Category: News

AN ENNIS company has manufactured a new fish pass which could save a number of endangered species of fish from the threat of extinction.

Enform Plastics Limited, which is based in the Doora Industrial Estate, has played a major role in the development of Ireland’s first ever plastic fish pass. The company, which was selected by the MulkearLIFE, helped design and manufacture a series of hardened ABS plastic sheets, each containing of pegs, which would aid the passage of fish upstream.

The project is focussed on helping to preserve the stock of Sea Lamprey in the Shannon but the design could have far-reaching implications for other rivers and other breeds of fish.

“This is a revolutionary design – it is the first time that a plastic fish pass has been designed which can be easily attached to barriers to allow fish like these massive Sea Lamprey to pass successfully upstream,” said Ruairí Ó Conchúir, Project manager with the MulkearLIFE Project.

“Sea Lamprey are under serious threat at the moment and the River Shannon as well as rivers like the Fergus are very important for them. They have suffered a 50 per cent decline in their population numbers and one of the reason for this is man-made barriers which have prevented them from accessing their traditional spawning grounds.”

MulkearLIFE is a new € 1.75 million European Commission funded project which is focussed on the Lower Shannon Special Area of Conservation. An initial instalment of the passes has proved to be a great success in recent months.

“We have worked with researchers in America, Canada and France to develop the design that would work best for the Sea Lamprey. The easiest way of describing the design is like an inverted egg-box made out of a special type of plastic. Enform Plastic worked with us on the design and manufactured the sheets for us and so far it has proved to be a great success,” continued Ruairí.

“This is a unique design and the first time anything like this has been used in Ireland. We have been making night-time and early morning observations of weirs and that is what proved to us that the design have been very successful. On one of the most recent counts we recorded 170 fish used the wire itself and 140 of them used the fish passes. We are confident that this is proving to be a big success. We know that we can easily adapt this to other rivers.”

ENNIS took another large step towards hosting the All-Ireland Fleadh in 2012 this weekend when it hosted a delegation from the National Standing Committee of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann.

With just 10 days to go until the announcement of who will host next years All-Ireland Fleadh, this was the local committees last change to influence the destination of valuable votes on the National Committee.

Ennis is currently in a three way competition to secure the Fleadh with Sligo and Cavan Town all bidding to host the event. Hosting the All-Ireland Fleadh is worth an estimated € 35 million to the locality which hosts it – and it could be worth a multiple of that in spin off tourism opportunities around the county.

“They seemed very pleased by what they saw in Ennis and we got a very positive response from them. There was a very impressive presentation for them, not just from he local branch but from the entire community here in Ennis,” said Rory Casey of the Local Steering Group.

“We took the delegation on a tour of all the prospective around the town and they were very pleased with what they saw.

“It was a really good presentation and we think that nothing more could really have been done to try and sway them. Whatever way things turn out we can look back at this and know that we did everything we could possible have done to bring the Fleadh to Ennis for next year.

“We have been so impressed by the amount of local support that we have received. Everyone has gotten together behind the bid. It hasn’t just been the local Comhaltas, all of the state agencies, the business and tourism communities – everyone has pulled together to try and make this a reality. What was really great about the presentation is the sheer amount of other interested bodies who took part.

“This could be the making of the summer for Ennis. You are talking in the region of € 35 million and in the current climate that will be a major boost not just for Ennis but for all of County Clare. That is one of the main things that we are pushing – that this will be not just an Ennis event but something that can be spread out to all of the county and something that can benefit all of Clare.”

AN ALL-IRELAND champion fisherman believes wetlands along a section of the N85 Western Relief Road could be transformed into a wildlife sanctuary. Ennis man Jimmy Allard says he has contacted Ennis Town Council about developing the area of land between Beechpark and the One Mile Inn as a sanctuary.

Jimmy and Clarecastle fisherman Michael Colleran recently released a new batch of 80 mallard ducklings into a lake in the area.

