Category: News

CLARE’S Oireachtas representation could be boosted to record levels on Thursday when the votes to make up the 24th Seanad Éireann are counted.

A record four Clare candidates are contesting the election with former Mayor of Clare Tony Mulcahy from Shannon and former Irish National Teachers Organisation National President Declan Kelleher from Corofin the two leading candidates for seats in the Upper House.

Fine Gael’s Cllr Mulcahy, who doubled his first preference total in the recent General Election, is contesting the Labour panel where 11 seats are up for grabs while independent candidate Mr Kelleher is bidding to win one of the three National University of Ireland seats.

Mr Kelleher has vowed to lead the charge towards reforming the Seanad if he follows in the footsteps of Joe O’Toole in winning a Seanad seat for the INTO.

“I believe that it can be reformed and through the presence of independent voices, can hold the government to account for its actions,” he told The Clare People . “My campaign is to bring about a reformed Seanad with just 30 members who would be elected directly by the people and would therefore be far more independent of political control,” he said this Tuesday’s final polling day.

Clare’s two other candidates are Fine Gael’s Martin Conway and John Crowe, who are contesting the Administrative and Industrial and Commercial panels respectively.

Cllr Conway is considered to be up against it being the first Oireachtas representative from Ennistymon since fellow Fine Gael man Deputy Bill Murphy served on Dáil Éireann from 1951 to ‘67. This is because of the presence of two Fine Gael candidates in the contest who lost their seats in the recent General Election – Tom Sheehan in Kerry South and Michael Darcy in Wexford.

With only seven seats up for grabs in the Administrative Panel, Sheehan and Darcy national profile as former members of Dáil Éireann could give them at a distinct advantage over Cllr Conway.

Cllr Crowe is contesting his second successive Seanad Election and could be a dark horse to win one of the nine seats on the Industrial and Commericial panel.

He narrowly missed out on election in 2007, while his profile as one of the Clare members on the General Council of County Councils could yet garner him enough votes to secure election.

HUNDREDS of Alpaca’s from all over Ireland will descend on Ennis this Sunday in search of the much coveted Anna May Driscoll Cup.

The cup, which is the premier award for Alpaca farming in Ireland, is named after the Ballyvaughan nurse and Alpaca farmer Anna May Driscoll, who died in 2007.

It is the highlight of the Alpaca Association of Ireland (AAI) national show which comes to Clare for the first time ever this year.

“We are delighted to bring the Irish National Show to Ennis. This will be our fourth national and we have been looking for an indoor arena in case of rain,” said AAI President, Damien Dyar.

“This allows us to have an early show before the alpacas are shorn. The public will be interested to see the alpacas with full fleece on as opposed to shorn. We are very grateful to the Ennis Showgrounds Committee for allowing us to use their premises.”

As well as being the President of the AAI, Damien is also the founder of Burren Alpaca – the Fanore-based company which he set up with his partner, the late Anna May Driscoll.

This year’s show will take place at the Ennis Showgrounds and will be judged by UK Alpaca expert Jay Holland, who is accredited by the British Alpaca Society as a fleece and animal judge.

The show will be open to visitors from 9am to 4pm and the judging of various classes will be in the morning.

It is expected that the Supreme Champion will be judged about mid day. As well as the judging there is also a display of fleece and alpaca products.

Alpacas are bred for their fine fleece which is as soft as cashmere. Peruvian Alpacas were introduced to Ireland only 11 years ago by Clare breeders Burren Alpaca and are steadily growing in popularity.

SHANNON recorded the highest temperature in Ireland this year, on Thursday afternoon – and we are in for quite a good week ahead across Clare.

Temperatures reached 22.7 degrees Celsius at the weather station at Shannon Airport at lunchtime on Thursday. This was the hottest day of the year and is the third highest April temperature in Clare in 50 years. It was also the highest April temperature since 2003.

Temperatures in Ennis peaked at 21.5 degrees on the same day, according to meteorology figures. County Clare fared much better than other parts of the country last week. Temperatures lowered to 12.4 degrees in Malin Head in Donegal.

