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IT IS estimated that almost one third of Clare babies are delivered by caesarean section.

According to a Health Service Executive (HSE) survey of the country’s 19 maternity units, the c-section rate at Galway and Limerick maternity hospitals is almost twice that recommended by the World Health Organisation.

At the Regional (UCHG) Maternity Hospital Galway as many as 29.56 per cent of deliveries were by caesarean section in 2011, and 27.43 per cent of births at Limerick Maternity Hospital.

The WHO recommends that the nation birth rate by caesarean section should be no higher than 15 per cent. The highest caesarean birth rate was in St Luke’s Hospital, Kil- kenny, at 38 per cent, almost double of that in Sligo General Hospital at 19.3 per cent.

As well as showing a wide regional variation in caesarean section deliveries, the survey released under the Freedom of Information Act, also revealed that Limerick Maternity Hospital had the lowest breast-feeding rate in the country.

The 2011 figures show that 32.5 per cent of babies at the Limerick hospital were exclusively breast fed on discharge. Just 38.6 per cent were combined fed – bottle and breast.

In Galway the figure for mothers exclusively breast feeding on discharge was at 39.8 per cent, with the majority of mothers – 59 per cent – opting to combine feed their new borns.

Limerick hospital had a higher rate of non-instrumental deliveries in 2011 at 55.98 per cent compared to Galway at 52.92 per cent.

BUSINESS people in Doolin are keen to ensure that damage inflicted on Doolin Pier over the weekend is addressed as soon as possibly. The pier, its access road and the car park took extensive damage on Thursday night, with much of the flood defenses also being destroyed.

This left the pier vulnerable to a second wave of flooding on Monday morning, which undid much of the repair work undertaken by locals and Clare County Council over the weekend.

Eugene Garrihy of the Doolin2Aran ferry company is keen to ensure that the damage to Doolin not be left on the long finger while repairs are carried out elsewhere.

“Lahinch is getting a lot of the attention and rightly so; there was incredible damage done there, but the situation in Doolin needs to be address also. It is a terminal port and many of the tourists there are international tourists,” he said.

“We need the ESB to bring electricity back to the area and we need the council to restore some sort of road service so we can access the pier and start to get things back to normal.”

The Doolin Pier was hit with a double whammy with the smaller Monday morning storm doing more damage that the Friday storm, because all the flood defenses had been washed away on Friday.

“The fact that a lot of defenses were broken down on Friday meant that this morning surge [Monday] did an awful lot of damage even though it wasn’t as big. A lot of boulders and debris at the ferry offices on the pier were moved again last night, but at least we had a bit more warning about it,” continued Eugene.

“The basic infrastructure of the pier – the road and walls – have all been disturbed so that will have to be reinstated as soon as possible. It was the water rather than the wind that did the damage in Doolin.

“We took it upon ourselves to get the clean-up started on Saturday. We had five or six men there with a machine and we got a lot of the infrastructure back in action. The council also sent up a JCB and started to clear the car park. Hopefully we have seen the worst of it and we can get back to the clean up work tomorrow [Tuesday, January 7].”

PADDY O’Beirne could be considered the ultimate contradiction – American by birth yet 100 per cent Irish, a man with a strong nationalist upbringing whose father and grandfather were both members of the RIC, a scientist with a steadfast belief in God, a psychiatrist who once had a serious mental illness.

On December 20, 2013, the retired chief psychiatrist at the former Our Lady’s Hospital, Ennis, best known for his fight against a smoking ban in the country’s prisons and mental health institutions, went to meet that God after a long battle with illness.

For those unfamiliar with the retired chief psychiatrist, the make up of his being may seem a contradiction, but for Dr Patrick O’Beirne, one part of his life could not be without the other.

From the darkest parts of his life he found light, from the most painful and horrific he eventually found peace, and from his questioning patients he often found answers to his own uncertainties.

He was one of the first to work to break the stigma associated with mental illness, speaking openly about his own battle with depression and publishing his memoirs.

Dr O’Beirne was born in New York in January 1933 of Irish parents.

He was brought to Ireland as an infant and reared by his grandmother in Mountshannon, following his mother’s death from TB.

