Category: News

THERE is now a cast-iron case for Clare County Council to establish an in-house legal department.

That is the view of independent councillor, Christy Curtin, who was commenting on figures released to The Clare People under the Freedom of Information Act, showing that the local authority spent €825,799 on legal expenses in 2005.

The figures bring to over €4 million, the amount the council has spent on legal fees over the past three years.

However, last year’s amount is significantly down on the monies spent in 2004 and 2003.

In those two years, the spending was €3.2 million or €1.6 million in each of the years concerned.

However, Cllr Curtin said yesterday that irrespective of the drop in money spent on legal expenses, over €800,000 was still a sizeable amount spent.

“It is now imperative that the council establishes its own legal office now. The case is made and the case is cast-iron.

“It is time for the County Manager, Alec Fleming, to come off the fence on this one.

“You can’t put a price on independence and it is appropriate that the council would now establish its own legal office with work on its new HQ to start soon. The manager needs to be pro-active on this.

Cllr Curtin said that any organisation with an annual budget of over €100 million would have its own in-house law agency.

The figures show that Ennis-firm, Michael Houlihan, which acts as the council’s legal advisers, received the highest proportion of costs, at €573,193.

Ennis-firm John Casey & Co. received the next highest amount at €79,694 followed by Connolly, Sellors, Geraghty & Assoc., which received €25,000 and PF Moloney & Co., which received €22,226.

The design for the council’s new corporate headquarters has not made provision for a legal department in house.

A SPOKESMAN for the Doolin residents group that opposed the taxdriven holiday homes for the area said that the battle “was in many ways the community fighting for its own survival”.

“If these applications had gone through, it would have resulted in 25 years development in one year. This would have represented overdevelopment and turned Doolin into a ghost town with empty homes all over”.

The spokesman conceded that the issue “divided the community to a certain extent, but we have to live as a community.”

He also criticised Clare County Council for breaching its own development plan to facilitate the development, by allowing the sewage treatment plant for the proposal to be built on unzoned land.

“The council should really abide by its own development plan and we shouldn’t have to rely on An Bord Pleanala to enforce the council’s own development plan.”

The spokesman said that it was a regret that the residents did not come together sooner to act, as a number of tax-driven holiday home developments were already granted or it was too late to object.

“A number of the holiday homes that did receive planning permission are selling for between the €350,000 and €450,000 and the total value of the homes would be €20 million.

“This wealth is being accumulated by people not from the area and the tax reliefs represents a massive loss to the Exchequer and still we can’t get the €4 million for a new pier at Doolin. The holiday homes are taxdriven and nothing to do with the market. The style of the houses was also not in keeping with the area.

“With the drawing up of the development plan, there was a great turnout in Doolin and the people’s views need to be listened to.”

The spokesman said that land in Doolin is now selling up for €1 million per acre.

SOURCES close to Fianna Fáil believe that the Clare General Election convention will follow a process whereby only one of three places on the ticket will be up for contest.

Through the “district convention”, Minister of State Tony Killeen would automatically be placed on the ticket as the only North Clare candidate for the party.

Senator Brendan Daly would also be automatically selected as the only representative for the Soldiers of Destiny in the West of the county.

This would leave the two remaining candidates to battle it out for the third place on the Fianna Fáil ticket in Clare.

A similar process was followed at the Longford West Meath Convention and the Cork North West convention.

The new date of the Clare convention, April 3, was announced this week.

Senator Timmy Dooley and Councillor Pat Hayes are both considered as East Clare candidates, despite Senator Dooley opening an Ennis constituency office last month.

Cllr Hayes was the last of the four candidates to indicate his intention to run for the party in next year’s election.

The man for Maghera put forward his name last December, just weeks before the initial date for the county convention.

The announced retirement from politics after the next election of Minister of State, Síle de Valera, in November, meant Fianna Fáil headquarters had to rethink the date of the selection process in Clare.

According to Fianna Fáil sources in Dublin, a search to find a suitable replacement candidate from the Ennis area proved fruitless and the April 3 date was set.

A spokesperson for Fianna Fáil told The Clare People that while the form the convention would take would not be decided until nearer the convention date, the Fianna Fail rule book allowed for “district conventions” and it was not unusual to hold them. The convention will take place in the Auburn Lodge Hotel at 7.30pm.

