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A WEEK is a long time in politics and in that very long week for Fianna Fáil in Clare it has turned its fortunes around from a party that was grappling to find a candidate to one that is now confident it can retain its two seats in Clare.

Nationally the party faces political meltdown when it goes to the people in the coming months, but in Clare the soldiers of destiny have begun fighting back with a new private of strong political pedigree.

Dr John Hillery, the 53-year-old son of the late President Paddy Hillery, will join sitting TD Timmy Dooley on the ticket, just ten days after the shock announcement that Minister Tony Killeen is to retire.

In Fine Gael uncertainty still surrounds the number of candidates that will remain on the ticket, with pressure coming on one of its former TDs to run as an Independent candidate in west Clare.

Speculation is mounting that Cllr Joe Cooney, a poll topper in the 2009 local elections will be added to the Fine Gael ticket, while The Clare People can reveal that former Fine Gael TD Madeleine Taylor-Quinn has been approached by a group of people from west Clare who believe the way is open for a west Clare TD. The Moyasta woman refuses to say if she is even considering such a proposition as potential candidates still meet with Fine Gael management.

Meanwhile, Labour is beginning to up the pressure in the constituency with the arrival of party leader Eamon Gilmore on Thursday next to support the party’s hopeful in Clare – Michael McNamara.

HIS motto in life is ‘Give it a lash’ and that is exactly what Tony Mulcahy intends to do in his quest for a seat in Dáil Éireann.

As had been widely expected, the 51-year-old was added to the Fine Gael general election ticket in Clare at the weekend by the party’s headquarters.

This followed the party’s convention in December in which sitting TDs Pat Breen and Joe Carey were selected to run for the party in the forthcoming election.

Mr Mulcahy, a native of Newcastlewest in Limerick, received 3,408 votes when he ran in the general election in 2007. Speaking to The Clare People following his addition to the ticket at the weekend, he said he is confident that he can secure 6,000 votes this time around and win a seat.

The father-of-four, who runs his own catering business in Shannon, has been a member of Clare County Council since 1999 and Shannon Town Council since 1994. He has enjoyed spells as mayor of both the county and town councils.

While his intentions to contest the election were not formally announced until just days before Christmas, in reality there was always a possibility that he would allow his name to go forward.

He thoroughly enjoyed the campaign four years ago and although he has had some health difficulties since then, he has recovered and endeavours a good challenge.

Two years ago, he had a kidney rebuilt, while last year he had issues with blood pressure, but has now declared himself “fighting fit and mad for the road”.

Mr Mulcahy explained the situation, saying, “Just before Christmas, I was asked would I be interested in letting my name go forward by a very senior figure in the party’s management structure after the convention. At the convention I was there to support my two colleagues.”

After he was approached, he discussed it with his wife, Carmel, and “I decided I’d give it one lash. It was a long campaign the last time. I got tired in the end. This one will be shorter.”

Mulcahy will pick up a huge vote in the Shannon area, where he has lived for several years. In the last election, he secured more than 55 per cent of the vote in Shannon and won 33 per cent of votes in the Shannon Electoral Area, which takes in Newmarket-onFergus, Sixmilebridge and Kilmurry. “I believe I can and I believe I will win a seat for Fine Gael in Clare. It will take 6,000 votes,” he said.

Since his entry to politics, he has polled consistently well. His vote of 440 in his maiden election campaign for the county council in 1999 increased to 1,200 in 2004. He secured 1,350 votes in the 2009 local election and while these tallies were impressive, he is acutely aware that winning a seat in the Dáil is a totally different ball game.

Pat Breen is poised to focus on win- ning votes in north and west Clare, while Joe Carey will zone in on mid-Clare and Ennis. This means that Mr Mulcahy is likely to focus on the lion’s share of his campaigning in Shannon and south-east Clare. While the creation of geographical divisions leads to angst in some circles, he embraces it.

“We will have to look at a divide like we did the last time. We would be well placed. The key for people voting for Fine Gael is the balance vote,” he said.

Indeed, he believes that geographic reasons played a key role in him being added to the ticket ahead of Madeleine Taylor-Quinn and Martin Conway.

“No disrespect to Madeleine and Martin but they live in different areas. I ran the last time, I was the may- or since and I am living in the second biggest town in the county,” he said.

He also dismissed speculation that he was added to the ticket merely to help get Joe Carey cross the line. Both live on the same side of the county and votes would be expected to transfer between them.

“Joe Carey won’t need any help from me to get over the line. He wasn’t idle over the past three-anda-half years. Neither was Pat Breen. I’m there to get a third seat for Fine Gael,” he said.

A CLARECASTLE man who scored a multi-million euro windfall during the property boom has said he will run as a candidate in the forthcoming General Election.

73-year-old JJ McCabe told

A LOCAL councillor is advocating the importance of a healthy and active lifestyle after surviving a major health scare last year.

