Category: News

MORE and more distressed Clare families are seeking legal assistance new figures have shown.

One in every three queries to Clare’s Legal Advice Centres last year was on matters of family law according to the Free Legal Advice Centre Report.

The centre in Ennis also proves to be the busiest centre in Munster attracting 449 people last year alone.

As many as 497 people received legal advice from the three centres in County Clare last year.

And while one third of the callers were concerned about family issues, 14 per cent had enquiries about employment law and their rights.

Money matters in the form of debt problem made up 11 per cent of the calls in Clare, nine per cent were concerned about housing and property and eight per cent about consumer law. Just four per cent of the calls related to crime.

FLAC noted a particular development around increasing debt prob- lems intersecting with issues such as family, employment and housing.

“FLAC has focused on reforming laws around personal debt because we have seen the terrible impact of over-indebtedness on people contacting us, having dealt some 83,000 legal queries since the start of 2008,” said Noeline Blackwell, FLAC Director General. “We have kept it simple: we need an independent, out-of-court debt settlement structure that will examine people’s personal debt in a holistic way and where possible aim to keep people in their homes.” Clare has three of these NSO centres in conjunction with the Citizens Information Centres in County Clare. The busy Ennis centre is open every Monday afternoon, Thursday evening and Friday evening at the Ennis CIC on Bindon Lane, while there are also evening clinics in Kilrush on the first and third Tuesdays of the month and an evening clinic in Shannon on the last Monday of the month. FLAC is an NGO that relies on a combination of statutory funding, contributions from the legal professions and donations from individu als and grant-making foundations to support its work. FLAC offers basic legal information through its telephone information line and free legal advice through its network of 80 volunteer evening advice centres. It also campaigns on a range of issues including personal debt, fairness in social welfare law, public interest law and civil legal aid.

LISDOONVARNA woman Birgitta Hedin-Curtin has been appointed as Ireland’s leading authority on organic fish.

Birgitta, who operates the Burren Smokehouse in Lisdoonvarna along with her husband Peter Curtin, was appointed by the Junior Minister at the Department of Agriculture, Shane McEntee (FG), to the newly formed Organic Focus organisation.

The organisation aims to coordinate business and government policy in the organic sector and Birgitta will have a key role in the way that the organic fish sector develops over the next few years.

According to the Burren Smokehouse funder, organic fish could become a major growth area in Clare in the years to come and could generate a large number of jobs.

“It is essential that you have a thriving organic sector, it showcases the entire food sector to foreign markets. The organic sector is a big focus for this and really does help to promote Irish foods abroad generally,” she said.

“Organic food is very important for County Clare but also for all of Ireland. The board is mainly made up of representatives from the business sector of the organic industry and the work will focus on helping to shape Government policy.

“Irish salmon production would not exist today if it wasn’t for the organic sector in the mid-1990s which kept it going. The weather conditions are difficult for salmon on the west coast but that gives us a higher class of salmon which means that we can charge a premium.

“Irish organic salmon has become a leader in the world market. It is being sought after worldwide at the moment. This can be built on. We have problems at the moment with licensing issues and that is holding things back at the moment but there are plans from the Department of Agriculture to address that.

“It needs to be addressed if there is to be a growth in the market. There is room for widening the production in the future and that can only be a good thing for the industry.”

PRESIDENT of Ireland Michael D Higgins did not call himself a Clare man during his first offical presidental visit to the county, but his brother and sister both agreed it was safe to consider him “one of our own”.

Ireland’s first citizen, who spent his formative years, from the age of five to 19, living in his parental home of Ballycar, Newmarket on Fergus, would not describe himself as a Clare man but a man with many associations with different counties.

“Yes indeed I associate myself with Clare.

“There are many origins I have that are very simply understood,” he said.

“My father and my grandfather and my greatgrandfather have been associated with County Clare since time immemorial. I am glad to say in the 1901 census in the townland of Ballycar there are four families of Higgins. And once again as a result of my brother’s [John] activites and his sons, there are four families in Ballycar again.”

The President explained that his mother came from an area near Charleville in Cork and her family continue to live there.