Meanwhile, the Fine Gael selection convention is expected before the party’s Ard Fheis in May.

Five Fine Gael candidates were pre-selected for the contest last October.

Sitting Fine Gael TD, Pat Breen along with councillors Joe Carey, John Crowe, Tony Mulcahy and Madeleine Taylor-Quinn will be vying for a position on the blue team’s ticket in 2007.

Early indications from party sources suggest that the historical two candidates will be put on the balloting paper, one less than in 2002.

TOP council official Tom Coughlan has once again claimed the highest amount in expenses among the executives of Clare County Council.

Mr Coughlan’s claimed €12,928 last year, the fourth year in a row that the Ennis town Manager and Director for Community and Enterprise claimed the top amount.

The €1,000 per month claimed by Mr Coughlan last year was more than €5,000 greater than next highest amount claimed, by Director for the Environment and Shannon Town Manager, Ger Dollard. He claimed €7,778.

Figures provided by the council, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, show that Clare’s County Manager, Alec Fleming added to his €109,000 salary with €7,706 in expenses.

The salary scale for Directors of Service goes from €75,000 to €89,000. The manager and directors of service also shared a fund of €72,000 in undisclosed ‘bonus’ payments last year.

Mr Fleming ordered a management shake-up last year with Mr Coughlan transferring from Housing to Community and Enterprise.

Mr Dollard went from Planning to the Environment and David Timlin left Environment to take up Housing.

Bernadette Kinsella switched from Community and Enterprise to Planning. She is also Manager of Kilrush Town Council.

County Engineer, Tom Carey, remained as Director for Infrastructure.

In all, the Manager and the Directors claimed €46,767 in expenses – down from the €59,000 claimed in 2004.

Mr Timlin claimed €7,246 in expenses, Mr Carey, € 6,531 and Bernadette Kinsella – who was on leave for the second part of the year – claimed €4,680.

In all, the 998 Council employees claimed €1.788 million in expenses last year, down on the €1.9 million claimed in 2004.

Mr Coughlan was the only member of the executive to feature among the top ten overall expense earners in the council. The top earner claimed €18,571, though that included an overpayment of €3,271.

Eighteen of the twenty top recipients in expenses work in the council’s roads and water infrastructure section, the department with responsibility for the county’s network of 3600 km of road, along with public water and sewerage installations.

Five officials, one wastewater inspector, two supervisors for rural water programmes and two executive engineers, each received in excess of €15,000.

SAFE levels of smoke and grime in the air have been breached in Ennis eleven times in the last two months.

That’s according to the results of air quality testing which has been carried out by the mobile Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the town.

A spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency agreed that the levels were “high by comparison to other similar sized towns” but the lack of a smoky fuel burning ban could account for this.

The EPA’s mobile unit has been carrying out testing in the town on a daily basis for the last eight weeks.

The testing is part of a national project and Ennis is the last of 20 towns visited over the last three years.

The mobile unit spends six months at a time in each town, testing for levels of gases and substances, including sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and particulate matter, which is smoke, dust and other small particles suspended in the air.

A spokesman for the EPA said that so far, all tests for nitrogen oxide and sulphur dioxide in Ennis have come in way under the level which is considered safe.

The levels of smoke particles and other grime suspended in the air have been breached six times during the last month.

But the EPA spokesman said that this alone was not cause for alarm.

“The safety limits state that there can be 35 days in the year on which the limits can be exceeded.

“It is not believed to be a threat to health until there have been 35 days in excess of the safety levels.”

The fact that there have been so many in the first two months of the year does not mean that the town will be over the 35 instances limit for the year.

“This was a very cold period, so we would expect people to be lighting more fires and for there to be more smoke present.

“But if it was in excess on more than 35 days, then a decision would have to be taken on whether continuous monitoring is needed.

“The county council would have to decide what action to take” the spokesman said.

The issue of consistently high levels of dust and smoke in the air was raising concerns for public health and safety right across Europe, the spokesman said.

KILRUSH said goodbye to its most senior citizen last week.

