasonable amount of investment you could have a product in place and ready to go very quickly,” continued Fergus.

“You don’t need signpost or things like you might need for a walking trail. It would be very very each to get this off the ground.”

THE Clare branch of Legalise Cannabis in Ireland (CLCI) has vowed to continue to fight for the decriminalisation of the use of medicinal cannabis following the withdrawal of a case against one of the group’s key members last week.

The case, which was taken against one of the founding members of CLCI, Kevin Clohessy, was withdrawn last week because of a technical issue involving the search warrant used by Gardaí in the case. Mr Clohessy suffers from Osteoarthritis, which is a progressive condition that effects his shoulders, hips and knees.

“It is very painful for him to move, and he has reduced flexibility in certain areas. This is a progressive condition so it is going to continue to get worse as he gets older. Cannabis is an anti-inflammatory; it also provides pain relief and is a muscle relaxant.

“When he can smoke, all of his body frees up and he can flex his wrists and his shoulders in ways that he just couldn’t before,” said Niamh O’Brien, founder of CLCI.

“There is a chemical tablet for cannabis about to come on the market in the coming weeks. We can’t understand why it is okay for some pharmaceutical company to grow it, put it in a pill and sell it to people for a massive profit, and it is not okay for us to grow this natural plant for ourselves.”

According to Clare LCI, the decriminalisation of cannabis will help stop people with genuine medical conditions from coming into contact with criminals and help stop the drugs trade in Ireland.

Medicinal cannabis has been legalised in a number of European countries to date, including Spain and Portugal as well as a number of US states.

“We don’t want to be involved in criminality, we don’t want to go down any dark alleyways and be involved with unsavoury people. We want to know what we are smoking. We are being responsible, we know that this stuff works and all we want to do is to be able to treat ourselves in the best way possible,” continued Niamh.

“What we need is more education and information about this issue. The Clare organisation is still going strong but it is hard to get people actively involved.

“People are still afraid of what might happen if they speak up. We really do want to reach more older people in Clare. They are the people who are most likely to get a benefit from this.”

THE quest to reclaim the memory of one of Ireland’s foremost storytellers and social historians begins this weekend in Kilbaha with a lecture on the life of Bríd Ui Choisteala – the blind storyteller of West Clare.

Bríd, who was recorded by Tadgh Ó Murchú on behalf of the Irish Folklore Commission in the 1930s and 1940s, was once recognised as one of the finest tradition-bearers in Ireland. However, over the last number of decades, Bríd Uí Choisteala has largely fallen from social memory.

Cuimhneamh an Chláir, the Clare Oral History and Folklore Group, will host a public lecture in Kilbaha Community Hall this Friday, March 9, to remember Bríd and her work.

“Women can be fantastic bearers of tradition but often dismiss themselves and fade into the background. In our collection of work, we have made every effort to ensure that the memories of Clare’s older women are documented and added to our archive and have been privileged with some of the memories and stories we’ve documented from women in Clare,” said Tomás Mac Conmara of Cuimhneamh an Chláir.

“The case of Bríd Uí Choisteala is a sad example of how, over time, these great storytellers can be largely forgotten outside of their native area.”

Last year, Cuimhneamh an Chláir produced an outreach project called Faces of Folklore, which featured Seamus Ó Duilearga, Stiofán Ó hÉalaoire and Bríd Uí Choisteala.

“We highlighted in Faces of Folk

lore that, in a picture

of Bríd Uí Choi

steala taken in the

1930s, she had been

reduced in the cap

tion to the blind wife

of Mr Costelloe,”

continued Tomás.

“We wanted to ad

dress this terrible

reduction and it re

ally seems to have

struck a chord with

people across Clare.

We received a lot of

interest in the storyteller over the following moths and so decided to arrange a public lecture in her honour in her native place of Kilbaha. In fact, the lecture takes place in the very building she went to school in the late 1800s.”

Cuimhneamh an Chláir have spent a number of days in the Kilbaha area, gathering local traditions about Bríd Uí Choisteala and are anxious to meet with any other people who may remember her from their childhood or have heard any information about her.

THE leading agency linked with the proposed public-private partnership takeover of Shannon Airport has heard the whole process to chart a new future for Clare’s international airport described as “a complete farce”.

Condemnation of the Booz and Company report into the future of the airport, which was commissioned by transport minister Leo Varadkar and published last Wednesday, has come at Clare County Council level.

Councillors and officials delivered a withering response at a specially convened meeting of the local authority’s Special Policy Committee on Enterprise and Tourism.