However, temperatures aren’t likely to reach those highs this week. Predicted temperatures for the next few days range from 11 degrees (Friday) to 16 degrees (Thursday). Editor of the website www.irishweatheronline. com, Mark Dunphy, said this month is predicted to break records.

“It’s not going to be too bad this week. It is going to get thundery towards the weekend with heavy showers, but it will be a largely bright week ahead. Temperatures could hit 20 degrees in Clare by the weekend,” said Mr Dunphy.

“Other hot April months would have been 1975, 1984 and 1990. This was the third highest. We are on track for the warmest April on record,” he said. “These figures are according to meteorological stations across the country.”

Mr Dunphy, a public relations consultant, set up the website last November and since it was established has commanded 7,500 followers on Twitter.

Indeed if the figures for Clare so far this year are anything to go by, we are in for a bright summer ahead. According to Met Éireann, the weather station at Shannon recorded the highest sunshine levels since 1955 in March. The monthly total of sun recorded there was more than 160 hours.

AS KILRUSH commemorated the 95th anniversary of the Easter Rising on Sunday, a woman from the town has told a remarkable tale of how her father celebrated his wedding on the eve of the rebellion before heading off to join Padraic Pearse’s garrison in Dublin’s GPO.

Belfast-born Thomas McMullen, who lived and worked in Kilrush for many years before his death over 40 years ago, was also one of the few Catholics to work on the building of the Titanic before joining the Irish Volunteers and taking part in the independence struggle.

“My father married Annie McGill on Easter Sunday 1916 in Ss Peter & Paul’s Church in Belfast,” Teresa O’Loughlin told The Clare People . “He got word that night from Padraig Pearse that the Rising was going ahead and he made his way down to Dublin on Easter Monday and was garrisoned in the GPO for the Rising.

“My mother didn’t mind him going off to the Rising. They were both of the one mind that Ireland should be free, so he had her blessing when he went off to the the GPO to fight for Ireland.

“Many, many years later I was in Dublin for Easter Rising commemoration and we went to the National Gallery and saw photograph of my father with Countess Markievicz.

“He was captured sometime after the Rising and was put in jail. He was involved in the whole War of Independence and he went on hunger strike for six weeks and suffered with his stomach for the rest of his life after that,” the 82-year-old from Henry Street, Kilrush added.

Ms O’Loughlin was born in Mitchelstown where her father worked in the local creamery, before the family moved to Kilrush when he took up an appointment with the West Clare Creamery.

“He lived in Kilrush until he died aged 74 in 1969, but he never really spoke to us about his role in the Rising. It was only my mother who’d tell us something about it. ‘Come on now,’ he’d say when we’d press him to talk about his part in the Rising. ‘Don’t fill the children’s heads with this stuff,’ he’d say.

“‘I’ll tell ye all about the Titanic.’ He told us there were awful things written on the hull. He knew because he worked on the building of it; one of the few Catholics who worked on it, but he had a great friend who got him a job in Harland and Wolff,” added Ms O’Loughlin.

THE 170 new jobs announced by the Cregg Group and Zagg in the Shannon Free Zone could be just the tip of the iceberg – says Managing Director Zagg International Brian S Packer.

According to Mr Packer, who was in Clare to officially announce the deal on Friday, the total Shannon based workforce from the deal could exceed 300 before the end of 2015.

Mr Packer, who is the overseeing the company’s expansion in the European, Middle Eastern and African market, had credited Ireland’s under threat 12.5 per cent corporation tax as one of the key reason for going forward with the Shannon investment.

“There are many reasons why we picked Shannon, but Ireland’s com- petitive corporation tax rate definitely sealed the deal for us,” he said.

“We will be manufacturing, shipping, marketing and selling our products from this base [in Shannon] and will be creating job opportunities, both directly and indirectly, over the next few years as we have at our US headquarters for Zagg.

“While we will be recruiting for a number of key positions, the majority of jobs will be created indirectly, as Zagg International will create a good number of jobs through our partnerships and key vendors such as Cregg.

“In total we expect over 300 jobs to be created over the next four years.”

Based in Utah Zagg Incorporated manufacture and distributing protective coverings for small handheld electrical such as i-pods and mobile phones.