Pat Daly, a Fianna Fáil member of Clare County Council, suffered a stroke while at work in Ennis in September 2010.

Cllr Daly, who has worked for 18 years as a personal assistant to the outgoing Minister for Defence and Clare TD, Tony Killeen, was subsequently diagnosed as having an irregular heartbeat.

He recalled, “I was at work and coming up to lunch hour, I got a bit of dizziness and my voice slurred and I couldn’t speak straight. I put it down to a cold but I wasn’t 100 per cent sure. I went home, my wife was there, a few neighbours came in and medical people. My wife rang the ambulance. I was hospitalised and I was diagnosed with a stroke. I was out of work for almost three months.”

He said, “It was a desperate shock, traumatic. I didn’t expect it. The family were great. Brothers and sisters and their family and my own family, my wife, two sons and a daughter. They were great in the hospital and when I came home.”

The 56-year-old father of three was treated at Ennis General Hospital and is currently on a course of the blood-thinning agent, Warfarin.

The Ennis native admits he was fortunate to survive the incident. He said, “I was very lucky because I made a full recovery and a lot of people don’t.”

Cllr Daly explained that his lifestyle has changed since his recovery from illness.

He said, “There’s been a big change in my life. You have to watch the diet. I eat a lot of fish now. I go walking. It’s the best form of exercise, walking. I’m watching the diet and drinking plenty of water.”

Cllr Daly is now encouraging more people to stay healthy and active.

He explained, “I wasn’t a great man for walking. People in their late 40s, 50s, 60s, they don’t get enough exercise and they need to walk a couple of miles every day, which I do now. I played a game of golf on Sunday morning – that was all I did. I thought that by playing golf on a Sunday morning, I was fit. But you need to do more. You need to do a bit of walking.”

Cllr Daly, who topped the poll in the Ennis area when he was first elected to Clare County Council in 1999, receives regular treatment at the outpatient’s clinic at Ennis General Hospital. “It’s a fantastic facility, a great facility,” he said.

AN INCIDENT in which a quilt was set on fire while a woman was lying on it was described yesterday by a judge as “unique”.

Judge Carroll Moran made the comment after hearing that were it not for gardaí who fought smoke and fumes, two people would have been killed in an apartment fire in Ennis. The woman lying on the quilt when it was set alight suffered what was described in court as “horrific” injuries.

Michael Keane (44), of Cappamore, Barefield, admitted setting alight a quilt, which created substantial risk of death or serious harm, at Childers Road, Ennis, on July 2, 2008. He also admitted causing harm to Josephine Moloney and pleaded guilty to arson, on the same date.

Sergeant Mark Murphy told Ennis Circuit Court that gardaí received a call indicating that people were trapped in a house fire. On arrival gardaí heard a male voice calling.

“Visibility was nil. Garda Derek Williams couldn’t see. He was using touch. Because of the smoke and heat, his only sense was touch. He went in at least three times. He had to come out to catch his breath,” said Sgt Murphy.

He said that the accused was living in the apartment and Ms Moloney was co-habiting with him. Both had been drinking and an argument took place in relation to a missing mobile phone.

He said that Ms Moloney lay on a quilt on the floor in the bedroom and the accused threatened to set fire to it, if he wasn’t given the phone. He then set fire to a thread of two inches on the corner of the quilt with a cigarette lighter.

“He stamped out the flame. He said he thought it was quenched. He then went in to the bathroom and read The Irish Times for 10 to 15 minutes,” said Sgt Murphy.

When he came out of the bathroom, Keane smelt smoke and saw that the living room was full of smoke. He called Ms Moloney and tried to get water from the bathroom to quench the fire, said Sgt Murphy, but “he didn’t make the bathroom. We assume he fell unconscious at that time”.

Keane and Ms Moloney were both rescued from the house and were tak- en to hospital with serious injuries.

Ms Moloney (41) sustained serious injuries. She suffered second degree burns to several parts of her body, including to her face, ear, neck, chest, arm, hand, abdomen and thigh.

Judge Moran said: “I have been sitting as a judge for over 13 years and have been doing crime (cases) for most of that time. I really haven’t come across a case like this before. It’s quite unique. I really don’t know how to approach this. I’ll sleep on it.”

He adjourned sentencing until March.

KILKEE woman Marina Keane has ruled herself out of the race for the Dáil, but hasn’t ruled out running in the future.

The 30-year-old solicitor is heavily involved in the Fianna Fáil party in Clare and was approached by party officials to run in the forthcoming election.

While she did consider contesting the election – in the aftermath of sitting TD Tony Killeen announcing his retirement from politics last week – she decided over the weekend that she would not run.

