Category: News

VISITORS to the Mid Western Regional Hospital Ennis can still bring fresh cut flowers when visiting patients, but are warned to leave the gift at home if the patient is transferred to Limerick.

The new policy, described by a spokesperson for the HSE Mid Western area as a matter of hygienic house keeping, results from a belief that infection control in Limerick’s hospital is more urgent than in Ennis or Nenagh.

“Concerns of hygiene are sharper in cases of acute hospitals,” a HSE spokesman said.

The ban in the Mid Western Regional Hospital Limerick will begin on Easter Monday April 17.

The latest national hygiene audit gave the hospital a poor result, at 65 per cent.

The ban on fresh flowers is now commonplace in many acute hospitals, according to the spokesman.

Fears of allergies, accidents arising from water splashing or broken vases, as well as infection, are among the reasons cited to support the ban.

Patient support groups have warned that the ban on flowers could seriously wilt patient’s spirits.

Another critic is a member of the Department of Clinical Microbiology, in Beaumont Hospital.

In a letter to The Hospital Infection Society’s publication, Mr H Humphrey said that infection could be acquired from potted plants or flowers and could arise where organisms colonised the water, or soil,

“However, for the vast majority of patients in hospitals, or in other healthcare facilities, fresh flowers, or potted plants do not represent a risk of infection,” he added.

“Fresh flowers often bring much pleasure and joy to patients who are ill and who may be depressed. Indeed for terminally ill patients, it may be their last chance to see flowers and inhale their scent.”

Separately, a new traffic management system at the hospital in Dooradoyle will see an increase in the cost of paid parking.

The €1.20 all-day fee will increase to €1 per hour, from May 1.

Euro Car Parks have been awarded the contract to operate the new traffic management system. There are no plans to impose pay parking at Ennis general hospital.

CLARE’s three main towns are putting final touches to their ceremonies to commemorate the 1916 Rising.

Ennis Town Council will hold a civic ceremony to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the rising, on Easter Sunday, April 16. The ceremony will take place at the 1916 Monument, Club Bridge, Abbey Street, at noon.

The civic ceremony will involve the attendance of the Army Reserve to raise the National Flag followed by a reading of the 1916 Proclamation in English and Irish. Ecumenical Prayers in English and Irish will be said for all those who died. Ennis Mayor, Cllr Frankie Neylon (Ind), will lay a wreath at the monument. The Ennis Brass Band will also be in attendance and will play the Last Post, Reveille and the National Anthem.

Kilrush will also honour the men and women of 1916 with a special ceremony. At 1 pm on Easter Sunday, independent TD James Breen will give an oration before a wreath is laid at the Town Hall. Shannon will put the final touches to its plans tonight. Unlike the other areas, the people of Shannon will pay tribute to those who died on the actual anniversary of the Rising, April 24. Early indications suggest the ceremony will take place in the early evening, with the raising of the flag. Once again the Last Post and Reveille will be played before those attending adjourn to the library to listen to speakers on this date in Irish history. Local children may then play a short film followed by some poetry.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern announced at the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis that the Government wanted next Easter to “be an expression of our pride as a nation in all those who took part in the Rising and the subsequent War of Independence”.

“As far as I am concerned, Collins, DeValera, Griffith and many of their leading contemporaries, were all great Irishmen, who played an equal and honourable part in winning Ireland’s independence, as did many distinguished women patriots,” he said.

“It is my firm intention to mark, in the most inclusive possible manner, the passage into history of both these great achievements and deep wounds associated with the transition to political independence.”

BUSINESS leaders in the Mid West have called for a multi-million tourism campaign which would last a minimum of seven years and promote Shannon Airport in North America.

They say that for the airport to meet the challenges of the new Open Skies deal, it must be left debt-free, be properly resourced and given a first class infrastructure.

The demands are contained in a report on the impact of Open Skies, launched yesterday.

The document is the result of a survey of companies in Limerick and Clare carried out by IBEC and the Chambers of Commerce in Ennis and Shannon.

Entitled ‘Embracing The Challenges and Opportunities of Open Skies’, the report calls for:

*Shannon International Airport to become a fully resourced, debt-free and independent entity.

* Adequate financing and cost competitiveness, so as to provide a full range of supports for airlines to develop new scheduled transatlantic services on a year-round basis.

