Category: News

SHANNON Airport chiefs have turned to the business public for ideas and input into the formulation of a new masterplan for the development of the airport over the next decade.

The unprecedented decision to turn to business leaders in Clare in an effort to come up with the best possible plan to drive the airport going forward comes in the wake of the worst passenger figures recorded at Shannon in many years. The Clare People has learned that the new initiative, being spearheaded by Shannon Airport management, with the imprimatur of the DAA that governs the airport, began on April 28 last when business groups in Clare and beyond were invited to a think-tank aimed at kickstarting renewed development at Shannon.

“The new masterplan will provide a framework to ensure timely delivery of infrastructure,” documentation secured by The Clare People this week says.

“The Master Plan is required to enable DAA to provide a clear direction for the Airport to ensure it develops in a strategic way so that the potential of all aspects of the business are optimized,” a Shannon Airport spokesperson said on Monday.

“A key element in drafting such a plan is to elicit the opinions of airport stakeholders,” he added.

The move to plan for Shannon’s future has also been heralded in light of the fact that the current blueprint for the former hub of the aviation world is over a decade old and, in that time, passenger numbers have fallen sharply.

In February, confidential Dublin Airport Authority figures revealed that passenger numbers at Shannon dropped dramatically and were approaching levels not seen since the early 1990s. In January, 92,000 passengers passed through the airport, a 37.4 per cent drop on the same month in 2010.

This figure comes on top of a similarly poor performance at the airport for the full 12 months of 2010 when 1,755,900 passengers used the airport, 37.2 per cent down on the 2,794,563 passengers that used the facility in 2009.

Shannon has experienced a 52 per cent drop since its peak in 2006, when 3,639,046 passengers used the airport, and 2010 passenger numbers were similar to 1996 levels.

The figures also forecast that if the rate of decline experienced in January continued throughout 2011, then the airport will only handle 1.1 million passengers for the year, a figure not experienced in 20 years. The Clare People can reveal that strict criteria have been laid out for the formulation of the new plan. Business groups in Clare have until this Friday to make submissions to the airport authorities.

Under the timeline schedule set down by the airport authorities, the identification of Shannon’s future requirements will be formulated in June in time for the completion of a draft plan in July, while the final masterplan will be completed and published in September.

THE state of the art fire and rescue service and training centre opened in Ennis last week is set to become the blueprint for regional fire services all over the country.

The centre, which was officially opened by the Minister for the Environment, Phil Hogan (FG), is set to become a centre for fire training for professionals from all over the midwest.

“This is a wonderful boost for the county – it is a fabulous training facility and one that should be replicated all over the country if resources are available,” he said.

“I can see how this can be a regional centre for other counties as well. I wish the fire service well and all who work here. They are doing a very im- portant job as a front-line service to protect the people of Clare and the surrounding counties.

“The training needs of today’s fire service personnel are wide and diverse. The opening of this new facility in Ennis will ensure the provision of high quality training to fire fighters into the future.”

Minister Hogan was joined at the launch by the Mayor of Clare, Christy Curtin (Ind); the County Manager, Tom Coughlan and a number of members of both Ennis Town Council and Clare County Council.

The € 470,000 facility is located right beside the offices of Clare County Council on the New Road in Ennis. Speaking at the official opening, Minister Hogan also paid tribute to the work done by the county’s fire fighters during major flooding events in the winter of 2009 and 2008 and to the efforts of County Manager, Tom Coughlan; Clare’s Chief Fire Officer, Adrian Kelly and Clare County Council Director of Service, Ger Dollard, in getting the new facility in place.

“I understand that management and staff worked around the clock to ensure that the threat posed by the flood waters to property and life was minimised [during the flooding],” he said. “The response was a credit to everyone involved. The experience and insights gained will no doubt shorten the learning curve for others in the emergency management sector.”

A FATHER of two, charged with the murder of a woman in North Clare in March, has secured bail in the High Court – subject to conditions.

Colm Deely (39), of School Road, Ballyvaughan, made his third court appearance last week in connection with the death of Deirdre McCarthy (43), whose body was found on Fanore beach on March 31 last.

She was last seen alive on Sunday, March 27, and was reported missing the following day, after she failed to turn up to meet a friend.

At Ennis District Court last Wednesday, Inspector Tom Kennedy asked that the accused be further remanded, to appear in court again on May 13.

