Category: News

THE huge contribution made by Tomás Mac Cormaic to the development of Shannon over many years has been recalled after the sudden death of the former Town Clerk last week.

The Kilkishen native, who was 76 years of age when he died suddenly last Tuesday, served as Shannon Town Clerk for 27 years between the advent of Shannon Town Commission in 1982 until his retirement in 2009.

At his funeral mass on Friday, Shannon parish priest Fr Tom Hogan described Tomás as “the man who owned Shannon”. Those were the words used by one of his grandchildren in the immediate aftermath of his death and were affectionately recalled to the hundreds who turned out to pay their last respects.

Tributes in Clare have been led by former Mayor of Clare and Shannon, Cllr Patricia McCarthy, who worked with Mr Mac Cormaic throughout his 27 years as Town Clerk.

“Even before he became Town Clerk, he would have been involved in a lot of community committees and activities,” said Cllr McCarthy. “He brought his knowledge of the town and the community into the Town Commissioners. He made a hugely positive and crucial contribution to Shannon.

“There was no history of elected representatives in the town, no history of how local government would work in the town. Tomás played a vital role with councillors of weaning Shannon away from being run by a semi-state company and helping the town taking charge of our own destiny,” she added.

These tributes were echoed by Senator Tony Mulcahy, who also served as Mayor of Shannon and Clare during Mr Mac Cormaic’s time in local government.

“In his 27 years as Town Clerk he never missed a meeting,” said Senator Mulcahy. “That tells you about him. He was totally committed to his family, his work and his friends. Tomás was one of the father figures within the town. He was a Commissioner of Oaths and a Peace Commissioner, so he engaged with a huge number of people in the Shannon Community.

“He made a huge contribution to the development of the town. He was always the great man for a solid word. He was available to the community 24/7 – that’s the man he was for Shannon,” Senator Mulcahy added.

Mr Mac Cormaic is survived by his nine children, Padraig, Máire, Cathal, Ciaran, Áine, Eimear, Eithne, Eoin and Gearóíd, his brothers Máirtín, Micheál and Noel, sisters Josie and Margaret; sons-in-law, daughters-inlaw and 12 grandchildren.

Mr Mac Cormaic’s remains were removed to Mary Immaculate Church in Shannon last Thursday, while the funeral mass took place on 12 noon on Friday with burial afterwards in Lemenagh Cemetery.

DESPITE the landmark achievement of returning three government TDs to the Fine Gael/Labour coalition in the February 25 election, Clare was the only county along the western seaboard to be ignored for either full ministerial or minister of state status in the new administration.

However, 100 days into the government, the county has finally received recognition thanks to a number of key appointments made by Taoiseach Enda Kenny. Fine Gale deputies Joe Carey and Pat Breen have been appointed Assistant-Chief Whip and chairman of the Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs & Trade respectively.

“This role will ensure I have daily contact with An Taoiseach and Government ministers in relation to legislation and co-ordinating debates in the Dáil,” Deputy Carey told The Clare People after his appointment.

“My role will be most important, especially as tough decisions need to be made in the months and years ahead. It will also allow me to develop and enhance strong relationships with all Ministers and I will endeavour to use that influence and insight to the benefit of the people of County Clare.

“I will also have responsibility for monitoring Senate legislation entering Dáil Éireann. The role of the Whip is to have strong relationships with deputies and ministers and to ensure the smooth operation of Government in its highest capacity. I believe my appointment is recognition of the inter-personal skills which I have developed over the years,” he added.

“Restoring Ireland’s international reputation is a top priority for our Government,” said Deputy Breen after his promotion to a key Oireachtas committee that carries with it an extra salary of € 10,000 per annum.

“The Taoiseach has entrusted me with the responsibility for driving and formulating Fine Gael policy in this area. I will be making it clear that the message that Ireland is open for business must be communicated all over the world and that our Corporation Tax rate is not up for discussion,” added Deputy Breen who cut his teeth in foreign affairs as a member of the Council of Europe.

Labour’s Michael McNamara has also been also appointed to a position on the Dáil Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, as well as to a place on the Committee on Communications, Natural Resources and Agriculture.

In addition to his assistant-chief whip duties, Deputy Carey has been appointed to the Committee on Procedure and Privileges, while Fianna Fáíl’s transport spokesperson, Deputy Timmy Dooley has been appointed to the Committee on Environment, Transport, Culture and the Gaeltacht.

SEVERAL stretches of road across Clare will be improved, after funding was injected into various schemes.