The company had a revenue of more than $60 million in 2010 and it is hoped that this major expansion, which will be coordinated from their new European Headquarters in Shannon, could double that figure.

Zagg’s Shannon facility will carry out the sales and marketing as well as product design and administrative activities for the new expansion.

The partnership with the Cregg Group will the Clare company carry out all the manufacturing, assembly, packaging and logistics work for the expansion.

Two of Zaggs flagship products – invisibleSHIELD and ZAGGskins – will be produced by Cregg in Shannon. Cregg will also be responsible for the distribution of the full range of Zagg products in Ireland and Europe.

AHEAD of a walk aimed at promoting greater awareness of suicide, an Ennis-based businessman has spoken openly of his brother’s death from suicide.

‘Darkness into Light’, a walk organised by Pieta House, will take place in Ennis on May 7. The 5km walk will start at 4.30am and follow a route through a forest trail in Lees Road sports and amenity park.

Pieta House provides therapy and counselling services at five centres around Ireland, including Mungret, Limerick.

Speaking at the walk’s launch in Ennis last Tuesday Joan Freeman CEO of Pieta House, explained, “It starts at half four in Lees Road and just as you are coming over the finish line the dawn is breaking. It’s a really symbolic walk which symbolises what we do at Pieta House which is bringing people from darkness into light.”

Tom McEvoy, a coordinator for Pieta House in Clare, became involved with the organisation after the death of his brother Adrian (28) in 2007. Mr McEvoy, his wife and three children moved to Ennis in 2002.

Tom explained that the family were in the process of building a house in Roslevan when Adrian moved home from Australia.

He said, “He’s a very talented joiner, carpenter. Ultimately I asked him would he mind joining me for the build process. He was delighted to take part in that.”

In July 2007, Tom and his family left Ennis for a diving holiday of Inishbofin, County Mayo. “We left a list for Adrian to work away with it on our new house, which we hadn’t moved into at the time. He ended up wanting to stay there and do the work and we were delighted with that. I texted him a few times during the week and didn’t get a reply which wasn’t really unusual,” he said.

When the family returned home, Tom was still unable to make contact with his brother.

“I went to see a match on the telly with my brother-in-law. The Dubs were playing at the time. I got a call from my wife that she had had a visit from An Garda Síochana to say that they were after finding a person and she wanted me to come home.

“I went and identified him and said how sorry I was that this had happened to him and that ultimately we wanted the best of him.”

Tom said that what happened to his brother is typical of many suicides. “We have numerous experiences like that in our community of young people showing an outward sign that they are okay and everything’s fine but ultimately they are in bits and they are in a very dark place,” he added.

Tom said that until the country learns to face the trauma of suicide, “we’re going to end up in the same boat this time next year and so on and so forth”.

AN 18-year-old woman involved in what gardaí described as a “nasty assault” at Ennis courthouse last year has been told by a judge to stay out of trouble.

Rosanne Joyce (18) with an address at Dún na hInse, Ennis, appeared at a sitting of Ennis District Court on Wednesday on charges of assault and shoplifting.

Inspector Tom Kennedy told the court that the assault had occurred just outside the courtroom when the defendant attacked a woman who had just given evidence against her brother.

Inspector Kennedy said Gardaí were forced to intervene, adding, “It was quite a nasty incident.”

Solicitor for the accused, Tara Godfrey said her client was very young and impressionable and had reacted to an allegation about her family.

Referring to the charge of shoplifting, Ms Godfrey said her client had been in the company of two other people at Dunnes Stores when clothes to the value of € 46 were taken.

Ms Godfrey said her client had pleaded guilty to shoplifting and that the probation services had previously highlighted the difficulties facing her client and her family.

The court was told that the woman had a number of previous convictions, including several for theft.

Judge Timothy Lucey said that the woman “seems full of good intentions but the facts contradict this”.

Responding to Judge Lucey’s question about whether she understood that she faced going to jail if she continued her current pattern of behaviour, the woman replied “yeah”.

Judge Lucey said he was enforcing the probation act “primarily because of her age”.