“I wanted to make a sanctuary out of it. It would be a great thing to have especially in the summer,” he says. “We released a few ducks in the lake; about 80 in the last two months. It’s a lovely area to put them in. They have plenty of freedom and room there and it’s grassy and they seem to be getting on well.”

Jimmy also believes that the re-built river wall at Parnell Street car park is too high and is denying children a chance to interact with wildlife.

The wall was built as part of works on the Ennis Flood Relief Scheme, a two-phase project to improve flood defences in the town centre.

The defences are credited with ensuring that large areas of Ennis town centre were not submerged under water when heavy floods hit the town in November 2009.

He says, “The big wall is a problem all the time. You have to lift a child to feed the ducks. It’s a pity you can’t raise the footpath or something. You see a lot of tourists down there trying to take photographs of the field.”

One of Ireland’s most successful fishermen, Jimmy is a three-time All-Ireland fly fishing champion and international gold medal winner. He was the first person to introduce ducks and geese to the River Fergus in 1990 and is currently chairman of the Clare Regional Game Council.

Jimmy believes that apart from a few lakes, it was a bad year for fishing because of the weather.

THE Merriman Summer School, which concluded in Lisdoonvarna on Sunday, has backed a campaign by a west Clare county councillor to create a bursary in honour of former Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald.

Fine Gael councillor, Gabriel Keating, was behind the motion that was tabled at the June meeting of Clare County Council, and now two months later, the 44th Merriman Summer School has endorsed his move that’s to be considered by local authority chiefs.

“Garret Fitzgerald attended a number of Merriman schools over the years and made a value contribution to this Clare festival,” a Cumman Merriman spokesperson told The Clare People on Sunday, “and it would be fitting indeed if this contribution was honoured in Clare,” he added.

Councillor Keating has called for “Clare County Council in conjunction with Clare VEC to award an annual bursary to promote the development of innovation in our secondary schools in recognition of Dr Fitzgerald”.

The motion won the backing of fellow councillors but Clare County Manager, Tom Coughlan pointed out that “the awarding of a bursary had financial implications” and that “the matter would need to be considered in the context of the 2012 Clare County Council Budget”.

“I would hope that this move to honour Dr Fitzgerald in Clare would happen,” Cllr Keating told The Clare People this week.

“Dr Fitzgerald was a man who helped shape modern Ireland and was a regular visitor to Clare and had connections with the county. In this context and as an educationalist, I think that it’s fitting that a bursary should be awarded in his honour,” added Cllr Keating.

A NEW masterplan for the development and safeguarding of services at Shannon Airport is set to be unveiled in September, just ahead of the 75year anniversary of when the first sod was turned to start the construction of Ireland’s first transatlantic gateway.

In consultation with Dublin Airport Authority chiefs, the Shannon Airport Authority are now believed to be putting the finishing touches to the blueprint that will be expected to chart a new future for the former hub of the aviation world over the next decade.

The plan’s publication will be the culmination of a consultation process between the Dublin Airport Authority, SAA and the public, by way of taking submissions on the airport’s future from key partners in the wider airport infrastructure and catchment area, before finalising the key points of concern and concentration in Shannon’s drive to usher in a new era of profitablity.

“A key element in drafting such a plan is to elicit the opinions of airport stakeholders,” a Shannon spokesper- son revealed in April, after business groups in the mid-west region were invited to a think-tank aimed at coming up with new ideas for the airport going forward.

The masterplan is being formulated against a backdrop of figures contained in the recently released Dublin Airport Authority annual report, which revealed that passenger numbers through Shannon in 2010 dropped by one million over the previous year.

This drop represented a 37 percent decline in passenger traffic, a 12-year low at Shannon.

Only 1,755, 885 passengers used Shannon in 2010, a figure that’s now lower than 1998 levels of 1,840,008 passengers when the airport was still reeling from the loss of its transatlantic gateway status in 1993.