His solicitor did not object. She told the court that her client had appeared in the High Court the previous day, where a bail application had been made. She asked that her client be brought back to Limerick prison, saying, “He’s currently being detained at Cloverhill.”

However, Inspector Kennedy said this was not a matter for the court; rather it was a decision to be taken by the prison authorities.

In the High Court, a ruling was made that a new address was to be approved by gardaí, at least 30 miles

away from Bally

vaughan, if bail was

to be granted. A number of bail

conditions were at

tached, including

that the accused

reside at an address

approved by gardai;

that an independ

ent surety be pro

vided; that he sign

on at a nominated

garda station; that

he abide by a cur

few and not contact

the family of the

deceased. Another condition was that the accused surrender his passport.

The matter will have to get district court approval, prior to bail being taken up.

FIFTY years after Shannon Town was born, it finally has an Oireachtas member thanks to Tony Mulcahy’s election to Seanad Éireann – a victory the former Mayor of Clare and Shannon had dedicated to the power of the social media site, Facebook.

On being elected to the upper house on the Labour Panel after the 13th count, Senator Mulcahy told The Clare People that it was the reaction to his General Election bid on Facebook that inspired him to launch his Seanad Éireann campaign.

“I was told to read the Facebook page. I read it on the Monday night after the General Election and the volume of goodwill messages that I got – people telling me to give it another go – was what prompted me to go for the Senate,” he said.

“That drove it home for me. I was going to leave it after the General Election and I decided after that to give it one good lash. It was from Malin Head to Mizen Head and every bit of it to get elected but it was worth it.”

Senator Mulcahy first stood for election in 1999 when winning a seat on both Shannon Town Council and Clare County Council, seats that he subsequently retained in the 2004 and 2009 local elections.

His first Oireachtas election was in 2007 when he polled 3.408 first preference votes in the General Election, a figure he doubled to 6,829 in the February 2011 election.

After the General Election, Senator Mulcahy, who served as Mayor of Clare from 2009 to 2010 and is the current Mayor of Shannon, was selected by the local Fine Gael organisation in Clare to contest the Seanad election, a nomination that was endorsed by party leader Enda Kenny.

“This brings closure on the General Election. We were over four months on the road. I was asked to stand in the General Election on December 19 and was added to the ticket on January 10,” said Senator Mulcahy.

“It was a tough campaign, a much different campaign to the General Election, but one that I threw myself into, once I made the decision to give it a go. I think it’s a great day for Shannon Town that it finally has an Oireachtas member.

“I say that because there was a strong view out there that people wanted an Oireachtas member from the town of Shannon and the Shannon electoral area. Shannon needed an Oireachtas member – Shannon is a major promoter for business and investment,” he added.

CLARE’S reputation as the county that makes electoral history was continued on Friday when Cllr Martin Conway was elected to Seanad Éireann on the Administrative panel, a success that been hailed as an historic breakthrough for the disability sector.

Senator Conway, who has been a Fine Gael member of Clare County Council for the last seven years, was selected to contest the Seanad election by the People With Disabilities Ireland (PWDI) group only months after his own party refused to put him on the ticket for the General Election.

Now, in being elected to the Upper House on Friday night to bring Fine Gael’s complement of Oireachtas members to an historic four, Senator Conway has created a famous first for Clare and national politics.

“From the vision impairment perspective, I’m the first person member of the Oireachtas ever to be elected with a severe vision impairment,” Senator Conway told The Clare People .

“There hasn’t ever been someone elected with the level of eyesight I have, which is less than 20 per cent.

“It is a great achievement for myself, given the battles I’ve had over the years, the disadvantages I’ve had over the years. I was born with it and lived with it all my life. It isn’t an is- sue I go on about but I speak about it when I’m asked,” he added.

Senator Conway’s success came against the odds as he was up against two former Fine Gael TDs who had the imprimatur of the party in a highly competitive seven-seater constituency.

“I had to look at long and hard about standing,” admitted Senator Conway. “It’s a separate house and I don’t buy into theory that because I didn’t get to run in the Dáil that I’m automatically going to run in the Senate as a second best option.

“I looked at panel system, as outdated and archaic and all that it is, from my perspective in politics, that the most appropriate panel was the Administrative panel given the outside nominating bodies are the voluntary disability sectors.

“My life experience of disability of being the only councillor the country with a declared disability, there was scope there for representing a minority group. Given that the Senate is supposed to be for minorities I felt I could competently represent that minority group.

