Category: News

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.

WEST CLARE could be about to get another wind energy project worth millions of euro in the development stage as a new application to construct a windfarm at Shanovogh near Miltown Malbay has been lodged with Clare County Council planners.

McMahon Finn Wind Acquisitions Ltd are planning to build the windfarm on a site that’s two miles away from West Clare Renewable Energy project on Mount Callan, the green light for which was given by Clare County Council last August.

The application lodged with Clare County Council last Friday is for a windfarm comprising of six turbines with a height of 85 metres and was submitted to local authority planners by Cian Ó Laoithe Architects.

Last year, Clare County Council invalidated plans submitted by McMahon Wind Ltd for a 12-turbine wind farm on the same site, while a decision date on the new planning application is due in mid-July.

The latest application for a windfarm development in the county falls within the guidelines of the Clare County Council wind energy strategy that has set a working target of 550 MW of wind energy to harnessed in the county by 2020.

Between 2000 and 2010, 22 applications for wind farms were lodged with Clare County Council, with one of the first projects to be given the green light being in 2002 when the ESB were granted permission for a nine-turbine € 20 million renewable energy farm at Moneypoint.

Most recently, last December An Bord Pleanala has rejected an appeal by An Taisce against a Clare County Council decision to allow Hibernian Windpower to construct a wind farm incorporating 11 turbines of approximately 2500kW capacity each, at Boolynageragh, Lissycasey.

The development site, which is three kilometres north of Lissycasey, will have a total rated electrical output of 27.5MW. The capital cost of the project is up to € 50m, while the Mount Callan windfarm that’s set to be the largest community-owned windfarm development in Ireland is a € 200m project that aims to create 300 jobs during the construction phase.

It has been claimed that renewable energy area in Clare has the capacity to create 10,000 jobs in the county from now until 2020.

INFLATION is a word no-one wants to hear anymore but, for one Clare man, it’s a word that is music to his ears. At the weekend, Boris Hunka from Killaloe held the first concert ever to be put on in Ireland in an inflatable theatre.

Ireland’s first fully inflatable arts venue – the Pop-up Playhouse – was launched in Killaloe with performances by Juliet Turner and John Spillane as well as Size 2 Shoes, who were joined by soul six-piece Hunka Burning Love, fresh from their performance at the Europa League Final and the Killaloe Ballina Gospel Choir.

Musician and teacher Boris started looking into how a venue could be provided for the town without quite knowing what he was looking for, he told The Clare People .

“We (the music school) put on a lot of our own performances and that was the initial impetus. There really was no venue in Killaloe where you could stage a big performance. I started looking into how we could have one and it was one of those things on the net when you find what you’re looking for before you even know what it is you’re looking for,” said Boris.

Boris came across a company in China who specialised in making inflatable structures and he started cor- responding with them to see if they could provide something that would meet the requirements of a theatre.

“We were going back and forth for a long time but, eventually, they came up with a plan for what we wanted and it went from there,” he said.

The Playhouse takes the concept of the Spiegeltent – a mobile, stylish, portable venue – into the 21st century.

It takes the best part of a day to prepare the floor and lay it out flat on the ground but, once that is done, it takes just one hour to inflate and it can accommodate up to 500 people if all three sections are used.

“It’s also a structure which only requires financing when it’s actually being used. When it’s being stored on the back of a truck, it’s not using electricity or costing rates,” said Boris.

Leader funding helped pay for the structure, which cost less than € 60,000, as it will be used to provide rural communities with performances of music and theatre.

It is 15m wide, 27m long, 5m high, constructed out of .65mm fireproof PVC with an internal wall dimension of 1m – and can be assembled on any flat surface.

“On the outside, the structure looks part sci-fi, part inverted bouncy castle whilst on the inside it is an otherworldly feel with wooden flooring, velvet curtains, sound system, stage lights, vintage jukebox, inflatable sofas and an illuminated bar. The structure is also equipped with a fullsize cinema screen and a silent disco set-up,” said Boris.

Boris plans for the theatre to be inflated and running in Killaloe for the whole month of July while it will be also be visiting Lahinch, Kilkee and other venues over the summer.

The structure can also be used in smaller modules of one or two sections.

“I know this is the only one of its kind in Ireland and the Chinese manufacturers admitted they had never made one on this scale before. But now we have a theatre that can bring performances to small communities anywhere.”

