Category: News

FEARS have been expressed in the Dáil that the Ennis-Galway rail-line will not be subsidised by Government. Iarnród Eireann claims that subsidisation is vital for the re-opening of the line.

As part of its “Transport 21” programme, the Government has made a commitment to re-open the EnnisAthenry line, linking rail services to Galway City, by 2008.

However, speaking in the Dáil, Fine Gael deputy, Pat Breen, expressed concern that the €300m€400m price tag of the western rail corridor would be soaked up on capital expenditure and that routes of the corridor would not be subsidised in the same way as other routes on the rail network.

“Will the rail line be subsidised similarly to other routes and will there be added incentives initially to encourage commuters to use the line?” he asked.

“The Minister should note the outstanding success of the Ennis-Limerick commuter line which was long fought for and once disregarded as being unworkable and commercially unviable. I use the service from time-to-time, when travelling on to Dublin.

“It allows one to escape the madness, chaos and unpredictability of travelling by road to Dublin. The service has been expanded since it was first announced, with the result that there is considerable pressure to expand the parking facilities at Ennis Railway Station.

“The Ennis-Athenry-Galway line will also be an outstanding success and I hope the work thereon will be completed in the timescale proposed by the Minister. It would link up two very important cities, Galway and Limerick, and would allow for an option to travel to Dublin.

However, in response to Deputy Breen’s queries, the Minister for State at the Department of Transport, Pat “The Cope” Gallagher, failed to provide any new information.

Councillor, Brian Meaney (GP) has expressed similar concerns about the Government’s commitment to the proposed rail service.

He alleges that Iarnród Éireann are not proceeding with any further work on the reopening of the rail line north of Ennis, until they get assurances that funding will be put in place to subsidise the running of the line over the next 15 years.

“This is the same management that wanted to close the rail link to Limerick as the claimed it could never be a success. Irish Rail should publish a work schedule for the reopening of the rail link to Galway and become part of the solution rather than the problem.”

A GARDA sergeant, who stopped to play good Samaritan to a motorist in trouble, found he had to book him instead.

And when Shannon-based Sgt Dermot O’Connor brought summonses for no insurance, tax or driving licence against Martin McDonagh of 44 Ard Alainn in Ballybane, Galway, he discovered that the man had 68 previous convictions, 60 of them for road traffic offences and was disqualified from driving at the time.

Sgt O’Connor told Ennis District Court that while off-duty, he was driving when he saw the defendant overtake him and then pull in to the side of the road, as if he had broken down.

“I went to see if I could help him and saw that he had no tax or insurance and he did not have a driver’s licence,” said Sgt O’Connor.

His record showed that he had 68 previous convictions, 60 of which applied to offences under the Road Traffic Act.

His solicitor said that McDonagh was just 21 years old and was currently serving a 19 month sentence due to end in August.

“He had bought the car just a short time previously and he was driving from Galway to visit relatives in Shannon,” the solicitor said.

Judge Aeneas McCarthy imposed a sentence of six months for having no insurance and ruled it should start after the completion of his current sentence.

THE sounds of fireworks crackled in the air, carrying all the way from Shanaglish over the blurred borderline that separates the Beagha parish from the Clare country of Tubber.

The sounds were Shanaglish’s signals of celebration – the Messiah wasn’t among them, but the prodigal son was. That’s what the former Bishop of Galway, Dr Eamonn Casey, is being called in these parts.

He finally landed in sleepy Shanaglish on Thursday afternoon last. Not that Shanaglish was sleeping. Instead the place was soon alive, kicking and basking in the notoriety of it all.

The paparazzi came to the village, staking out the parochial house next to Shanaglish church, where Casey has set up home. It wasn’t a long stake-out. Dr Casey arrived there at 4pm and an hour later appeared at his front door to face the cameras and waiting journalists.

“I am very pleased to be back in Ireland and I would like to express my gratitude to you parish priest (Fr Paddy Callanan) and my bishop (Dr Drennan), for the warm welcome,” said Dr Casey who was flanked by Fr Callanan and Fr Martin Glynn of Galway Cathedral.