He told the woman that she was “starting with a clean slate” and advised her to stay out of trouble.

THE Doonbeg Drama Group secured a massive seven nominations at this weekend’s All Ireland Drama Finals in Wexford but sadly were unable to bring any awards home to the Banner County.

Their production of the comedy ‘Say Cheese’ attracted 600 people to the Wexford Opera House and was described by the organisers as the audiences’ favourite. To gain seven nomination was a triumph for the group – considering that comedies rarely feature in the All Ireland Final and receive very few nominations and overall awards.

“The crowds loved it – they said that it was the only laugh that they had all week long. We managed to attract 600 people into the Opera House to watch the show which was second highest number for any show throughout the All Ireland,” said John Igoe of the Doonbeg Drama Group.

“We had a lot of nominations, which was a achievement in itself, but unfortunately we didn’t win any overall awards. To get to the final at all was an achievement but then to go down so well with the audience was great – we were definitely the people’s favourite.

“Very few drama groups will take on a comedy and fewer still will get as far as the All Ireland Final with a comedy. There is a feeling out there that adjudicators don’t really vote for comedies – but the audience certainly do love it.

“But it was great to see people laughing down there this week. We got a great response to the show and that is the main thing.”

Nominated from the Doonbeg Drama Group were Mary J Egan for best actress, Ann-Marie Doyle for best supporting actress and the scholarship award, Helena Keane for best supporting actress, Mark May for best actor, Michael McInerney and Peter Smith for best lighting and the backstage team for the best set award.

This achievement comes just weeks after the Doonbeg Drama Festival celebrated its 50th year entertaining the people of Clare.

A FATHER-OF-TWO, charged with the murder of a woman in North Clare last month, has made his second appearance in court.

Colm Deely (39), of School Road, Ballyvaughan, appeared before Ennistymon District Court, sitting in Kilrush, on Wednesday. He is charged with the murder 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.

Mr Deely was brought before Ennis District Court last Thursday week, charged with murdering Ms McCarthy on March 28 last. He was remanded in custody to reappear in court last Wednesday.

Inspector John Galvin applied to Wednesday’s court to have the accused remanded in custody for a further fortnight. Defence solicitor Gearóid Geraghty did not object. Judge Joseph Mangan granted the application and remanded Mr Deely in custody to appear again in court on April 27.

The court heard previously that when charged, Mr Deely said, “I’m very sorry for what happened”.

The court was told the accused is a part-time Fás worker employed three days a week. Free legal aid was granted at the initial court hearing.

EFFORTS to reintroduce the Golden Eagle into Ireland will be supported by two days of dedicated fundraising at the Burren Birds of Prey Centre in Ballyvaughan later this week.

The fundraising and awareness campaign will take place at the centre, which is located at the Aillwee Caves, with the organisers hoping to raise more than € 3,500 to help fund the ongoing efforts to reintroduce the spectacular bird into Ireland.

The centre is hoping to raise the money to fund the purchase of a satellite pack, which provides much needed data on the movements of the Golden Eagles which have been reintroduced into Ireland.

All money raised will be donated to the Golden Eagle Trust, who will use the satellite pack to monitor the movements of White Tailed Sea Eagles, which they have just reintroduced into the Kerry National Park.

“We were very privileged last year at the centre to welcome one of the released white tails to join our own resident Sea Eagle, Sika, during her flying display,” said Barbara Faulkner of the Aillwee Cave.

“Albeit a coincidence, this is exactly what the aims of the reintroduction programme are and the satellite packs will enhance these aims even further. It is hoped, by raising awareness about the effectiveness of these satellite packs, that we can reach our target over the coming months.”

The two days of activity will take place from noon to 5pm this Thursday and Friday, April 21 and 22. Activities over the two days will include informative talks given on the Golden Eagle Trust Reintroduction Programme and the Raptor Tracking Efforts, while the Irish Hawking Club will be on hand with information on the history of falconry in Ireland.

There will also be a number of activities for children, including face painting, parrot peg and nest box making. There will be two artisan woodland workers in residence to help and guide visitors through the intricacies of woodwork while flying displays will be at 12 noon, 2pm and 4pm.