Category: News

AFTER three years in existence, the position of full-time biodiversity officer at Clare County Council is to be scrapped later this week.

The position, which has been held by Elaine Keegan since its creation in October of 2003, will be down-sized to a part-time position following the failure of Clare County Council to meet the shortfall in budgeting created by the withdrawal of LEADER funding.

The project was funded for last year through a combination of LEADER, Clare County Council and Heritage Council funding. All LEADER funding has been suspended until the end of 2007. It had been hoped that the local authority would put forward what one council member described as the “very small amount of money” required to keep the position viable.

“I find it hard to reconcile this when we appear to have appointed our sixth Director of Services at Clare County Council,” said Clare’s Green Party general election candidate, Cllr Brian Meaney.

“From my understanding, a Director of Services salary would pay for three full-time biodiversity officers. I cannot even contemplate the loss, or even the scaling back, of the biodiversity brief at the council. We should look at the more grandiose and cosmopolitan functions of the council before we cut back on something like this.”

In recent times, Ms Keegan has been responsible for a number of Clare County Council’s most successful projects. These include the recent survey of the cuckoo population in the county, the creation of a CD-ROM for primary schools on Clare Biodiversity and the recently formed Clare Bat Group.

“It is unfortunate that the funding is not available and we will have to scale back,” commented Ms Keegan. “We will carry on and push for more funding in the future. These projects should be funded by the Department of the Environment through the Parks and Wildlife Service as they have stated in their own biodiversity plan that each local authority should have a biodiversity officer.”

The work of the biodiversity officer will be discontinued completely in the beginning of next year, but will be restored in a part-time capacity later in 2007. It is hoped that ongoing projects such as field trips for primary and secondary schools and the work of the Clare Bat group will be continued for the immediate future.

FINE Gael leader Enda Kenny is predicting “a humdinger of an election” in Clare.

“There won’t be a house in County Clare that one or two or four of them won’t visit,” he said referring to the four Fine Gael candidates battling it out in the four-seater constituency.

The leader was facing criticism for adding two more names to the ticket following the convention, during his visit to the county last week.

During the hotly-contested convention, Deputy Pat Breen and former mayor of Shannon Cllr Tony Mulcahy were selected by the Clare delegates, but afterwards the names of former TD Cllr Madeleine Taylor Quinn and Cllr Joe Carey were added by the national executive.

Asked if this move woiuld scupper any chance of a second seat for the party in Clare, Deputy Kenny said, “I never presume to know what the good people of the Banner County are going to decide, that is their absolute remit, but we are going to give them choice. The situation we have in the Fine Gael party is that the executive council mandate the delegates, who are the members of the branch, one man one vote. Every member is entitled to a vote if they are registered for two years to cast their votes for a candidate and the convention selected two.

“The Fine Gael party then polled the constituency, looked at it subsequently and decided to make two additions.

He said the party did the same in Galway East and other constituencies.

“First of all, we are going to be guaranteed intense competition within the party for the votes of the Fine Gael electorate . . . and for those outside of that afterwards. And that is going to mean no effort will be left untouched as it were, to get out there in front of the electorate. We have evidence from the local elections and the European that that kind of internal competition brings out the highest volume of support,” he said, pointing to the success of Mairéad McGuinness and Avril Doyle in the Ireland East European Election.

Mr Kenny also pointed to the recent TG4 poll, which showed a nine per cent increase overall for Fine Gael.

“(It) puts us in the two-seat territory and what we have got to do here in Co. Clare is manage that strategy, so the transfers begin to fall properly and that is a matter for the election strategy committee here in Clare.

“I think this is going to be probably the most competitive and exciting general election campaign for very many years.”

CLARE County Council needs to exercise its “green” buying power and count the environmental cost of where it spends its money, an elected member has said.

Cllr Brian Meaney’s comments came as an international conference in Ireland heard how local authorities had the spending power to make a serious environmental difference.

Junior Environment Minister, Batt O’ Keefe, opened last week’s “Buying Green” one-day workshop on Green Public Procurement in Ireland.