* Accelerated Infrastructure delivery so that Shannon’s catchment is expanded significantly, creating a vibrant market demand for transatlantic services and ensuring it can compete with Dublin.

*A major multi-million annual tourism campaign in North America to be undertaken for a minimum 7-year period, which promotes Shannon’s transatlantic services as the gateway to the greater West of Ireland region, commencing in Autumn 2006.

A total of 123 companies, employing 19,756 people in 2005, responded to the survey. Total turnover of respondents amounted to €6.12 billion in the same year.

Of the 123 respondent companies, thirty were US and 3 Canadian multinationals.

The report also found that a serious reduction in connectivity could impact over the medium to longerterm on future investment plans of individual companies with knock on implications for employment in the West of Ireland.

IBEC’s mid-west Business Development Executive, Donncha Hughes, briefed an audience in the Shannon Shamrock Hotel in Bunratty at the launch of the report last night.

“Shannon International Airport is a major driver of economic growth firstly in attracting companies to the region and secondly in providing cost effective international access for companies located in the catchment area,” he said.

“To illustrate the importance of Shannon International Airport, 85 – almost 70 per cent – of respondents indicated that they agreed that ‘the current level of access and connectivity from Shannon Airport to the US and Canada is vital for the company’s continued competitiveness’

THE Clare branch of Macra Na Feirme has expressed concern over the attitude taken by many young Irish people towards alcohol.

A survey produced by the young farmers organisation revealed that 57 per cent of young people did not consider themselves to be “binge drinking” unless they consumed ten or more alcoholic drinks in one sitting.

This is despite the fact that the World Health Organisation defines binge drinking as consuming in excess six drinks in a single session. Less than one fifth of young people surveyed agreed with this definition.

More than three hundred people between the ages of seventeen and thirty five years of age were interviewed as part of the Macra na Feirme national survey.

According to the head of Macra in Clare, Joe Carrig, attitudes in the county could even be worse than those nationally.

“People in the late 20’s and 30’s seemed to have a more responsible attitude towards alcohol,” said Mr Carrig.

“There are a lot of young people in Clare, so I’d say that the attitudes would be worse here if anything.”

More than 53 per cent of those surveyed admitted that due to alcohol consumption, they did not remember how they got home following a night out, on at least one occasion. The survey also revealed that the majority of young drinkers consumed alcohol more than once a week.

“It is very dangerous if you wake up after a night out and don’t remember where you have been or what you have done,” said Mr Carrig.

“I was really surprised with the numbers. It could lead people into dangerous situations, or unplanned pregnancy.”

Mr Carrig said that while the attitudes of young people towards alcohol was a concern in every area of society, people in urban areas tended to be at greater risk than those living in rural communities.

“It’s not just in Clare, there is a problem everywhere.

“I don’t think that it is as bad in rural areas. In a town or city, a quiet person can fall through the cracks, but there is more support available from different organisations in country areas.”

The survey also revealed that only ten per cent of young people considered themselves to be non-drinkers.

A NEW service which will allow people seeking planning permission to get advice from council officials has just been set up. Experts in planning on the council’s staff can now advise applicants on whether their site is suitable, before prospective homebuilders spend a fortune.

Many people who submit applications fall at the first hurdle when they discover that their site is not suitable for building. If other basic requirements are not met, the exercise of applying for planning permission can become a costly one.

Planning officials last week told a meeting of councillors from the Scariff area that the new pre-planning service was been made available to applicants and details of how to avail of it would be posted on the Clare County Council website in the next couple of weeks.

“What we want people to do is provide us with the most detailed location map they can and as much information about the application as possible at that early stage,” a spokesman for the planning section of the council said.

“We can then at least advise them on what they need, or whether there are any special considerations concerning the site they have chosen. And all of the details of pre-planning meetings will now be recorded on a file, so that the details of the meetings will be retained even if the planning personnel change”.

The spokesman added that while giving a pre-planning to every applicant would probably not be possible at this stage, it was hoped that with the addition of two replacement planning staff next month, the section would have more resources.

The service was free and applications would either be given a meeting or a written reply on their enquiry, depending on which was most suitable, a spokesman said.

Details will be posted on the council’s Website in the next two weeks.

Cllr Pat Hayes (FF) welcomed the new service, which he said could save applicants costly mistakes and a lot of time.