“I look forward to settling down here amongst the people of Shanaglish and look forward to getting to know them as my neighbours,” said Dr Casey as he read from notes.

“I regret that, in the past, I let a number of people down. This caused grave hurt to some and, for that, I am deeply regretful and sad. I now ask for privacy as I settle down in my new parish and amongst my own people,” he added.

All the while, photographers present took the first shots of Dr Casey in his old diocese of Galway, Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora for the first time since he fled Ireland 14 years ago, after it was revealed that he had fathered a son with American divorcee Annie Murphy.

Two locals were present for Dr Casey’s first public engagement in Shanaglish – local publican Michael Whelan and Seamus Clandillon who said, “it’s time the press stopped hounding him and allowed him live his life.”

These words were echoed by Fr Callanan. “He wishes to be left in peace now,” he said on Dr Casey’s arrival, while in Sunday’s 10 am mass in Shanaglish, he suggested local people might “perhaps discourage” photographers from turning up in the area.

Dr Casey was not present at mass.

LISDOONVARNA woman Shelley McNamara made history this week by becoming the first ever architect allowed to join Aosdána, a group made up of Ireland’s leading artists.

The organisation, which was founded by Charley Haughey in 1981 with Samuel Beckett as it’s first member, has recently opened its ranks to architects and choreographers. Ms McNamara is the first from either discipline to be granted membership.

Aosdána boasts some of Irelands leading artists, with the likes of Colm Tobin, Neil Jordan and Noble Laureate, Seamus Heaney, among its membership. Ms McNamara’s appointment is a major milestone for the group and has raised a number of eyebrows in the artistic community.

“It is the first time that architects have been considered for Aosdána and I would imagine that I am the first of many,” Miss McNamara told The Clare People.

While she is delighted with her appointment, she pointed to a numbers of problems that have to be addressed in the planning process in Ireland at the moment.

“I think that there are a lot of problems, mainly the fact that new developments don’t always consolidate within an area,” she said. “It’s not always to do with the architect, it’s about the planners as well. We all have to take responsibility for tackling the problem.”

Born in Lisdoonvarna, Miss McNamara attended UCD before establishing Grafton Architects with Yvonne Farrell in 1977.

SECURITY for post offices in the county is to be stepped up following a spate of robberies over the last number of months.

Clare Fine Gael TD Pat Breen said this week that he has been informed by An Post chief executive, Donal Curtin, that a major upgrade of security is on the way.

The latest such robbery in the county saw the postmistress at Whitegate tied up when her post office was robbed just under three weeks ago.

“I wrote to Mr Curtin because Whitegate was the latest in a series of robberies of post offices in east Clare and there seemed to have been little action taken on the matter.

“However, I have now been assured by Mr Curtin that there is a major upgrade of security now taking place involving a roll out of burglar alarms and CCTV systems,” he said.

“This hopefully will have an effect on the number of robberies taking place and will reduce the element of fear among operators,” Deputy Breen said.

Management at An Post are in ongoing contact with the Irish Postmasters Union with a view to rolling out the equipment to the post office network before the end of the year.

A PLAN to develop Ireland’s first full-scale retirement village accommodating up to 300 residents outside Clarecastle has come under fire from An Taisce.

Last December, the Dublin-based Master Group announced the village, costing €50 million. It would create over 100 jobs on 75 acres of grounds of the historic 18th-century Carnelly House, five miles from Ennis.

There would be 120 houses of various sizes, 35 apartments and a 64-bed retirement home. Village facilities would include a leisure centre with a 12-metre pool and a speciallyequipped gym.

The property was purchased for in excess of €3 million by the Master Group last year.

Objecting, An Taisce told Clare County Council that, “There is an ample network of towns and villages, including locations with good service provisions and public transport access for provision of retirement and nursing home locations in Clare, to meet the needs identified by the applicant without having to resort to development in an unsuitable, rural, unserviced location of the type proposed in this application.”