The seminar took place at the Enterprise Ireland Conference Centre in Glasnevin, Dublin, and was convened by ICLEI, the international association of local governments and regional and national government organisations that have made a commitment to sustainable development.

In his opening address, the minister noted that public authorities were one of the largest consumer blocks in Europe, spending some 16 per cent of the EU’s gross domestic product.

In Ireland, the total Government purchasing budget is between €8 billion and €10 billion per annum. This gives “significant leverage” to procurers in the public sector to “move the market” towards the competitive provision of greener products and services, he said.

The Minister added, “The extent to which we integrate the environmental, economic and social dimensions of our policies will determine our future prosperity and quality of life”.

Clare County Council had no representative at the conference and just three other Irish local authorities were represented.

Green Councillor Brian Meaney said that it was “very important that we as a council consider our public procurement policy. First, we need to ensure that we are only buying materials from suppliers who are operating within the planning laws.

“It has happened in the past that this has not been the case. And we must give serious consideration to the carbon dioxide impact of what we are buying.”

A spokeswoman for the County Council’s Environmental section said that Clare County Council’s Waste Minimisation Policy is “coordinated regionally by the Regional Waste Management Office”.

She added that the region was the first to appoint a Regional Industrial Waste Minimisation Advisor.

“The Replacement Waste Management Plan for the Limerick/Clare/ Kerry Region has incorporated clear policies and targets. Objectives include to implement green procurement of office stationery in each local authority, to increase waste prevention and recycling in each local authority, to investigate tendering for the purchase of consumables on a regional basis and to reduce and reuse construction and demolition waste.”

LEADER of the opposition Enda Kenny said he was unaware of the contents of legal proceedings being brought by one of his deputies against a national newspaper.

Enda Kenny (FG) told The Clare People that he would not be involving himself in the proceedings.

“I can’t comment on the situation, because I don’t know the situation where legal representatives for either Deputy Pat Breen or a newspaper are involved in discussions. It is not for me to involve myself in any way in that,” he said.

In a solicitor’s letter to The Irish Examiner , Clare Deputy Breen threatened legal action over its reporting of a parliamentary question during which he inquired about the eligibility of convicted paedophile Joseph Nugent for early release.

The letter also embroils two of his general election running mates in the libel action. The article in question contained critical comments by Cllr Madeleine Taylor-Quinn and Cllr Joe Carey on his tabling of a Dáil question.

The editor of The Irish Examiner Tim Vaughan told The Clare People that the national paper “will defend any litigation” on the matter.

He said the paper was willing to join Deputy Breen’s election colleagues, Cllr Madeleine Taylor-Quinn and Cllr Joe Carey as co-defendants.

“We strongly deny that we have defamed or liable him,” he said.

The Clare People attempted to contact Deputy Breen regarding claims in a Sunday newspaper that he also made inquiries about the early release of a convicted murderer.

The Clare People was told that, “Deputy Breen has no comment to make on any other parliamentary question.” The Fine Gael leader said he was satisfied with the Clare deputy’s explanation as to why he tabled the “Nugent” question, but believed he would have done it differently in hindsight.

“When people are elected to the Dáil, irrespective of what party they represent or none, they have a democratic right to ask any question that they want. Now Pat Breen clarified on national radio that in no circumstance was he seeking the early release of a convicted paedophile.

“You can question the phraseology used in the question and I assume as the Taoiseach said at his Ard Fheis speech that in hindsight people would live perfect lives if they knew certain things were going to happen,” he contined.

“So I’m happy that Pat Breen was in no way attempting to seek the early release of a convicted paedophile,” he added.

“It is the right of every deputy to ask a question but probably, in hindsight, I would say Deputy Breen might have phrased his question differently.”

Deputy Kenny believes that the issue has done no permanent damage to the party in Clare.

“We have had some discussion ourselves about the strategy that I want the candidates to adopt, and I want to move on from this and I want everyone to understand the fundamentals of that, and that we have a situation where we have all candidates fighting the Government on the issues that matter for Clare, and that campaign will be sufficiently strong to secure a second seat for us, led by Deputy Breen.”