“I’ve ruled myself out. I’ve made the decision not to go. I did give it serious consideration after Tony Killeen stepped down. I did come under pressure last week and was asked to stand. There is an appetite there for a candidate from west Clare and I think people did want a west Clare name on the ticket, but you have to take personal circumstances and work circumstances into account,” she told The Clare People .

She has chosen to concentrate primarily on her career as a solicitor, in the short-term at least. She currently works as a solicitor with Michael Houlihan’s office in Ennis, having graduated from Blackhall Place four years ago.

“I’m still young enough and I am fairly early starting out in my legal career and I want to progress that. I also want to work on reform within the party. I’d like to work with the party on a national level. There has obviously been some damage done to the party over the past couple of years. We need to work on communications in the party,” she said.

Marina grew up in a Fianna Fáil house in Kilkee. Her father Pat has been a county councillor since 1991 and is a former mayor of Clare. She has been a key member of his election campaign team for several years. It’s not the first time that Marina’s name has been linked to the political stage. Her name was mentioned as a possible candidate in the 2007 General Election, but she similarly took the decision at that time not to stand.

She became a member of Ógra Fianna Fáil in Clare at the age of 19 and is currently a Kilrush Comhairle Ceantair representative to the Comhairle Dáil Ceantair.

She is highly regarded in Fianna Fáil circles in Clare and recently worked on the party’s county strategy, aimed at bringing about reform. She has also worked on various subcommittees in the county.

“That’s something I would like to continue to work on in the future; reform in the party,” she said.

“I would never rule anything out. However, my priorities are now on progressing my legal career and working in the Comhairle Ceantair,” she said.

“I’d never say never. It is something that might arise in the future. You can only assess things as they arise,” she said.

ALMOST 40 pubs closed in Clare in the last year, making 2010 one of the worst years on record for pub closures in the county. According to figures released last week a total of 36 pubs closed in Clare over the last 13 months resulting in the loss of more than 100 jobs in the local economy.

The majority of these closures were in rural parts of the county where cheaper alcohol in supermarkets, the smoking ban and the stricter drink driving legislation is driving many rural publicans out of business.

One rural pub which has been hit badly in recent years is Cassidy’s in Carron, where a 60-year-old weekly card game died out last year as a result of the stricter drink driving legislation.

The pub has had to drastically cut back its winter opening hours and according to owner Robert Cassidy, it would not be able to survive it if wasn’t for the summer tourist and food trade.

“One of the big things that effects us here is the drink driving laws. We have only one customer who is close enough to actually walk to the pub. Everyone else has to drive because of the distances involved,” Robert claimed.

“We are in the middle of the Burren so we are talking in a catchment area of nine miles all around us and the people just can’t get here. The peo- ple who are being hurt by this are the older people who might have come up here for a couple of glasses on an evening and they just can’t get here anymore,” said Robert.

“The problem is that we have people up in Dublin making laws for rural people who live out the country where there is no possibility of getting transport. Then there is the same penalty for someone going down the road at 30 miles an hour after drinking two pints as if you were caught on a dual-carriageway doing 70 miles an hour with six or seven pints taken. It is the same penalty for both things which I think is totally wrong. If people are living within a certain distance from the pub and are obeying all the other rules of the road there should be some adjustment made on the penalty.

“The young people are going to the big pubs in the big urban centres and that is where the damage is being done but we are taking the brunt of it. I agree that people should not drink and drive but in circumstances like this there should be some allowance made.”

Carron is located in the centre of the Burren – in a 300 square mile rural area where only 400 people live. The pub has been the traditional meeting place for the local community for more then 100 years and its difficulties are leading to a marked increase in rural isolation in the area.

“We had a game of cards going here for 60 years every Thursday night and it just died away because people could not take a task. This is older people, older bachelors who could come down, have a few glasses, play the cards and have a bit of craic with their mates. If they didn’t meet them for cards, the next time that they would meet them would be mass on Sunday or cards again the following week. This is a big big loss for those people,” continued Robert.

“You can’t make rules and tie the judge’s hands. There should be some discretion and some understanding for the man who is caught driving home at 30 miles an hour, in a rural area with no taxi and no other social outlet. These people should be allowed to make a case. This is not to say that people should be let off with drinking and driving but the guards and the judicial system should have some level of discretion – things shouldn’t be as clear-cut as they are.”

According to Clare TD Joe Carey (FG), the Government has not had the bottle to deal with the problems faced by rural publicans.

“The pub holds a unique place within Irish culture. I am a firm believer in the conscientious publican as a good dispenser of alcohol within tight legal age qualifying regulations. The problem we have now is that you can buy a bottle or can of beer cheaper than a litre of milk or bottle of water and that is killing the pub trade,” he said. “In each of the recent budgets, Government have lost their bottle in this regard and have not tackled this issue. As a result we are seeing good businesses go to the wall and a sig- nificant loss to the Irish tourist product with it.”