“I sought the nomination for People With Disabilities Ireland (PWPI). I felt I could be a strong advocate for the issues that concern them. They gave me their nomination. I toured the country and I met every Fine Gael councillor I could – 90 per cent of them and got the vote out,” added Senator Conway.

TAOISEACH Enda Kenny must reward Clare with “a post of significance” after the historic achievement of the Clare branch of the party in winning four seats in the Oireachtas.

Cllr Joe Arkins, who spearheaded Clare Fine Gael’s Seanad Éireann campaign among the party’s 14 members of Clare County Council, told The Clare People that “Clare cannot now be ignored by the party brains trust in Dublin”.

“In the absence of Clare getting a junior ministerial post after the General Election, Enda Kenny can now look at the county again. We have four Oireachtas members for the first time in the party’s history and we want that recognised by Government.

“It’s in the Taoiseach’s gift to do that. He has the scope to make one of Clare’s Oireachtas members the chair of an Oireachtas sub-committee. It’s the least the county deserves. The bank of talent is in Clare.

“Senator Martin Conway has a special insight into the area of disability, so to does Senator Tony Mulcahy. Both of them also have an involvement in small and medium enterprises. They could be rewarded with a post on sub-committees in these areas,” added Cllr Arkins.

CLARE has six members of the Oireachtas, but it could have been an unprecedented eight, after the election count for the 25th Seanad concluded in Dublin on Friday.

Both Cllr John Crowe (FG) and Declan Kelleher (IND) were just edged out in their bid to join Senators Tony Mulcahy and Martin Conway in the Upper House.

For Sixmilebridgeman Cllr Crowe, it was another agonising defeat, five years after he was edged out in his first national election when contesting the Seanad on the Industrial and Commercial Panel.

Cllr Crowe polled 36,000 first preference votes and, after a mammoth count, was eliminated after the 32nd count when his vote stood at 82,149.

“If he had got three more transfers, Cllr Crowe would have lasted to the 33rd count and then the votes of Labour’s Joe Leydon’s would have elected him,” Cllr Joe Arkins told The Clare People .

“I’m disappointed not to be elected,” admitted Cllr Crowe. “I put in a good campaign and just came up short. It was very close but I’m proud of the performance,” he added.

Meanwhile, Corofin National School principal Declan Kelleher was edged out for one of the four seats on the National University of Ireland Panel.

Mr Kelleher, who was the INTObacked candidate for the election, re- ceived 3,771 votes in the first count, but missed out after the 25th count after he had amassed 5,410 votes.

“I needed about 700 more first preference votes and then a good transfer to get elected,” reflected Mr Kelleher afterwards.

“There were three seats and 27 candidates in the running for them and there was always the chance that I would come fourth out of 27 and just miss out. That’s what happened.

“I was disadvantaged in being a candidate from the west, because there were only 2,000 NUI votes in Clare, while there were 33,000 in Dublin.

“However, I learned an awful lot by contesting the race and I am delighted that I did so,” he added.

RESIDENTS in Newmarket-on-Fergus are being urged to take part in a local survey, the findings of which will play a key role in shaping the future of the village.

Community group Obair is spearheading a community needs assessment, with a view to putting together a range of events for locals. The aim is that those who are struggling with any aspect of their lives will be helped out.

Project co-ordinator Kirsty Horner said the aim of the project is to look at the needs of the community and build on the findings.

“We are targeting specific groups, for example one-parent families, people with disabilities, unemployed males and the elderly. The aim is to create a profile of Newmarket and find out what the needs are in the village and what is here already…what needs to be improved and what needs to be added,” she said.

Kirsty has been working on the project for the past few months and is hoping to have all the information gathered over the coming months. A public meeting will then be held and locals will be encouraged to attend this and present their ideas for the future of the village.

A number of focus groups have been set up and their findings will be made available at a later stage.

“We will form a social inclusion committee, where people who have never been on a committee before will be involved,” she said.

“It is important that people get involved. It’s a chance for them to have their say,” she said.

Kirsty recently completed her Master’s Degree in Partnership Studies at the University of Limerick and completed training with the HSE in relation to compiling a community needs assessment. Arising from this, she got involved in this project.

“We have to build up a profile of the area and put together statistics on social housing units, unemployment and rent supplements in Newmarket,” she said.