THE Minister for Transport, Martin Cullen has confirmed that the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) intends to issue its recommendation on a ‘survival plan’ for Shannon later this month.

In response to a Dáil question from Green Party leader, Trevor Sargent, Minister Cullen said that the LRC had recently overseen an intense round of negotiations between unions and management.

Both unions and management declined to comment on the talks, which have taken place under an LRC-imposed blackout on press covAER ARANN is to abandon its link between Shannon and Dublin for the second time.

The decision leaves Shannon as the only national airport without a connection to the capital.

The pull-out comes days after Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny, told a gathering of Clare business people that an early-morning link to Dublin was erage.

Minister Cullen said: “If Shannon Airport is to develop as a successful and sustainable business, it is clear that one of the issues that must be addressed in its business plan is the airport’s very high cost base.

“Negotiations with the unions at Shannon on the cost cutting changes that would be required to ensure the viability of the airport have been underway for some time now.

“In this, the parties have been helped by the Labour Relations Commission, the Labour Court and the National Implementation Body.”

The talks between unions and management have been ongoing for vital.

Now the Shannon Chamber of Commerce has called for the route to be subsidised, as is the case in Kerry, Cork and Galway. The airline has taken the decision because passenger numbers on the route are so low as to be uneconomical.

Changing the current flight time to earlier in the day wouldn’t work because an earlier time would be impossible under Aer Arann’s aircraft one year and in September, the offer of a €30 million ‘survival plan’ for Shannon was withdrawn by the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) after unions failed to ballot members on the offer.

The move by both parties to accept the invitation of the chief executive of the LRC, Kieran Mulvey followed the intervention of the National Implementation Body (NIB).

The NIB has imposed a four week deadline for the talks to be completed. At the start of the talks, the DAA’s Director for Change, John Horgan confirmed that the €30 million was no longer on the table. The two sides have held over 50 meetings scheduling, according to the airline.

Speaking to the Shannon Chamber of Commerce dinner on Friday, Enda Kenny said that he would give every encouragement to any airline that would take on an early service from Shannon the Dublin.

“This is extremely important to facilitate business. This has been said to me time and again as I met people on this visit. Passengers need to be able to get to Dublin in time to do in the past year, with the DAA warning that large cost savings will have to be made to avoid Shannon losing €130 million over the next 10 years.

The DAA’s plan for Shannon includes cutting the workforce of 520 through 200 voluntary redundancies and to out-source work at a number of areas at the airport, including catering.

In the deal that was on the table, the workers who opted to remain in their jobs were to receive lump payments of up to €10,000. The voluntary redundancy package gives staff with over 24 years experience a €100,000 pay-off, while it also entitles workers to their company pensions at 55. business and get back the same day.”

Chamber Chief Executive, Triona McInerney said that there was still, “a real need for an alternative method of transport between this area and Dublin. This is evidenced by the number of Clare people who fly from Galway.”

Ms McInerney said that the chamber “would be happy to facilitate focus groups for any airline thinking of setting up a route. But it would have to be planned to be responsive to the needs of the business community, taking into account office hours and the time it takes to get from Dublin Airport into the city.”

She added that the route, “should be subsidised. This is the case in other airports under the Public Service Obligation.”

The Fine Gael leader also outlined his proposal to site a Transatlantic Foundation in Shannon to “draw together academia, politics and business with a view to conflict resolution.”

Meanwhile, Minister for Transport, Martin Cullen, is to make a fresh bid to clinch a bi-lateral deal between Ireland and the US while the Open Skies agreement is on hold.

The deal would see the current practice of having one flight to or from Shannon for every flight to or from Dublin dropped in favour of one Shannon flight for every three Dublin flights and access for Aer Lingus to three new US gateways.

ENDA Kenny is predicting a twoseat win in the Clare constituency in light of recent polls and the party’s successful run in the local and European elections.

The Fine Gael leader has admitted, however, betting on a Mayo win in this year’s All Ireland following the Connacht team’s success in defeating Dublin.