COUNTY Clare’s spiritual heritage walks through the eyes of modern ecumenical Christians will take place during the coming weeks. Clare Christian Heritage walks, Ar bóthar na Naomh, has, in the past, attracted both local residents and people from further afield, including Northern Ireland and England.

The walks have a historical, archaeological and spiritual input, some of which is provided by expert guides and some developed through the skills of those who participate.

The organiser is Dr Rosemary Power, a historical and folklorist, who is also a local minister working on behalf of the Methodist Church.

The first walk will take in some of the most scenic parts of East Clare; Inis Cealtra, Holy Island on Lough Derg, on June 11. A White Sunday walk, entitled, ‘Walking the Shannon’, will take place the following day.

Walkers will move to the Burren on June 18 and 19. They will take in the stretch from Noughval to Kilfenora on June 18 and further parts of the Burren will be visited the following day. Both walks will end with an informal service in Saint Fachnan’s Medieval Cathedral Church.

On July 9 and 10, walks will take place in West Clare – Scattery Island and Loop Head. Both will close with celebrations in Kilkee Methodist Church. On July 30 and August 1, walkers will move to the Corofin and Parkanbinna areas.

Similar walks have taken place over the past two years and have attracted a wide range of age categories,from very young people to more mature adults. “This is our third year. We have always covered different parts of the countryside,” she said.

“It has been very, very positive,” she added. “I think sometimes that religion helps people to focus on what is valuable in life. People have lost the sense of belonging to the land and are hoping to get that connection back.

“There is a very positive sense of the strength of the spiritual in our lives and to explore our relationship with what is around us.”

According to Ms Power, the aim is to keep the pace of the walks relatively easy. Prayers will be said along the route, while singing will also form part of the events.

There will be regular breaks along the route and Dr Power will present talks on the historical importance of some of the places of interest along the way.

“The focus will be on both religion in the wider spiritual sense and the valuing of the religious of the past and exploring the spiritual in our lives today,” she said.

“It is ecumenical – open to people of any Christian tradition,” she said.

Anyone looking for further information on the various walks should contact Dr Power on 087 9888 508.

TEACHERS and parents along with students past and present gathered on Sunday to celebrate the official opening of the recently renovated 16-classroom Barefield National School.

Completed last year, work on the latest extension at the school included the construction of eight new classrooms, six special education teaching rooms, a general purpose/sports hall and multi-purpose rooms, stores, offices, toilets, boiler room, separate external store and a new roadside drop-off zone, as well as a new sewage system.

Work on an initial eight-classroom school was completed in 1997 with previous developments taking place at the site in the 1950, 1993, 1995 and 1996. The school has been a part of community life in Barefield for 115 years. Sunday’s ceremony was attended by staff, members of the board of management, parents association, local priest Fr Jerry Carey and local politicians.

Ronan Connolly, chairman of the board of management, said, “We are justifiably proud of having played our part as the Executive of the school who saw this project through to fruition and I thank all my fellow Board members for their countless hours of unselfish and voluntary dedication in achieving this outcome. We only could do so, however, as a result of the huge level of support and guidance we received from all of the relevant stakeholders who have vested their time and energies in this project.”

Mr Connolly also paid tribute to the work of principal John Burns and said that the school building project “exhibits very clearly all the wonderful attributes of the Irish meitheal concept and the force which a volountary community of parties working together can generate”.

He continued, “We were fortunate indeed to receive the necessary Government funding to allow this very positive development to proceed at a time when our country is sadly blighted with so much financial pain and negativity and the new school represents a wonderful beacon of hope for the future”. Michael Butler, chairperson of the parent’s association, said, “As parents of the children who attend Barefield National School, we know how fortunate we are to have such a dedicated team of people who look after our children’s education and development on a daily basis. Up to now, the conditions were not as we would have liked them to be. Now, however, with the opening of the new school, we can be truly proud of what is a first-class and future-proofed environment in which they will receive their education.” John Burns, principal, said that a striking feature of life at Barefield National School has been the “continuing generosity displayed by parents over the decades in supporting a range of activities at our school”. He said, “Barefield National School is a focal point for our community, educating generations of girls and boys since 1895. Our school’s close link with our community has always been an important feature of our growth and development over the years.”