A former TD for Galway West, he described how the city accepted him as a migrant and its mayor twice.

“Galway is where my own fam- ily have been born and rared,” he added.

While the president maintained his life experiences have been made up of many counties, including the city of Limerick where he was born, all have a common thread of both rural and urban life.

It is these experiences that have formed the ninth President of Ireland, who admited that coming back to Clare as the country’s first citizen was like coming home.

AN ERSI report published yesterday predicted that the jobless rate is to rise to 14.9 per cent this year before settling at around 14.7 per cent.

One organisation that is not letting such predictions dampen its spirits, however, is EmployAbility Clare, formerly Clare Supported Employment Service, which is defying the odds by keeping its job-seeking success at an all-time high.

It is good news for the local people with an illness, injury or disability who continue to take up employment with the support of the service.

“We are delighted to report that our placement figures continue to remain steady despite the current climate,” said Alice O’Carroll, team leader with the service.

“I think local businesses have gained a confidence in our uncompromising commitment to match them with the right person to meet their needs over the last decade.”

The service, which is funded by the Department of Social Protection, is also committed to meeting the recruitment needs of local employers.

In some cases, businesses may be eligible to avail of a subsidy of € 5.30 per hour to assist them with wage costs when they employ a candidate through the service. Her e, Cla ir e Ga lla gher t a lks t o fou r ind ividu a ls who have ga ined employment – a nd a con fidence b oost – wit h t he help of Cla r e Sup p or t ed Employment Ser vice.

THREE Junior Certificate students from Ennis have been hailed as heroines by Clare Civil Defence chief Liam Griffin this week after their quick thinking helped save the life of a woman who got into difficulty after going into the River Fergus to retrieve her dog.

Rice College students Ellen McMahon (15), Aisling O’Sullivan (15) and Eve Copley (15) came to the rescue of a woman, who hasn’t been identified, who was out walking her dog on Tuesday evening last near Steele’s Rock in the Lifford area the town.

“The three of us were walking past at about 7.15pm, having been up town for something to eat after our Business Studies exam,” revealed Ms McMahon. “When we were passing, the woman was standing behind the wall and the dog was on the steps at Steele’s Rock. We walked on a bit and, when we looked back, the dog was being dragged downstream and the woman had moved to the steps and was calling him.

“Then she went in after the dog and was taken away by the flow of the water down towards the FBD offices. She was very tired because she had swum out to get the dog and the current was so strong there was no way she would have been able to swim back to the steps,” she added.

The three students quickly raced back to get the lifebuoy that’s located near Steele’s Rock and came to the aid of the woman, who was getting into difficulty.

“She had a hold of the dog and we raced up got the lifebuoy and threw it in to her and slowly dragged her in. We didn’t get her name because, after being soaked to the skin, she got a drive home from a passing motorist,” revealed Ms McMahon.

“Their quick thinking helped save that woman’s life,” Clare Civil Defence chief Liam Griffin told The Clare People . “It just shows the importance of lifebuoys,” he added, “because sometimes they get vandalised and the people who do that can cost a life. Luckily in this case, it was there and the girls were able to use it and come to the rescue of the woman.”

THE move to locate a high technology pharmacuetical plant in Clarecastle was announced in November 1973 – the first big jobs announcement for the county after Ireland’s accession to the European Economic Community.

Syntex was an international company founded in Mexico in 1944, before developing subsidiaries in Brazil, Canada, Spain, England and America and prior to establishing in Clarecastle had a worldwide workforce of 5,000.

The announcement of the development of Syntex’s first production facility in Europe on a 77-acre site in Clarecastle, with the promise of 200 jobs that would grow to 500 represented a huge injection into the local economy.

The founding managing director, Dr John T Day said “the reason Syntex selected Ireland was because of a very attractive incentive package available to manufacturing companies.

“We have been very impressed by the co-operation we have received from the IDA and SFADCO, the Clare County Development team and Clare county officials.

“I would like to thank the local people for the very efficient and progressive way in which they have approached the establishment of a high technology industry in County Clare,” he added in announcing this huge jobs boost to the county.