But Deputy Kenny is adamant that the party can succeed and on Thursday last promised to fulfil for the party faithful their dreams for Clare if elected Taoiseach.

First at the Mayo man’s door, if he is successful, will be Cllr Joe Arkins, who will be asking him to fulfil his promise to him on the hospital.

Cllr Arkins asked “when Fine Gael are in power” will Ennis General Hospital be guaranteed continuing and developing consultant-led Accident and Emergency service and appropriate diagnostic services?

“A simple ‘yes’ will do me fine,” he said at the public meeting with Deputy Kenny in the Auburn Lodge Hotel on Thursday last.

The leader received a round of applause as he said, “You have my word on that.”

Deputy Kenny also promised to put Ennistymon Community School on a critical building list, much to the appreciation of Cllr Martin Conway.

The Fine Gael leader also promised Cllr Conway that he would visit the Doolin Rescue Service to see for himself the “appalling conditions” in which they worked.

He promised a special SSIA scheme for first-time buyers so they could accumulate a deposit for a new home, to abolish stamp duty on houses under €400,000 and to ensure a set standard for building houses and granting planning permission in all counties.

THE chief executive of Shannon Development, Kevin Thompstone has confirmed that the agency’s new corporate plan will be published early in the New Year.

In recent weeks, staff at the semistate body have been briefed by management in relation to aspects of the plan.

Arising from the embargo by staff not to co-operate with the new mandate, they had no input into the formulation of the plan and it was drafted by the Shannon Development executives.

Speaking in Shannon last Thursday on the announcement of 350 new jobs for Shannon with the establishment of US e-commerce firm, Digital River, Mr Thompstone said: “We would hope that the new corporate plan would be published early in the new year.

“Minister Michael Martin has recently completed the clarification process and we are now in the middle of a change management process as part of the transition period.”

He added: “When we have that bedded down and gone through Human Resources, then we will be coming

into the public domain with the cor porate plan.”

Mr Thompstone welcomed Minister Martin’s decision to allow Shannon Development retain control of the Shannon Free Zone in the revised mandate announced in September.

He said: “The Shannon Free Zone is a product that we have developed since the early days of the company – it is something that has been reinvented and we see a bright future for the Free Zone as illustrated by our ability to attract companies like Digital River today

Mr Thompstone also sounded optimistic on additional jobs coming to Shannon.

“We have a pretty good pipeline of projects at the moment.

“There are other projects that we are negotiating at the moment,” he said.

THE 47-year old victim of child rapist Joseph Nugent has called upon Deputy Pat Breen to drop his proposed libel action against The Irish Examiner .

The victim said yesterday, “If Deputy Breen sues and goes to court, it will bring it all back. The victims have gone through enough. Deputy Breen is as well off to forget it.”

On Sunday, the victim met with Deputy Breen in Doonbeg. He said yesterday, “I asked him not to be going to court and dragging in Cllr Madeleine Taylor Quinn and he told me that Cllr Taylor Quinn needed to apologise first.”

Asked to comment yesterday, Cllr Madeleine Taylor-Quinn would only say, “I hope that this controversy does not continue for the sake of the victims.”

Party leader Enda Kenny was asked during his constituency visit to Ennis last Thursday should Deputy Breen withdraw his threatened libel action following the call from the primary victim in the case to do so.

In response, Mr Kenny said, “That is a matter between Deputy Breen’s advisers and the legal advisers for the other side. I cannot comment on a case that it is the subject of interest between Deputy Breen’s advisors and the advisors for the newspapers.”

Deputy Breen sent a legal letter to The Irish Examiner threatening to sue for libel in relation to an article that contained comments by Cllr Taylor-Quinn and Cllr Joe Carey, which were critical of Deputy Breen’s tabling the question inquiring into the eligibility of early release of Nugent.

However, editor of The Irish Examiner , Tim Vaughan, denies libel and has stated that the paper will staunchly defend any libel proceedings.