The drastic fall-off in numbers, from 2,794,563 in 2009 represented the fourth year in a row that Shannon’s passenger count when into sharp decline.

Between 2004 and 2005 passenger numbers increased by a record 37.9 per cent as Shannon’s numbers grew to a record 3,639,046 from 2,395,116 over a two-year period.

It’s expected that the new blueprint will concentrate on stabilizing Shannon’s finances – rather that directly addressing the passenger decline with the transformation of Shannon into a worldwide cargo hub development seen as a potential saviour for the airport.

Into this category comes the Lynx Cargo trans-shipment facility, which is to be grant aided to the tune of € 6m by the DAA, while Shannon Development chairman, Dr Vincent Cunnane has said “the airport will not survive on passengers alone and needs a cargo hub”.

THE search for a missing east Clare man enters into its eighth day this morning, with friends and family joining Coast Guard and Garda search teams around the Cliffs of Moher area.

Tulla native Gerry Kelly is a regular visitor to the tourist attraction, where his car was discovered unattended last Monday evening. The 61-year-old was last seen on Tuesday, August 8. However, there have been a number of unconfirmed sightings of him in the Tulla area between then and August 15, when his car was discovered.

“The search is still ongoing and will be for the next number of days. We have been doing a protracted search of the area for the past week,” said Matty Shannon of the Doolin Unit of the Irish Coast Guard.

“This man was a very regular visitor to the cliffs. He worked at the county council and a lot of his friends and family have been up in the area helping in the search. At the moment, the only real piece of information that we have is that his car was found at the cliffs.

“Our search is focusing on the Cliffs of Moher and Doolin area but I do know that friends, family and county council colleagues are searching in areas around Spanish Point and up as far as Fanore – all the different areas either side of Doolin.”

Mr Kelly, who is single, does not have his mobile phone with him which has made it difficult for gardaí to track his movements electronically. He is described as being five feet five inches tall with short brown hair, a round face and a ruddy complexion.

Anyone with any information is asked to contact Gardaí in Killaloe at 061 620540 or Ennistymon at 065 7072180.

A CLARE third-level student will be used by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) to contest a judicial review against changes made to the way in which third-level grants are calculated.

USI president Gary Redmond confirmed to The Clare People yesterday that the case of a north Clare student, Medb Hensey, will be used to challenge new Department of Education legislation which increases the distance from a university that a student can be considered “adjacent”.

Under the new rules, which come into effect this September, Medb’s grant will be significantly cut because, even though she lives outside Ballyvaughan, she is considered to live beside NUI, Galway. The case will appear in the high court on October 7.

“Medb is being used as part of this test case. We know this won’t help Medb or other students this year but it might help her, or other students in the same position, down the line.

“We did try to impress on the judge how important the timing of the case was, with students going back to college,” said Gary Redmond, President of the Union of the Student in Ireland.

“This has placed a lot of students in severe financial difficulty and I know that many students, especially from rural areas, may have difficulty going back to college.

“The rationale behind this is that public transport has improved but if you look at a situation like Medb’s, there is no way that she can get to college using public transport each day.”

Medb is planning to take up a year’s study abroad this September and, according to her mother Antoinette, they have managed to save enough money for Medb to study abroad this September.

“USI sent an engineer out to measure the distance and we are 39km from Galway by the shortest direct route,” she said.

“This won’t be of any benefit to Medb this year but we are hopeful that USI may win this case; we will have to wait and see.

“She is going to Malta anyway. We have both been working hard to ensure that we have enough to get her there. We were both determined that that would happen.”

THE Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has directed that a man accused of the murder of a 21-year-old law student in Barefield in June be sent forward for trial at the Central Criminal Court.

At Ennis District Court yesterday, Garda Supt Peter Duff told the court that the DPP had issued directions in relation to the case of Joe Heffernan.

Mr Heffernan (31) with an address at Cappabeg, Barefield is accused of the murder of Eoin Ryan at Cappabeg, Barefield on June 7.