Just 24 days shy of her 104th birthday, Mai McMahon passed away in her home, having contracted the winter vomiting bug 25 hours earlier.

The mother of nine, grandmother of 27 and great-grandmother of 28, lived an active life right to the end, even though her walking had declined in the last year.

The secret to the long life of Kilrush’s oldest citizen included an annual visit to Knock up until the age of 100, taking a trip to America at the age of 99 and keeping an active interest in politics and current affairs.

Born Mai Googan in Tullycrine in 1902, she was the second oldest of nine children. She married Patrick McMahon in 1925 at the age of 23 and moved to Kilmurry McMahon. There she reared her nine children, eight of whom survived their long-living mother.

During her many decades in Kilmurry McMahon, Mai ran a small shop two doors down from the church while helping her husband run the family farm.

The hard-working West Clare woman buried her husband, Patrick, 34 years ago, at the age of 72.

Just a few years later, she moved to Vandeleur Street in Kilrush to live with her daughter.

Living in Kilrush, Mai went to Mass every day and the devout woman made an annual trip to the shrine in Knock up to her centenary year.

A keen knitter and talented at crocheting, Mai also kept abreast of current affairs, reading the newspapers every day and keeping up to date with the news right up to the end of her 104 years.

The active pensioner baked bread until she was 100 years old, and is one of the few people ever to say they collected the old age pension with all of their children.

Mai’s son Martin died just over a year ago and she also buried one grandchild, Mary McMahon, in her lifetime.

While her family were expecting Mai to pass away, it still came as a shock to them in the end.

“It was a shock but not a surprise,” said her granddaughter Marian McMahon Jones.

Marian is a member of Kilrush Town Council, and this month’s meeting of the council was postponed as a mark of respect to Kilrush’s eldest citizen.

THE Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh, has stated that there is a growing sense among young people “that they do not belong, that they are not valued or that they have no meaningful role in society.”

In his Lenten letter, read out at masses across the Killaloe diocese over the weekend, Dr Walsh said, “We are privileged to live at a time of significant prosperity in Ireland. However, we should not blind ourselves to the fact that in the midst of that prosperity the gap between rich and poor continues to widen.”

Dr Walsh said that “despite that, we build more houses than ever before, we are witnessing the increasing spiral of homelessness in our towns and cities and despite the means of communication becoming more and more sophisticated, there is significant evidence that more people than ever feel a sense of isolation.”

Dr Walsh also stated that despite young people enjoying better opportunities for work and leisure, “it is evident that many of them are finding a real emptiness in life. There appears to be a growing sense among many that they do not belong, that they are not valued or that they have no meaningful role in society.

“We must not blind ourselves to the fact that more and more people are finding it very difficult to cope in this world of competitive and even aggressive individualism. In making these observations, I am not at all decrying the progress made in recent years – the economic progress, the increase in employment, the improvement in services, the better facilities in education, in leisure and sporting facilities.

“I am suggesting however that economic progress, on its own, does not satisfy our deeper needs – our need for friendship and for love, for being valued for ourselves.

“I am suggesting that there is a real challenge to our Christian community at this time to reach out to those who have not benefited from this progress.”

In his letter, Dr Walsh also referred to Pope Benedict.

“We have gradually come to recognise him as a gentle, humble and prayerful man.”

A UNION has claimed that 66 Polish contracted workers at Moneypoint power station have been paid well below the minimum wage.

The ESB confirmed that an internal audit had shown up a problem with workers’s sub-contractor, ZRE Zatowice.

At a news conference, the union said the workers received €5.20 per hour. The welders and fitters were working on the €200m retrofit operation underway at Moneypoint.

A spokesman for the ESB has said an internal audit by the company on wages had shown irregularities.

“This ESB investigation concluded with the signing of a memorandum of understanding involving this subcontractor and the relevant main contractor, following an acknowledgement that there had been breaches of agreed wage rates,” he said.

“This Memorandum of Understanding commits the contractor to rectifying this situation. Implementation of the terms of the Memorandum will be subject to an extensive audit, scheduled to take place before the end of March, he said.”

At all stages, the union TEEU was involved.

Kilrush County Councillor Madeleine Taylor Quinn (FG) has said that it was not sufficient to have an auditing committee set up between contracting parties.