An Taisce’s Heritage Officer, Ian Lumley, has referred the Council “to a number of precedents by which nursing home schemes have been refused in rural unserviced locations, including two relevant refusal decisions by An Bord Pleanala”.

“Any planning application which changes the use and planning status of Carnelly to an institutional one, no matter how well-designed or sensitive, can only be regarded as regrettable,” said Mr Lumley.

An Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) has been lodged with the application. However, Mr Lumley states, “We submit that the argument being put forward by the consultants in the EIS on location suitability is untenable.

“The effect of the proposal would be to bring an elderly population into an unserviced, non-public transport-accessible rural area, without addressing where the employees in the proposed development, who are stated to be 104, would live.

“An increasing number of employees in nursing homes in Ireland are from the Philippines and other nonEU countries, who would be on low incomes and not car owners. Nursing homes, where possible, should be located close to centres of population with easy access both for staff and visitors.

Mr Lumley states that the claim under the EIS that there are no alternative sites “is absurd, given the level of zoned land in Clarecastle, Ennis and other parts of Clare”.

VISITORS to the Cliffs of Moher may have to pass a picket line in order to see the historic site in the next few weeks, if Clare County Council persists with plans to remove casual traders from the Cliffs.

The warning comes from Cliffs trader, Gerry Cahill, who expects to be served with a court injunction along with his colleagues, when he returns to the Cliffs next month.

This follows an ongoing dispute between the traders and Gerard Dollard, Director of Services of Clare County Council, who is attempting to remove all unlicensed traders from the Cliffs before the new interpretative centre in completed.

The dispute came to a head last month when Councillor Madeleine Taylor-Quinn (FG) offered to mediate between the two groups, in order to prevent the dispute from reaching the courts.

“They are just waiting for us to go back up the Cliffs so they can serve the injunctions,” Mr Cahill told The Clare People .

“If they get a temporary injunction of two to six week we won’t be able to trade there, but we will be up there every day with placards protesting. Then we will challenge it in the courts.”

Mr Cahill claims that he has offered, on a number of occasion, to meet with Mr Dollard and resolve the dispute before legal action is required, but has been refused a meeting on each occasion.

“I have put it in writing to him and he hasn’t even given me the courtesy of a reply, even to say ‘Gerry there is no hope. I am willing to meet him at any time with no conditions attached at all.”

Cllr Taylor-Quinn spoke to Mr Dollard about the possibility of arranging the meeting and said that she had done all that she could do as a councillor to resolve the matter.

“I have spoken to Ger Dollard and he has taken the line that going into negotiations would not be in the best interest of the council,” said Cllr Taylor-Quinn.

“I hope the people who have been trading in the Cliffs down the years are allowed to stay, as they are of a great benefit to the Cliffs.”

The Clare People attempted to contact Mr Dollard for a comment but had received no reply at the time of going to press.

THE Rossport Five received news of a two-week stay of execution from the High Court, while visiting Doolin over the weekend. The five, who spent 94 days in prison last year for breaching an injunction taken out by Shell, were due to appear in the High Court yesterday (Monday) to learn if they would have to serve additional time in prison.

However, it was decided last Friday to defer the case to appear again before the High Court on Monday, February 27. Should the five men be ordered to return to prison, they believe it will set a new precedent in Irish law.

“Everything about this case is unprecedented. In fact, our legal team has told us that if we are to receive further punishment, it will set a new precedent in Irish law,” said Vincent McGrath of the Five.

“They decided, for some reason known only to themselves, to defer the case for two weeks. They gave us no reason at all.”

The five were in Doolin to give a short talk and take part in a concert on Saturday night.

“We had a great time in Doolin. There was almost 200 people there. I think we are almost twinned with Doolin now,” continued Mr McGrath. “It was great to have the head filled with music instead of with facts and figures about gas for a change.”