Supt Duff told the court that the DPP had directed trial on indictment to the charge of murder to the Central Criminal Court.

He said a book of evidence for the case would be ready by September 23. Supt Duff said Gardaí were seeking to remand the accused in custody to Ennis District Court on September 2. Solicitor John Casey consented to the application. The court heard that the accused is currently in custody.

A RECOMMENDATION by councillors to include large tracts of development land as part of a proposed variation to the Ennis and Environs Development Plan has been described as a “haphazard approach to sequential planning”.

In July, members of Clare County Council and Ennis Town Council voted through a number of amendments to the proposed variation. At the time, councillors were told that phase one of the plan could only include 88 hectares of land zoned for residential purposes.

In total, across a number of amend- ments, members of Ennis Town Council proposed the inclusion of 38 hectares of land in the Ennis area, which the manager’s report said should be excluded from phase one of the variation. To balance their proposals, councillors also proposed that 38 hectares of land in the Roslevan area be excluded from Phase One of the variation.

Thirty-one submissions were received in relation to the variation, which was drawn up in response to concerns raised by the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government. The Department had expressed concern over the amount of land zoned in the Ennis area. Reports and material amendments to the plan have now gone before the public.

In a strategic environmental assessment on proposed amendments to the plan, council planners state, “The zoned lands within Phase One as recommended by the Elected Members represent a segregated and haphazard approach to sequential planning.”

The report continues, “It is contrary to the aim of the core strategy which encourages sequential development from the centre out and this option has the potential to cause significant environmental effects including development in an ad-hoc and unrestrictive manner; without regard to the current available levels of infrastructure and utilities, without regard for environmental and ecological designations, sensitivities and constraints and without regard for the likely significant impacts on water resources

The report states that the majority of lands are located within the Clarecastle RDA “which currently has issues regarding the pressure on wastewater infrastructure”. The report adds, “It is also relevant to note that the Clarecastle RDA is not within the protection zone for Drumcliff springs. The allocation of phased lands within the Western RDA is within in the Drumcliff Inner Protection Zone.”

Members of the public have until September 9 to make submissions.

PROMOTING a greater understanding of Clare’s rich heritage for both local and visitor alike has emerged as a major tenet of Clare County Council environmental policy from now until 2017.

This commitment going forward, in tandem with conserving and enhanc ing the county natural environment, is contained in the second Clare Heritage Plan (2011-2017) that has been put together over the last year.

The launch of the plan in the Vandeleur Walled Garden on Monday was followed by visit to Scattery Islands – considered to be one of jewels in Clare’s heritage crown – by some of the key partners in formulation of the ambitious six-year plan.

The publication of the heritage bluerprint marks the culmination of a year’s work by the County Clare Heritage Forum and brings together the interests and agendas of the 23 forum members and 64 submissions made by the public.

“There were 66 partners in the development of this plan,” revealed Heritage Officer, Conjella McGuire, “all of whom have generously committed their time, energy and expertise.

“As a result of this, the Heritage Plan brings together a wide range of backgrounds and interests.”

Launching the plan, the Mayor of Clare, Cllr Pat Hayes said “our heritage is about people, place, culture, nature and the opportunities that it can offer in the future.

“Our heritage is one of our greatest strengths in the county and I intend to lead the implementation of this ambitious plan for the benefit of the county,” added Mayor Hayes, who has been chairman of the council Heritage Forum since 2006.

“The plan has three overall aims which are supported by 14 objectives and in total contains 77 actions. It is an ambitious plan and seeks to complement and build on the achievements of the previous Heritage Plan 2003-2007,” said Ms McGuire.

“Community groups have fostered and enhanced their local heritage and a wide variety of community heritage initiatives are underway in the county at present, many of which are showcased throughout the county this week during Heritage Week,” said Cllr Oliver Garry, chairman of the West Clare area group of county councilors.

“Community groups and individuals require funding and technical advice in order to implement best practice,” he added.