“The onus is on the Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment to have an active inspectorate in place that circulate regularly throughout the country to ensure this form of employment does not occur,” she said.

“It is completely unacceptable that any worker would be exploited in Ireland.

“The state needs to be more vigilant,” she added.

Cllr Brian Meaney (GP) is requesting that legal action commence against companies operating not complying with basic of Irish labour legislation of paying the minimum wage.

“A blind eye has been turned to the alleged breaches of Irish labour legislation occurring in Clare. This should not be accepted. The full weight of the law should be applied as Irish subcontract companies are losing out and Irish workers are being displaced.”

The clean-up currently underway at Moneypoint is necessary to allow the station operate past 2008 in order to comply with a licence granted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), requiring that pollution levels be drastically cut at the station, which supplies one quarter of the State’s electricity.

A SENIOR Clare cleric has raised concerns over the Church rules that require priests to be removed from their ministry when a sex abuse allegation is made against them. In a newsletter circulated at masses in the parish of DooraBarefield over the weekend, Canon Caimin O’Carroll outlined his concerns over the issue.

Speaking to The Clare People yesterday, he asked, “Is it fair that a priest be removed from his home, his mission and then wait in limbo for a couple of years before any decision is made because an accusation is made?

“In our democracy, a person is innocent until proven guilty, but requiring a priest to leave his parish and his home would appear to me to contravene natural justice. This is something that I am bothered and worried about and that is why I circulated the statement contained in the newsletter at the masses.”

Canon O’Carroll’s move to air his concerns comes against the background of two priests in Clare parishes being asked to stand aside in the past six months, as a result of allegations being made against them.

Canon O’Carroll said, “I included the statement because I want people to talk about it and get a discussion going on it, because if there is to be any change to Church policy it must come with pressure from the people.”

Canon O’Carroll said that his views were shared by others in the local clergy. “There would be a lot of sympathy and feeling for the priests that have been asked to step aside from other priests”.

Canon O’Carroll said that the Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh, was bound by Church rules to ask priests to step aside when allegations were made. Canon O’Carroll said, “It breaks his heart the whole thing and he is under a lot of pressure emotionally over the issue. I would hope that the people and priests would give more thought to the issue.”

AN 18-year-old man has appeared in court, facing charges arising out of the death of a young Ennis woman in a road accident last year.

Aidan Quilligan, of Cloughoolia, Sixmilebridge, is charged with dangerous driving causing the death of Charelle Howard, at Shanaway Road, Ennis, on July 16, 2005.

Mr Quilligan is also accused of carrying passengers, the number of which exceeded the passenger accomodation of the car.

17-year-old Ms Howard, an only child from Watery Road, Ennis, was a back seat passenger in a Volkswagen Polo car when it was involved in the single vehicle accident.

Inspector Michael Gallagher told Ennis District Court last Friday that the “unfortunate” accident happened at 12.30am, at a time when road conditions were good.

He said the accused was driving the three-door car in which six others were travelling, all of whom were aged 17 or 18. The group was coming from a birthday party, travelling towards Ennis.

“He lost control of the car, hit a kerb and overturned a number of times. A number of the others were injured. The defendant escaped injury,” said Inspector Gallagher.

He said it is alleged that Mr Quilligan was driving “okay” after leaving the house party, and increased speed after a friend’s car overtook him.

“Inexperience caused him to lose control,” said the Inspector. Relating to the speed, he added, “Whether that could be proved is another matter. A lot of that could be speculation, to be fair to the defence; up to that point he was driving slowly.”

He said there was no question of any racing, adding that the car the accused was driving was “overloaded”.

Inspector Gallagher said the accused was a “fine young man, of good character, who has never come to the attention of the gardaí before. He comes from a highly respected family.”

Judge Joseph Mangan was told that the DPP would consent to a summary disposal of the case in the District Court on a guilty plea.

Defending solicitor Rachel Dobson said there was a guilty plea. After hearing the facts, the judge said he would accept jurisdiction.

Ms Dobson requested an adjournment, for preparation of the relevant reports on the matter. The accused will appear again in court in June.

Charelle’s mother was in court while solicitor Tara Godfrey said she was holding a watching brief.