“The report before us is a complete farce,” blasted former Mayor of Clare, Cllr Tommy Brennan (Ind).

“They are treating us like mushrooms – keeping us in the dark and feeding us you know what,” said Cllr PJ Ryan, amid fears that the local authority might pull back from a commitment to embrace a takeover of the airport.

“What are they trying to keep back from us? Did they keep back stuff from us about the figures? Did they keep back from us how the DAA were milking Shannon over the years? What is the real story? We don’t really know,” added Cllr Ryan.

These fears have been backed up by Clare County Council Director of Service, Ger Dollard, who said “the biggest issue” was that “all financial data is effectively taken out of the report, which it makes it very difficult to make any type of assessment whatsover”.

PATIENTS and visitors to the Mid West Regional Hospital Ennis will soon have to leave the hospital campus and walk to the public roadside if they plan to light up.

Despite the purpose built covered shelter which is in place for smokers on the grounds and just yards from the main entrance of the Ennis hospital, smokers will have to leave the hospital grounds to light up according to new regulations.

This raises the distinct possibility of patients in dressing gowns, pyjamas and fluffy slippers being visible to passing traffic and the elements if they must smoke.

From May 1, all hospitals in the midwest, including the maternity hospital in Limerick, will become smoke-free, following in the footsteps of other HSE West hospitals.

Sister hospitals in Galway have been smoke-free for more than two weeks, although not everyone is a fan of the new regulations that must be imposed in all Irish hospitals by 2015.

Chairman of the HSE West, Pádraig Conneely (FG) asked if the HSE had gone a step too far by banning smoking on all hospital campuses.

“Is it not a far walk all the way to the road?” he asked. He also raised concerns about policing the new ban.

“How are you going to stop people outside accident and emergency in an inebriated state who are smoking, or a person dealing with a tragedy who wants to go outside to smoke,” he said.

According to the most recent figures available, the annual security costs at the Ennis facility are € 34k.

Clare representative to the HSE West Forum, Cllr Brian Meaney (GP) said he agreed with the policy, but raised concerns about hospitals like the Mid Western Regional Hospital Ennis, which has a psychiatric unit.

“It is more than a dependency for people with psychiatric problems,’ he said. He asked if the HSE now plans to extend the practice of allowing unhealthy behaviour on campus, by ceasing to sell sugary foods in its hospital shops, given the rise in typetwo diabetes.

Fellow Clare representative Cllr Tony Mulqueen (FG) asked about the size of the hospital campus and was told it was a 150-acre site.

“If there were 1, 5000 acres, would you have the same rules? Where does it stop?” he asked.

THE inspiration for the establishment of Shannon Development in 1959 was Clare’s international airport which then enjoyed the status of the hub of the aviation.

Now, over half a century on and in a complete role reversal, the flagship development and tourism agency in the mid-west region has been challenged to play its part in securing the future of Shannon Airport.

The Booz and Company report, in outlining the advantages of sepa- rating the airport from Dublin Airport Authroity control, has said that Shannon Development would have a huge role to play in helping develop “niche business opportunities” under a new operation model.

This would envisage a model that would see control for the airport vested in a holding company made up of public/private interests.

“The airport lacks sufficient integration with the surrounding land bank, with the current management having no function in developing alternative ventures with a mixed aero-industrial complex,” the Booz and Company report states.

“The airport covers an area of 2,000 acres of which 25 per cent is development land, and the airport is adjointed by the Shannon Free Zone.

“There is also a business and technology park of around 600 acres that is also owned and managed by Shannon Development.

“Other benefits are linked to its geographical position and roles as an airport that provides 24-hour operations each day of the year,” the report adds.

The consultants’ report has highlighted the need for “the Govern- ment to better integrate the airport with surrounding industrial developments, and in particular the Shannon Free Zone, which is currently owned and managed by Shannon Development”.

And, the prospect of Shannon Development parting with some of its sizeable landbank if private interests are to be attracted to investing in the airport.

Booz and Company say that for an airport like Shannon “to be attractive to private sector participation, investors could be granted assets that can generate income, such as develop- ment land or commercial property.

“In this context, the viability of Shannon would be enhanced via a structure that enables the better utilisation of development land within the current boundary estimated to be around 5,000 acres, as well as in leveraging the adjoinging Shannon Free Zone,” it adds.

Shannon Development Company has declined to comment on the contents of the Booz and Company report, only to say it was “currently reviewing the redacted version of the report and has no further comment at this time”.