“But I would hope that where written answers are provided, the information will be clearly stated. I have seen some letters sent to applicants and even though I know something about the planning process, I couldn’t understand it. It can be very difficult for people to understand the terms used in planning matters.”

A LEGAL service which specialises in dealing with human rights and refugee issues has opened for business in Ennis.

Pendred and Co. solicitors, the brainchild of campaigning litigator, Conleth Pendred, will offer for the first time, a totally independent private service, which is not linked in any way to government agencies.

Pendred decided to set up in Ennis after his Dublin firm began seeing a lot of clients from here and from Galway. Clients whose income from Government was just €19 a week, were travelling to Dublin to ask for Pendred’s help in their applications to stay in this country.

Pendred had learned that there was a large immigrant population in the mid-west “who are undocumented and have no status.

“That’s unacceptable on human rights grounds and it’s hypocritical of the Taoiseach to go to the US to represent undocumented Irish people when there are thousands here who have no security or status.”

A former member of the Garda, Pendred became involved in human rights litigation while working with a legal firm in the US, which handled a lot of emigration work.

When he returned to his native Dublin, Pendred became involved in working with the first trickle of emigrants who came to Ireland.

“It got my goat up to see how they were being treated,” said Pendred, who went on to qualify as a solicitor and set up his own firm.

One of his most high profile cases was that of Bola Fumi Ojo, a Nigerian woman, who was arrested and held in Mountjoy with her five-weekold baby in 2003.

Pendred successfully argued that her detention was unlawful and unconstitutional because there was no deportation order hanging over her.

“Undocumented people here rely on the kindness of the community and what all of them say is that they want to be able to work.

“If they are documented and given a green card, they are free to give their skills to the community,” said Pendred.

Pendred’s practice is a private one and this is important for his client’s peace of mind, he says.

“People who have been persecuted for a long time grow accustomed to living with fear in their lives and they often associate that fear with government agencies.

“It’s important that people know that we don’t work for any government agency – our raison d’être is often to fight the dovernment.”

Pendred can be contacted through his Ennis office at 85 Parnell Street.

THE County Manager has told councillors that their unanimous move to dismantle their ‘locals only’ policy on one-off housing departed from the National Spatial Strategy and was wrong in law.

County Manager, Alec Fleming, also stated that the councillors’ proposal was in breach of the Planning and Development Act 2000 and didn’t have sufficient regard to Ministerial guidelines.

In a 45-page report circulated to councillors, Mr Fleming said that their proposal “would result in a significant relaxation of rural housing policy that would undermine the ability of the County Development Plan to support the objectives of the Mid-West Regional Guidelines to support the growth of settlements.”

At last night’s March council meeting, councillors agreed to hold a special meeting on the issue.

Mr Fleming said that if the proposal succeeded, “it would remove the need for any landowner to show that they have links with the rural community and would not be consistent with the National Spatial Strategy.”

Mr Fleming said that the amendment undermined the ability of the plan to support the development of key services to provide a significant level of social, commercial and community centres in peripheral areas.

On the environmental impacts of the amendments, Mr Fleming said they would result in significant adverse effects.

At the Council’s September meeting last year, the members unanimously voted to pass two motions against the advice of management to amend the Clare County Development Plan 2005 in order to make it easier for applicants to build one-off homes.

In the plan, the council had sought to control the proliferation of one-off homes in large swathes of Clare by imposing a general ban on non-locals.

As part of the implementation of the non-local rule, the council demands from applicants cattle herd numbers, copies of birth certificates, school records and letters from parish priests to prove that they are local to the area.

However, in a proposed amendment unanimously adopted by councillors, those who own land in the area prior to 1999, but might not have any links with the area, would now qualify as being a local person entitling that person to planning permission.

A FAMILY say they are “terrified” that a mobile phone mast, to be erected near their house, will cause them serious health problems.

Fionnuala and Mike Casey of Lisheen Cross, Ballynacally, say they will have to leave their house and uproot their two children, if the 02 mast goes ahead.

The Caseys are among dozens of objectors to the proposed 50 ft high mast at Lisheen. Fifty six others, led by the Lisheen Mast Action Group, sent in objections, after a public meeting.

The Caseys, who live just 600 metres away from where the mast is to be erected, say they “hope and pray” it won’t be allowed.