Educated in the local primary school in Mountshannon, he later attended St Flannan’s College, Ennis, from 1946 to 1951. Although he once considered the priesthood – following in the footsteps of his two uncles – Paddy opted instead to help his fellow beings through medicine. In 1951 he began studying at the University College Dublin, and graduated with a medical degree in 1958. From January of 1958 to July of the same year he worked as a house surgeon in St Vincent’s Hospital Dublin, before transferring to Portlaoise hospital where he was employed as a house surgeon. In November 1958 he began working in Dr Steven’s Hospital as a house surgeon. It was there he met his wife Marie, a young nurse from Cork. In August 1959 he embarked on a medical career in America, specialising in gynaecology, oncology and general practice before studying psychiatry. Patrick O’Beirne eventually returned to Clare to become chief psychiatrist at Our Lady’s Hospital, Ennis. Through his impressive career, he battled with depression an illness that would see him hospitalised numerous times. He also campaigned for the rights of those with mental health issues and was to the forefront in bringing treatment clinics into the community. Through it all he raised a family with his ever-supportive wife Marie, and maintained a robust sense of humour. He is survived by his beloved Marie, his children Fionnuala, Caimin, Deirdre, Padraig and Grainne, sonsin-laws, daughter-in-laws, grandchildren, family and friends. He was laid to rest in Templemaley Cemetery, Barefield on Christmas Eve.

THE most tragic event of this weekend storms took place in Lahinch where a brand new playground, built using money raised locally over more than a decade, was virtually washed away overnight.

The playground, which has been open for less than two years, sustained massive damage during the storm which ripped up all the protective matting, collapsed walls and the creation of a six-foot deep crater.

The playground was yesterday described as a “war zone” by local woman and member of the Lahinch Playground Committee, Nicola Hartigan-Downes.

“It is devastating. We invested so much time and effort into this playground and it was just wiped out in 24 hours. We’re back to the drawing board now.

“It is like a war zone. It’s like someone came in and dropped a crater right on top of it. There is a whole on the ground that you could fit a six-foot man into, all of the rubber mats have been lifted, fences and the gate have been knock. A lot of the equipment seems to be okay, we haven’t had an assessor out to it yet, but hopefully it will be okay. But we don’t know.

“The Clare County Council bottle banks were washed from one side of the playground right through to the other; we’re not sure what damage that might have done. It’s total devastation, the whole of the ground has been lifted off the playground.

“The playground is under water at the moment [Monday afternoon], so we don’t know what new damage has been done. All we can do is wait and see.”

The Lahinch Playground Committee held an emergency meeting last night and say they are determined to get the playground open again as soon as possible.

“We are moving on this straight away, we want the playground back up and running for the season. We had a lot of positive feedback from local businesses people and residents to say that they are behind us 100 per cent and they will be there with funding and manpower to help us out,” continued Nicola.

“We’re meeting tonight [Monday night], to see what the next step will be and we will we working on this straight away after that.”

“A PIONEER of business, a visionary and a gentleman of the old style.”

These were just some of the quotes used this week to describe Michael Lynch Snr who passed away early on Monday morning aged 85. The Newhall native owned, built and operated the iconic West County Hotel for a number of decades and was known throughout Clare and beyond for his business acumen.

Affectionately known as ‘Mickey’ Lynch, he opened the West County Hotel back in the late sixties originally as a twenty bedroom hotel with a restaurant, bar and grill room. Then Minister from Clare Dr Paddy Hillery cut the ribbon on the original West County Hotel on March 15th 1968.

The first manager of The West County was John Madden, who moved from the Gresham Hotel in Dublin to take over the operation of Clare’s newest hotel. He recalls Mickey Lynch as wonderful to work for, a man of enthusiasm, vision and generosity:

“Mickey Lynch was a man of great ideas, a true visionary. He built and grew The West County. He did that with flair, enthusiasm and he was wonderful to work for,” recalled John this week.

“He never went away anywhere without coming back with new ideas for The West County. Mickey really was ahead of his time. Anytime we spoke about the need for additions, like the function room or more bedrooms, something that might attract tour operators, Mickey would get straight to work and deliver whatever was necessary to grow the business.

“The function room was a perfect example. Once he was convinced of the need for it, it went up in no time. Before we knew it we had over a thousand people coming to our hotel weekly for functions, dress dances, dinners and shows. People came from all over Munster to attend events in the West, Mickey was the instigator of all that,” remembers John.

Mickey Lynch was also remembered this week as a proud Clareman, good to his community and generous to a fault. As John Madden pointed out, he was very supportive of his native county and its people.