Some of the routes were earmarked for funding after concerns were expressed by local residents, who were anxious that improvement works be carried out.

In total, funding amounting to € 230,000 has been allocated for the projects under the Low Cost Safety Improvement Works on Regional and Local roads. The works are expected to be completed this year.

Junctions at local roads in Bodyke and Kilnoe in East Clare will receive € 40,000, while Monument Cross near Newmarket-on-Fergus will receive € 40,000.

A stretch of road at Clonderlaw in West Clare will receive € 30,000 for improvement works, while the R474 at Inch and the R487 road near Carrigaholt have also been included in the scheme. A stretch on the Kilrush Road, Ennis, has also been included.

The funding was allocated after Clare County Council compiled a list, which was then submitted to the National Roads Authority, which in turn granted the allocations.

According to Clare County Council, the scheme is designed to improve road safety at various locations around the county where it is believed there is a genuine safety risk. The Council makes submissions to the National Roads Authority, which decides on whether to grant funding.

“We make applications based on crash statistics and volumes of traffic. It looks at the history of locations,” said Clare County Council’s road safety officer Barry Keating.

“We make numerous applications,” he added.

VISITORS to the world-famous Poulnabrone Dolmen will be greeted by the most unusual site when they visit the iconic tourist location later this month – a twice-life-size replica of the dolmen made as a functioning bouncy castle.

On the eve of the summer solstice on June 21, local artist Jim Ricks will complete a two-week trek across the Aughty Mountains at the site of the Poulnabrone Dolmen. Each day, Jim will be inflating ‘The Bouncy Dolmen’ as part of a public arts programme supported by Clare County Council’s Arts Office, Galway County Council and Ground Up Artists Collective.

Jim, who is a former Master of Fine Arts student at the Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan, dreamed up the bizarre outdoor installation as a means of contrasting the ancient her- itage of the dolmen with the excesses of Celtic Tiger Ireland.

“I found it so interesting that something that was so old but had so little really known about it had become this symbol of Ireland and all things ancient. It had become a marketing symbol for B&Bs; people were making dolmens in their front yard using diggers. There were even coffee cups made in the shape of the dolmens,” said Jim.

“I started thinking, what is today’s monumental structure – what the dolmen would have been 6,000 years ago – and the answer that I came up with was the bouncy castle. Particularly a few years ago, bouncy castles were everywhere and they were a symbol of Celtic Tiger Ireland. I thought building the bouncy dolmen would be a pretty absurd way to pull together these different identities for Ireland.”

The castle was designed and built by Jim and the English company who invented the first bouncy castle over the last four years.

“The consumption of the Celtic Tiger, as seen through the bouncy castles, has changed Ireland forever. While this project is not a scathing critique of that, it is a commentary on it – a playful commentary anyway,” continued Jim.

‘The Bouncy Dolmen’ will appear at different locations in the North Clare and South Galway area between June 7 and 21. It will come to its last destination at the site of the Poulnabrone Dolmen on June 21. ‘The Bouncy Dolmen’ is a functioning bouncy castle and people will be allowed to jump on it while it is on tour.

THIEVES are turning up the heat on home-owners with reports of thefts of copper heating cylinders and home heating oil.

A combination of the rising cost of heating oil and the increasing value of copper is leaving householders in hot water as criminals target both commodities around the county.

Thieves have targeted homes in East Clare and syphoned off large quantities of home-heating oil from unlocked tanks.

A Garda spokseperson said that oil is now so expensive that it is worth the thieves while to wait for the cover of darkness to get at the tanks.

In some instances oil was stolen while the householder was at work or it was taken from unoccupied holiday homes.

Gardaí are advising that people whose tanks are outdoors and accessible should consider extra security precautions, such as gettig a lock for their tank.

The fact that most tanks are in back gardens and, in rural areas in particular, often easy to get at while the house is empty is making oil theft easier.

In other incidents, copper cylinders have been removed from homes in the county, mostly while the houses are empty.

And to add to the householder’s difficulties, removing the cyclinder can result in serious flooding. Gardaí believe that the cylinders are being stolen for re-sale or for the valuable copper.

A NORTH Clare garden, which boasts Ireland’s largest collection of snowdrops, has been recognised as one of the country’s top 100 gardens.

The Caher Bridge Garden in Fanore, which was founded less than a decade ago, has been chosen alongside more established Clare gardens such as the Vandeleur Walled Garden in Kilrush and the Bunratty Castle and Folk Park as one of Ireland’s top gardens.