“We are satisfied that Syntex are seriously concerned about the environment and that they have a keen sense of responsibility to the community,” said then Clare County Manager, Joe Boland.

“They have supported many educational and social programmes, not only in America, but also in other countries in which they have factories. Clare and Ireland are fortunate in getting a company of the stature and quality of Syntex to establish here,” he added.

Site preparation started in May, 1974 and ‘sod turning’ for the manufacturing plant took place in June 1974, which was performed by Minister for the Gaeltacht, Tom O’Donnell (FG), with the same shovel used by Charles Stewart Parnell to turn the sod for the start of the West Clare Railway in 1886.

The plant was built by Michael Lynch and Company, with the total project costing £11.8m, nearly £6m more than had been forecast, with production of Naproxen – a drug used in the treatment of arthritis – commencing in February 1977 and official opening of the plant by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Gene Fitzgerald (FF) on July 11, 1977.

THERE are now more than 3,000 uninsured drivers in Clare, new figures released by an insurers watchdog have revealed, with these offenders being held up as responsible for hiking up the premiums of lawabiding drivers.

The figures have been released by the Irish Brokers Association which has called for Clare Gardaí to be given the power to confiscate the cars of uninsured drivers.

“There are 51,725 licensed private cars in Clare and it is estimated that 3,100 of these could be uninsured,” Brian McNelis, Director of General Services at the Irish Brokers Association told The Clare People .

He continued, “What the general public in Clare may not know is that these uninsured drivers could be indirectly costing them an additional € 30 on their annual car insurance premiums.

“The UK have now made it illegal to own an uninsured vehicle, even if it is kept off the roads, in an attempt to stamp out uninsured driving.

“However, we believe that such measures may be a little harsh on those who have fallen on hard times and have had to take their car off the road for a period of time.

Mr McNelis went on to say, “We do, however, feel that the current penalties are not acting as a sufficient deterrent and would urge compliant drivers to report those that don’t have insurance as they are ultimately paying their insurance for them.”

Motor insurance offences are pun- ishable by a fine of up to € 2, 500, disqualification of one year or more for a first offence, and two years or more for a second offence, and, at the discretion of the court, a term of imprisonment not exceeding six months, though these maximum penalties are rarely imposed.

Where the court decides not to impose a disqualification, drivers convicted of a first offence of driving without insurance will incur five penalty points on their licence record in addition to any other penalty imposed by the court.

THE fact that the Roche Ireland plant in Clarecastle has an incinerator is being held up as the trump card that can save the company from being closed as part of a global restructuring plan being put in place by the company’s cor porate headquar ters in Basel in Switzerland.

Permission in principal for an incinerator at the Clarecastle operation was granted by Clare County Council in early 1996, but was later the subject of the first ever Envi ronmental Protection Agency Oral Hearing before the Roche was granted a licence for the incineration facility in December of that year.

Sixteen years on and with the incineration facility firmly in place, there are hopes among the staff that this could be “the deciding factor” in persuading the Roche Group to retain its Clarecastle operation.

Despite controversies such as incineration and the odour problem that dogged the Clarecastle area in the early years of the plant, Syntex/ Roche’s reputation as a flagship employer in the county has been cemented over many years.

This was flagged from its earliest days of production in 1977, when it employed 180 people and had a wage bill of £750, 000, while within four years numbers employed at the plant had grown to nearly 300 as the company embarked on a £7. 5m investment.

Thanks to the production of the naproxen drug, Syntex had an initial turnover of £10m, a figure that trebled in the early ’80s as employment soared and an expansion of facilities allowed for a four-cycle seven-day week operation.

In 1994 the Clarecastle company became part of the Pharmaceutical Division of the Roche Group as it acquired the Syntex Cor poration in a $5.3bn worldwide takeover that resulted in it being re-branded as Roche Ireland from 1996.

Employees at the Clarecastle plant come from a wide range of disciplines and include chemists, engineers, manufacturing and laboratory technicians, craft-workers, accountants and IT specialists.