“The aim is to help people who are struggling with childcare or who are going back to education. We felt it would be good to have a community fund,” she added.

Anyone wishing to get involved in the project should phone Kirsty in Obair on 061 368030.

CLARE national teachers have vowed to take industrial action over pay and the threatened closure of up to 44 schools in the county, because they say “this country’s current financial Armageddon was caused by reckless banks and unscrupulous developers aided and abetted by governmental policies and not by public servants”.

This militant action by the county’s teachers was heralded at last week’s Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) congress in Sligo, which was attended by over 30 Clare delegates and led by their union leader Sean McMahon.

“We are living in the economic aftermath of national economic sabotage generated by rampant capitalism,” McMahon told The Clare People in a hard-hitting statement in which he declared that the county’s primary school teachers are refusing to bear the brunt of Ireland’s economic meltdown.

“There is no room to reduce teachers pay any further,” he blasted. “If government recommence an attack on public servants and teachers for further wage cuts then I firmly believe we must as a union cast off the Croke Park and all agreements and immediately ballot all members for a sustained campaign of industrial action including the ultimate right of every worker the withdrawal of their labour.”

McMahon, who is Clare’s delegate of the INTO national executive, also said that Clare primary schools would not stand idly by if the Department of Education presses ahead with the controversial McCarthy Report plan to close all schools in the county with under 50 students.

“The threatened closure of schools with under fifty pupils is of particular interest to teachers and communities nationwide,” he said, “Within Clare in particular, as there are 44 such schools. Clare INTO delegates argued that primary consideration should be given to the needs of pupils, their parents and the wider community.

“A significant rationalisation of small rural schools has already taken place in Ireland and any consideration of future school provision must bear that in mind and be particularly sensitive to community wishes,” Mr McMahon said.

Speaking on this issue, the principal of Knockerra National School, Brid Finnegan, said, “rural Ireland has much to thank its small schools for, not least being the cement that binds rural communities together, giving them an identity.

“Rural schools, large or small, or indeed rural Ireland did not drive the financial madness that became the Celtic tiger. This was instead driven by the greed of banks and the self interest of large developers allied to the inaction of central government to regulate. We must not now allow our small, often isolated, rural communities to pay the price in terms of the educational opportunity of our children.”

THE Sisters of Mercy have donated two East Clare properties worth in excess of € 500,000 to Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann who now plan to transform the old Tulla Convent and the Girls’ Primary School in Tulla into a Comhaltas Cultural Centre.

A major fundraising effort was launched in East Clare yesterday, to raise the money needed to develop the building, with a mock wedding planned to take place on June 5.

Plans are currently being prepared to develop the convent buildings into a cultural centre, with particular emphasis on the cultural traditions of Clare. Once complete, the building will become Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann’s seventeenth cultural centre in Ireland.

When completed, the centre will be called ‘Cnoc na Gaoithe’ or the windswept hill.

“This is an exciting and challenging project in which the whole community will have a role,” said Breda McNamara, Cathaoirleach of the project in Tulla.

“We will draw on the experience and contacts which Comhaltas have built up over the years. We intend to make it a shop window for the cultural traditions of Clare which have won international acclaim.”

The director general of Comhaltas, Labhrás O’Murchú, said that this was a “very generous gesture” on the part of the nuns who have made a “huge contribution to the educational and cultural life” of the area.

The Sisters of Mercy’s long history in the East Clare region dates back more than 100 years and a number of sisters still live in the area. These include Sr Eileen Callinan, who chose the name for the new building, Sr Bosco Griffen, Sr Ita Quinn and Sr Annette Sexton.

A number of well-known local faces have already been lined up to take part in the mock wedding, which takes place on June 5. Clare TD Timmy Dooley (FF) will act as priest for the day, while local pharmacist Morna Toibín and mechanic Cyril Hogan will play the roles of Mona Hogan and Bill Tobin for the wedding.

Within the drama, the bride comes from a staunch Fine Gael family and the father of the bride, Paddy Hogan (Cllr Joe Arkins), has serious reservations about the success of this marriage. To stir the pot even more, his wife Bridie (Kitty Leyden) is in love with Fr Falvey – the role played by Fianna Fáil TD Timmy Dooley.

Tickets for the event are available at a cost of € 25 and are available from the Tulla Pharmacy, the Tulla Post Office and Custy’s Music Shop in Ennis or online at www.custysmusic.com.