That is according to a new book by Shirley Lanigan, which is due for release later this week.

The garden, which is started in the Caher Valley in Fanore just 11 years ago, is one of the newest gardens in the top 100.

“This all started as a private garden, and I really had no intention of opening it to the public, but somehow it has become very well known. This is not really a tourist attraction. It is a private collector’s garden, but people do seem to want to come and see it anyway,” said garden owner Carl Wright. “I have a lot of collections of plants. One of my real passions is snowdrops and I actually have one of the largest collections of snowdrops in Ireland here with more than 200 different types.”

The garden was built from scratch in one of the harshest landscapes in Clare to grow plants and flowers.

“One of the problems with creating a garden here has been the conditions. It is a totally unsuitable location to produce a garden in, so I had to work very hard to get this off the ground. There is very little soil here and the conditions are very difficult they are as difficult as you could possibly get. The only thing that I have on my side is great shelter but it has been a real challenge to get it off the ground.”

The Caher Bridge Garden is open to visitors year-round by appointment only. Telephone 065 7076225 for details.

STRIKE actions at Clare’s most popular tourist destination will not take place this week following an agreement by both staff and management at the Cliffs of Moher Visitors Centre to return to the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) in an effort to resolve the ongoing dispute.

The dispute centres around the work conditions and status of the staff employed at the flagship tourism hotspot.

Union leaders claiming that staff at the cliffs should have same right and entitlements of Clare County Council employees, while the management of the facility claim that they are a separate company, owned by Clare County Council.

According to the Company Registrations Office (CRO), the Cliffs of Moher Centre Limited is a company, owned by Clare County Council, which lists Clare County Council’s director of services Ger Dollard and Clare County Council senior executive officer Carmel Greene as its directors.

In a statement to The Clare People , Katherine Webster, Director of the Cliffs of Moher Visitors Experience, said they were looking to find an “agreed resolution” to the dispute.

“Management at Cliffs of Moher Centre met with union representa- tives following SIPTU’s notification of industrial action. A productive meeting took place on Wednesday [June 1],” she said.

“Both sides have agreed to enter a process with the Labour Relations Commission to seek an agreed resolution to the dispute.”

According to local SIPTU spokesperson Tony Kenny, the dispute had resurfaced after management failed to uphold a Labour Court recommendation to grant parity of pay for workers in the centre with other local authority employees.

“Following three years of local discussion, three Labour Relations Commission (LRC) conciliation conferences and a Labour Court hearing that found in favour of our members, the employer has refused to honour its findings,” he said.

The Cliffs of Moher Centre employs 24 people in the North Clare area, 17 of which are members of SIPTU.

THE government holds the key to ensuring that the Lynx Cargo transshipment facility to be developed in Shannon will be a long-term success and engine for new growth at Clare’s international airport. The Clare People has lear ned this week that the Dubl in Ai r por t Author it y (DAA) backing for the project to the tune of up to € 6 million which was heralded by Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, must now be followed up by the opening of negotiations between the Irish and US gover nments on creating a cargo pre-clearance facility at Shannon.

“Lynx will only be a major success if the Irish and US government can reach a deal on the pre-clearance of cargo at Shannon,” one insider told The Clare People this week. “This has been done for passengers and, for the Lynx project to realise its full potential, it will have to be done for cargo traffic as well.”

This claim has been backed up by local Fianna Fáil TD and the party’s transport spokesperson, Timmy Dooley, who has challenged the Government to play its part in transforming Shannon into a new worldwide cargo hub creating thousands of long-term jobs.

“I am delighted after a prolonged period of time that the DAA are prepared to invest appropriate funding in Shannon to enable Lynx to build a facility there,” said Deputy Dooley.

“It’s a vote of confidence in the airport – the short-term potential is limited, there is long-term potential if the Irish government can secure a deal with the US administration for the pre-clearance of cargo at Shan- non,” he added.

It’s understood that the DAA investment in the Shannon project will amount to infrastructural works on the ground – making the site identified accessible by road, providing connection to the airport taxi-ways and fencing – before Lynx would step in and invest over € 2 million in building their temperature control facility.

The project was first heralded in 2009 when Lynx and the Shannon Airport Authority signed up to a memorandum of understanding to develop an international logistics hub in the Shannon Free Zone.

In 2009, the Mid-West Task Force called on the Government and DAA to back the Lynx project, while Shannon Development chief executive and task force member, Dr Vincent Cunnane warned that “the airport will not survive on passengers alone and needs a cargo hub”.