“We are terrified that this mast will act as a trigger for ill health. As a family, we look after our health to the best of our ability, but we are convinced that living so near to a telecommunications mast will cause serious health problems for this family.

“We made this area our home and we had planned to live here for the rest of our lives, but if this structure is granted planning permission, we would be forced to uproot our two children and move to an area free from health risks.

“We hope and pray that common sense will prevail and that O2 Communications are not successful in their request”.

They also claim there’s no need for the mast and that it will slash the value of their property.

“There is not a problem with mobile phone coverage in the Lisheen, Ballynacally area so the erection of this structure is not essential to the development of telecommunication services. The fact that this mast is so close to our house will without a shadow of a doubt devalue our house, as we certainly would not buy property so close to a mast ourselves.”

The Caseys also express concern over the visual impact the mast will have on their lives, describing it as “alien to any other structure” in the area.

Green Party councillor, Brian Meaney, has also lodged an objection against the proposal.

“I am opposed to the mast because it is an area of scenic amenity and there are no proposals in the application lodge to camouflage the structure,” he told The Clare People . As a result, it will have a strident impact on the landscape,” he said.

A decision on the application is due next month.

A POLISH man has appeared in court, accused of attempting to break a window on a plane as it flew into Shannon at the weekend.

Szczepan Drzewiecki (37) was travelling from Warsaw to Shannon to take up employment in the construction industry in Tralee, when the alleged incident occurred.

He was arrested at Shannon Airport on arrival there on Friday night and brought before a special sitting of Ennis district court the following day.

Gardaí say the alleged offence is at “the higher scale of seriousness.”

Drzewiecki is facing three charges, arising out of the alleged incident on board a Centralwings flight from Warsaw to Shannon.

He is charged with being intoxicated, engaging in abusive behaviour on the plane and failing to cease engaging in abusive behaviour, when requested to do so by a crew member, contrary to the Air Navigation and Transport Act.

Inspector Tom Kennedy said it was alleged that when the plane was about an hour away from Shannon, the accused became aggressive and violent.

“He was drinking from a bag, which gardaí will say was vodka… He assaulted two passengers behind him. He went to punch the window and break the window,” he said.

A number of people had to intervene and the accused sustained an eye injury in a struggle that ensued. One of the witnesses travelling on the same flight was an Ennis businessman.

Garda Brian McCarthy said when charged, the accused replied “I am sorry” to one of the charges.

Defending solicitor, William Cahir, said his client was due to commence a job as a labourer in Tralee this week.

Inspector Tom Kennedy applied to remand the accused in custody and said there was a fear he may flee the jurisdiction.

“The circumstances of the offences with which he is charged are quite serious,” he said.

“I’m particularly concerned about the offences. They are very much at the higher end of these offences. If he were convicted the penalty would be quite severe,” said the inspector.

Mr Cahir said the accused’s relatives lived in Fermoy and he was willing to surrender his passport.

But Inspector Kennedy said he did not believe the accused’s links in Ireland “would be good enough to guarantee his appearance here to face the allegations.”

Judge Joseph Mangan agreed to the request from the prosecution and remanded the accused in custody, to appear again in court tomorrow.

A WOMAN who was given a stolen laser card in Limerick and told to go to Ennis and do the best she could with it, has been jailed for four months.

Kathleen Stickle (22), of Pineview Gardens, Moyross, Limerick, unlawfully obtained goods to the value of €865, in nine premises in Ennis and surrounding areas, on September 30, 2004.

Ennis District Court was told she was given the card in Limerick and told to go to Ennis with it.

Stickle was addicted to cocaine at the time and had fallen into arrears with a drug dealer in Limerick.

Her solicitor Daragh Hassett said his client’s doctor was asking the court to give her a break. He said the mother-of-one would not benefit from going to jail.

“If she goes to prison there is no-one to look after her child. She is petrified she will get a prison sentence,” he said.

“It wasn’t that she stole the card. She was given the card. It was brought on by her dealings with nasty people,” said the solicitor.

Inspector Michael Gallagher told the court that the accused had 17 previous convictions, in Limerick. Mr Hassett said those arose out of a few incidents, most of which were public order offences. “This is her most serious todate, without a doubt,” he said.

Judge Joseph Mangan imposed a four month jail term and fixed recognisances of €500 in the event of an appeal.