“If a local organisation was in need, Mickey was first in line to give. He was generous with both his time and his money. He was also very good to his employees. And I suppose one of the qualities I most remember was Mickey’s ability to have a good dis- cussion, disagreement even, then five minutes later we moved on, it was forgotten about. I learnt a lot from Mickey Lynch,” John told The Clare People. Mickey Lynch originally was a builder and set up Lynch’s Joinery across the road from where the West County is now situated. Michael Lynch Limited is now fifty seven years in business and over that time has employed many hundreds of Clare people from all over the county in the various family enterprises.

One of Mickey Lynch’s oldest friends Pakie Tuohy from Tiermaclane in Ballyea remembered Mickey Lynch this week as a business man with the common touch:

“Mickey was a gentleman of the old style. He was a very visible presence in the West County and a wonderful host. Always generous, Mickey was great company, he knew everyone and everyone knew him. It was always ‘hail fellow, well met’ with Mickey,” Pakie recalled this week, going on to emphasise the impact the newly opened West County had on Ennis in the late sixties, seventies and eighties.

“It should be remembered Mickey really brought entertainment back to Ennis with The West County. From dinner dances to music in the bar on Saturday nights, the hotel very quickly became a focal point for gatherings. Always a well run establishment, we had many great nights there and Mickey was on hand for all of them. He really was ahead of his time,” Pakie fondly remembered.

Michael Lynch is survived by his wife Chrissie, sons Seamus and Michael Jnr, daughters Geraldine, Colette, Martina, Annette, sons and daughters in-law and a host of grandchildren. He will be reposing at the family home on the Clare Road, Ennis, on Tuesday and Wednesday, with the house private on Thursday morning. Funeral Mass for Michael Lynch will take place on Thursday at 1pm at the Cathedral in Ennis, following by burial in Drumcliffe.

THE number of people using the Western Rail Corridor which connects Ennis to both Limerick and Galway continues to drop.

Despite a number of initiatives designed to increase passenger numbers on the route, new figures show that fewer than 200,000 people used the route in the first 11 months of 2013.

Figures for the route, which was reopened at a cost € 106 million in 2010, show that only 197,780 line passenger journeys took place on the line between the beginning of January 2013 and December 1. This compares with almost 250,000 over the same period in 2012.

It is hoped that the introduction of online booking on the rail service will provide a significant boost to passengers in 2014. Nearly two years after the issue of online booking was first raised with the Iarnrod Eireann, online booking was introduce on the line last month.

Passenger numbers on the route have been growing on commuter routes such as Ennis/Limerick and Athenry/Galway in recent years and it is hoped that online booking may also help to promote business from Ennis, Sixmilebridge and Gort.

“We know this is something which our customers and the wider community have been anxious to see provided for some time,” said a spokesperson from Iarnród Éireann.

“Our fares from € 5.99 each way for adults and € 2.99 each way for children are extremely competitive, giving big savings to families at a time of year when every cent counts.”

A CLARE musician says she is excited to be joining some of the giants of Irish music on their United States tour next month.

Tara Breen will play alongside The Chieftains on their North American tour.

The talented fiddle player will perform with the legendary band on their four-week coast to coast tour. The former Rice College student was offered the invitation to play by Chieftains founding member Paddy Moloney.

“I play with this Galician piper, Carlos Nunez and Paddy was saying to him they were looking to do something new and he was asking him did he know any fiddle players,” explains Tara.

“So Paddy came along to one of the gigs and I thought we were just playing with him. Nobody gave me a heads up that it was almost a rehearsal! So I got the invitation after that. It’s great.”

Tara has already played with the band, performing alongside them at a concert in the University of Limerick in November.

The four-week US tour from February 16 and March 18 will take in gigs in California and a St Patrick’s Day concert in New York.

“They’re lovely people and it’s brilliant to be get the opportunity to play alongside them. It should be a good trip. I’ve been to America before but this going to be a lot bigger,” she says.

The invitation caps a busy year for Tara, who teaches music in schools as part of the Comhaltas outreach programme.

She also appeared on TG4’s ‘Geantraí’ Christmas Day special

Tara’s multi-instrumentalist talents came to the fore at the age of 13 when, in one year, she won the All-Ireland U-15 Fiddle, U-15 Fiddle slow airs, U-15 Flute, U-15 Flute slow airs.

In 2006 Tara won the coveted ‘Fiddler of Dooney’ competition, and in 2009 she added the Michael Coleman Fiddle Competition to her list of accolades.

She is a former student of University of College Cork. In 2010 she was selected to join Ciorras, a group put together by music legend Donal Lunny.