The decision by the DAA to finally back the project with capital investment was taken in mid-May, a move that now paves the way for Lynx to take the next step and lodge a planning application with Clare County Council to build its facility.

CLARE’S four TDs have started their term office in Leinster House by claiming nearly € 600 a day in expenses for the number of days the 31st Dáil has been in session in its first two months.

Figures secured by The Clare People this week have revealed that Deputies Pat Breen and Joe Carey (FG), Deputy Timmy Dooley (FF) and Deputy Michael McNamara (Lab) claimed the maximum amount of expenses for March and April of this year, even though the Dáil only sat 17 times in that two-month period.

Fine Gael colleagues, Deputies Breen and Carey, top the expenses league in Clare for these two months, each claiming € 10,091.68, a figure that’s broken down to € 5,045.84 for March and April respectively.

Deputy Timmy Dooley claimed € 4,982.84 per month in the same period for an aggregate expenses total of € 9,965.68, while Deputy Michael McNamara claimed € 4,951.84 for a total of € 9,903.68 for his first two months as a member of Dáil Éireann.

Meanwhile, the Oireachtas timetable of business in that period has revealed that the Dáil only sat for eight days in March and nine in April.

This means that in addition to earning an annual salary of € 92,672 a year, Clare’s four TDs who were elected in the February 25 General Election have claimed over € 40,000 between them in expenses for the 17 days that the Dáil sat.

The breakdown of those expenses reveal that for those 17 days that the Dáil convened, Deputies Breen and Carey each claimed € 593.62 per day, while Deputies Dooley and McNamara claimed € 586.21 and € 582.56 per day for the first two months.

A CLARE actress stars in an acclaimed new play that comes to Ennis next month.

Written and directed by Mick Donnellan, ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down’, tells the story centres on the McGuire family: Theresa, the long suffering mother; alcoholic father Joe and their sons Chris and John.

Based in the Mayo town of Ballinrobe, the drama follows the trials and tribulations of the McGuire family combining humour with moments of poignancy and emotional turmoil.

For Ballyvaughan actress Theresa Leahy, who first encountered the play when a friend emailed her a copy of the script, playing the McGuire ma- triarch has been one of her greatest experiences on stage.

She said, “She’s like a mother you’ve seen. She’s trying to hold the family together. She’s a proud strong woman who really believes in the sanctity of marriage. She’s religious and is just going to stay with this marriage. She’s trying to create a home in difficult circumstances with her husband’s drinking. I suppose she’s the most poignant part of it because you really see the effects of it on her. It’s the sadness against the hilarity of what’s going on in the pub and the stories that are going on outside.”

Theresa continued, “There are actually some very funny moments. That’s what so great about the play. One minute you are laughing you’re head off and that next minute you’re like, ‘oh what’s happening.’ It’s great.”

Theresa believes that the story, which sold out on its first run in Galway, strikes a particular chord with Irish audiences.

She explained, “Everyone has seen this, in friend’s houses, in villages. It’s a story that is everywhere but it’s never been written about. Everyone recognises the characters. The language is real. You know Theresa. You know what kind of person she is. You know Joe, you know that type of drinker. They are all recogniseable characters. It’s something in the soul of Irish people. It’s something that when you come and see the play, you’ll say you know these people.”

An active member of the theatre scene in Clare since moving to Ballyvaughan from Dublin 10 years ago, Theresa also studied science at Trinity College Dublin.

The mother of four has performed with the Burren Players and has helped guide Clare’s young actors and writers through her involvement with Clare Youth Theatre.

Last December, Theresa co-directed with Mairéad Ní Chonduin Canadh le Cheile, a project that saw 400 children from five schools in County Clare perform two unique concerts with original music and script.

Theresa said, “I think Clare is a real ‘can do’ county. If you can contribute someway then you can con- tribute. People are really happy to let you do that.”

Truman Theatre’s production of ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down’ comes to Glór on this Saturday, June 11.

Meanwhile another Clare actress Aoife McMahon, from Knocknamanna in Clarecastle, has landed the female lead in The Abbey’s forthcoming production of Brian Friel’s ‘Translations’.

The play, set in an Irish Hedge School in the early 19th century, begins on the famed Abbey Theatre stage on Thursday, June 23, with Aoife playing the part of Maire. Aoife (37) and a RADA graduate, previously starred in the TV series Random Passage .