In an article last Thursday, The Irish Examiner, writing on Deputy Breen’s move, repeated the alleged libel in the article.

Co-ordinator of the Limerick Rape Crisis Centre, Miriam Duffy said that, “Deputy Breen is now in a position to understand the experience of survivors and to realise the sensitivity needed in dealing with these issues”.

She added that Deputy Breen “needs to be aware of his powerful position and the power of any public authority figures against the relatively unpowerful position of a survivor”.

RESIDENTS concerned over the re-development of the historic Old Military Barracks in Ennis say the development will attract increased levels of anti-social behaviour.

In a statement, the Old Military Barracks Resident Group have called on local councillors to support their concerns, which also include a reduction in green space.

Following a meeting with Ennis Town Council officials last week, residents say their concerns over the development have not been fully considered and that the issue of antisocial behaviour has already been raised with the estate manager. Pointing out that five people with disabilities live in the area, the group say the level of development will negatively impact on residents’ quality of life.

Ennis Town Council hopes to redevelop the Old Military Barracks on the Kilrush Road as a three-storey building consisting of two twobedroomed apartments and two twobedroomed duplex units.

There are also plans to renovate the existing Guard House, a protected structure, which is attached to Avondale House, to incorporate three two-bedroomed terraced houses. Ancillary storage units, rear boundary walls, parking areas and pathways are also included in the plans.

However, residents have voiced their reservations over the scale of the development. In a submission to the council in September, the group outlined their concerns and called on the council to clarify who owned the legal deeds to the area.

“While we welcome the attention that Ennis Town Council is giving to the derelict site, we have strong reservations over the large development being proposed. Seven units is the large number being proposed, three of which are being built on the existing derelict site. Four of these units will be built on the only green space available to the residents.

“As there are seven units being proposed, this will bring extra traffic into the area. One can expect an increase of approximately 10 cars. This is adding to the current number in existence already. There are a number of single story houses in the estate and this new development will overshadow the homes of current residents.”

The issue is expected to be discussed at the December meeting of Ennis Town council.

FINE Gael TD Pat Breen has blamed the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, and sections of the media for the storm of controversy surrounding his tabling of a Dáil question into the early release of a convicted child rapist.

Deputy Breen gave a written statement to the primary victim of sex offender, Joseph Nugent, when the two met in Doonbeg on Sunday.

In the letter, Deputy Breen does not apologise for tabling the question and instead focuses on the role Minister McDowell and the media have had in the affair.

In the letter, Deputy Breen states, “This issue would never have been the subject of public debate if it had been handled in the normal way.

“However, the Minister for Justice in his Dáil reply provided unusual and extensive detail about the case, which clearly identified those involved.

“This directly led to it becoming a public issue because certain sections of the tabloid media saw an opportunity to create sensational headlines without showing any regard for the pain and suffering it would cause to the victims.

“Thankfully, other sections of the media acted responsibly and treated the issue with sensitivity.

“I genuinely regret the pain and suffering that you have been caused, not only by the terrible crimes of the perpetrator, but also the fact that you had to relive the terrible experiences because of the actions of certain sections of the media.

“Although, it is not under my control, I hope for your sake that there will be no more debate on the matter.”

Explaining the circumstances around the tabling the question, Deputy Breen said, “I was approached by a relative of Joseph Nugent who was seeking clarification as to the exact situation in relation to Joseph Nugent.

“The family was totally confused about the matter, having received conflicting information on different occasions. It is usual for a TD to be approached on an issue such as this and I agreed to table a written question to seek this information on their behalf.”

The victim told The Clare People yesterday that he was satisfied with the letter from Deputy Breen.

“Deputy Breen told me that he regretted asking the Dáil question. We had a cup of tea and I think both of us want to get on with our lives now.”

Nugent is currently serving a sixyear term in Portlaoise for the buggery and indecent assault of two young west Clare boys.

Last month, Deputy Breen tabled a Dáil question inquiring when the 74year old, Nugent would be eligible for early release. Minister McDowell said that due to the seriousness of the offences, he would not be authorising any early release.