There are four automated manufacturing plants on site with room for further expansion, with the company priding itself of being “a manufacturing centre of excellence for the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients destined for conversion to medicines in dosage form at other Roche facilities throughout the world”.

A COUPLE who said they were discriminated against on the basis that they are Travellers have won their case against an Ennis pub.

John Mongans (33) and his wife Anne Marie Mongans (31) said they felt “humiliated” and “embarrassed” after being refused a drink at All Bar One, Abbey Street, Ennis on November 3, 2011.

The Ennis couple brought a case against Tradewell Pub Company Ltd under the Equal Status Act.

The case was heard at Ennis District Court on Thursday. Tradewell Pub Company Ltd was not represented in court.

Mr Mongans said he and his wife entered the bar at around 9.15pm on the night in question. He said the barman came over and told them that the bar was closed.

Mr Mongans said other customers in the bar were drinking at the time and “nothing looked out of the ordinary”.

The couple left the bar and came back at around 10.15pm. Mr Mon- gans said he asked for two drinks but the barman refused. According to Mr Mongans, the barman said that he was closing the bar in order to control the crowd in the pub. The court that Mr Mongans went outside and rang the Gardaí.

He said, “I felt totally embarrassed that I had to go and get the guards.”

He said “settled people” whom he played soccer with had seen what had happened at the bar.

Asked by solicitor Andrew Darcy why he believed he had been refused service, Mr Mongans said, “I was re- fused on the basis of being a member of the Traveller community.”

He added, “I don’t hide the fact that I am a Traveller.”

Ms Mongans was described in court as a proactive member of the Traveller community. She said she was a member of a committee that worked with Clare County Council on the issue of Traveller accommodation.

Ms Mongans told the court that people she knew from her children’s school were in the pub on the night. “I felt very, very humiliated,” she added.

The court heard that the couple had not been drinking on the night. Judge Timothy Lucey said that he found the case proven. He said there was no good reason why the couple should have been refused.

Judge Lucey added, “To be refused because you are a member of the Travelling community, when you are well behaved, is very upsetting.”

Mr Darcy said the couple were not seeking the closure of the bar.

Judge Lucey ordered that that couple be given € 500 compensation each, plus costs of € 250 and VAT.

CONSTRUCTION work on the controversial Clare section of the Limerick Northern Distributor Road will not begin until 2025 at the earliest, according to Clare County Council’s leading Engineer.

Senior Council engineer, Tom Tiernan said yesterday that the road – which has prompted local protests in the Parteen, Ardnacrusha and Clonlara areas – was now an aspirational project and something that will affect the “next generation” of residents in the south east Clare area.

“This is not a road for the present. If this was on the table four or five years ago, it may well have materialised very quickly. There was a different definition of ‘future’. We would have to be very optimistic to see that this road would be accommodating traffic in 10 years. That would be extremely optimistic,” said Mr Tiernan.

“We have to hope that this economic situation will turn around but it seems very clear that this [road] will not be done for the foreseeable future. But we have to plan for it. If we don’t plan for it, then other areas of the country will be ahead of us when things do turn around.

“This is a very substantial scheme, which should have positive spin-offs for the region as well. But really we are talking about the next generation and not the current one.”

Local Cllr Cathal Crowe (FF) also raised concern over the pubic consultation process for the development, saying that the ESB were allowed to consult on the project on an ongoing basis while the public were only allowed two “insensitive” chances to have their opinion heard.

“The playing pitch was unequal at times. Talks with the ESB were ongoing where as Joe Soap in the public was given just two chances to have their say, and they were very insensitive times where they had to go into a hotel in front of all of their neighbours to say their piece,” said Cllr Crowe.

According to Tom Tiernan, the ESB were spoken to on an ongoing basis because of the “serious consequence” that the road could have for their operations.

“People are upset, it is impossible to develop a road scheme of this nature without upsetting some people,” he said.

“We have to consult with people, we have to be as fair as possible in how we deal with people. Once a route is selected, once funding begins to materialised for the purchase of property, we have to realise that people are being disenfranchised by this scheme.”