UP TO 10 metres of the land bank of the five star Doonbeg Lodge and Golf Course was lost to the Atlantic Ocean during the weekend storm.

“We got a right bashing but we are living to tell the tale,” said General Manager Joe Russell, who was confident that the Greg Norman-designed golf course would be playable again by Thursday. The picturesque resort was at the mercy of the high winds gusting up to 120 kilometres an hour, but the superintendents at the course were confident that all damage could be repaired.

“We have lost some land back into the ocean, but we have 18 holes in play. It has thrown up a lot of debris from the ocean but that does not affect play,” said Mr Russell.

He said that a clean up is been planned for tomorrow (Wednesday) once the full damage has been assessed and the weather monitored.

The high tides have also taken a few metres of sand from the dunes, which will naturally repair themselves in time.

Mr Russell has warned however against walking over the dunes however as there is now a sheer drop on one side, almost like a cliff, which is extremely dangerous.

MORE than € 100,000 worth of damage has been inflicted on Lahinch Seaworld which will remain closed to the public until further notice. The facility was hit with a severe flood on Friday morning as flood waters from Lahinch Golf Club and the Liscannor Road Car Park, overflowed into its control room – severely damaging both the structure of the building and the swimming pools facilities.

Manager of Lahinch Seaworld, Joe Garrihy, said that his team are work ing hard to get the facility up and running as soon as possible.

“We have extensive damage to our plant room, to the boiler house, to the cinema and the multi purpose hall. The big systems in the plant room and the boiler house, like the heating system for the pool, had been submerged in about three foot of water. So that is a big problem,” said Mr Garrihy.

“The flood actually came from the Golf Club side. There was so much flooding in that area that it eventually flooded down to ourselves. So we had it coming at us from both directions.

The damage comes at the worst possible time for Seaworld, as this is their busiest time to secure new members for the gym and pool.

“We need to reopen again as soon as possible. This is the busiest part of the year for people in the fitness sector, so it is a big blow. We are going to be closed until next Monday [January 13] at least,” continued Joe.

“Once the heating is off it can take as much as much as a week to get the water to heat up again and to get the water filtered properly. We are targeting that week at the moment but we can’t say for sure.

“We need to be back up and running soon. We service around 30 school in the North Clare area and they need somewhere to swim. Membership is our core business, and if they don’t have somewhere to go they will either go somewhere else or give up on out new years resolution.

“We are all really determined to get this back on track. We have had a great response from the public – local people and people from all over the country. Everyone is really determined to get this back on track and I’d like to thank everyone from all their support.”

A MOTHER has spoken of the terror felt by her family when their home was the target of a suspected gun attack in Ennis last week.

Shots were fired at a family home in the Cloughleigh area of the town in the early hours of New Year’s morning. No one was injured in the attack but windows and the front door of the house were damaged.

A husband and wife and seven children including a one-year-old girl were in the house at the time. A 46-year-old man was questioned and subsequently released without charge.

Gardaí in Ennis yesterday issued a renewed appeal for information.

They are interested in a grey saloon type car that was seen leaving the area at the time with two occupants on board. A garda spokesman said that investigations into the matter are ongoing. A large downstairs window and door remained boarded over at the house yesterday.

In her sitting room, the mother of eight, who was present in the house on the night, relived the horror of the attack.

The couple were upstairs watching television having just returned from a New Year’s Eve party when they heard the sound of windows breaking, according to the woman.

“We looked out and saw three men well known to us driving a silver private car. We shouted down at them,” she said.

The woman, who did not want her name to be published, said shots were then fired at the front door and at the upstairs bedroom window where her husband was standing while “rocks came through the sitting room win- dow”.

The couple’s daughters (ages eight, three and 16) and one-year-old grandchild were asleep upstairs at the time. Their three sons were asleep in a downstairs bedroom.

“We were terrified but the kids were probably more terrified,” the woman said.

The incident may be linked to a recent court case in Ennis, which the family had no direct involvement in.

The woman says the family’s car has previously been damaged while she says her son was the victim of a serious assault in Ennis last June.

She said, “We feel like our lives have been taken away from us. We are afraid for our children.

“We know nothing about any feuding that’d be going on in this town. We have nothing to do with anything like that. My husband has never been in trouble in his life. All we want is justice for this.”

Members of Ennis Town Council will meet in private today to discuss the incident in Cloughleigh.

Independent councillor Paul O’Shea yesterday warned that lives will be lost if violent incidents in Ennis do not stop.