The five have currently suspended their involvement with the mediation with Shell because of what they describe as a lack of clarity about the scope of the negotiations. Speaking in Doolin, Mr McGrath wished to express his thanks to all the people of Clare who supported the five.

“The support given to us by the people of Clare gave us great encouragement and strength while we were in prison,” he said.

“I remember looking on the TV in the early days in prison and seeing a big Clare banner protesting for us outside. It gave us great heart.”

Meanwhile, Clare Shell-to-Sea are to host a ‘Boycott Shell’ picket at the Shell Service Station on the Limerick Road in Ennis at 1pm this Saturday. The protest comes amid new fears that areas in the Burren and Spanish Point could be targeted as gas resources in the future.

“I would be concerned that the lust for oil and gas in Clare would result in the reneging on committments to proper consultation with local communities, under the Agenda 21 principle of local government,” said Niall Harnett of Clare Shell-to-Sea.

SENATOR Timmy Dooley (FF) has opened up a constituency office in Ennis just over a year before the current Dáil term expires.

With a Fianna Fáil party convention looming to nominate candidates for next year’s General Election, the 36-year old Mountshannon man has moved to up his profile by opening the office on Ennis’s Carmody Street.

Work was continuing on the fit-out of the office over last weekend before it formally opened yesterday (Monday).

“It is in response to the demand of work really that has considerably increased for me in the Ennis area”, said Senator Dooley.

“Up until now, I would be meeting people in hotels and bars so opening up the office makes things far easier. I have a secretary working in Dublin, but there will now be one working full-time at the Ennis office.”

Asked was the opening in any way connected to his campaign to secure a party nomination to run in next year’s General Election, Senator Dooley said: “No, not at all. That will be decided by delegates, that is their decision.”

Senator Dooley said that he took out the lease on the office last October and was planning not to open the premises until after the planned convention in early January.

“When the convention was postponed, I thought I could not wait any longer due to the inconvenience.”

Asked what kind of response he has been encountering in his campaign to secure a party nomination, Senator Dooley said, “It has been very, very good. I’m very, very happy with it.”

Commenting on the move, Fine Gael TD, Pat Breen said, “Senator Dooley obviously sees himself as a potential candidate for the next election and is seeking political advantage by opening up an office in the county capital.”

Senator Brendan Daly (FF) said: “The opening of the new office by Timmy is to be welcomed as it will provide further services to the public.

“I wonder just how effective constituency offices are. There were three in Ennis before the last general election and the candidate, James Breen, who didn’t have any office, polled 4,000 votes in Ennis.

“The demand for such offices is becoming less and less as the public receives a lot of information from the likes of the Citizen Information Bureau and other voluntary groups.”

THOUSANDS of fake driving licences are in circulation on the roads, a Clare court has heard.

The issue of the counterfeit licences came to light after a driver sporting a fake document was stopped at a routine checkpoint.

The judge in an Ennis court handed down a four-month prison sentence to the man in question.

Sergeant Dermot O’Connor told the Ennis District Court that he stopped Trevor Condon (38) of Goirtroe, Corrandulla, in Galway at Newmarket-on-Fergus on July 12 last.

“When I asked for his licence, he produced a document which appeared to be a full driving licence but when I checked it, in my opinion, it was a forgery,” Sgt O’Connor said.

“When I informed him of this, he challenged me and said that he had been issued the licence by Galway Corporation,” the Sergeant told Judge Aeneas McCarthy.

The Shannon-based officer seized the document and sent it to the handwriting section at Garda Headquarters, Dublin, for examination.

Sgt O’Connor said that the experts there “advised that it was a forgery and one of a batch of a few thousand which are in circulation, mainly in the Southern part of the country,” Sgt O’Connor said.

He described the forgery as being “of average quality,” and handed it over to the Judge for inspection.

The court heard that the accused man had a number of previous convictions, but none for road traffic offences.

His solicitor, Bill Loughnane, said that the Galway man’s previous offences had all been when he was a young man and he had not been in any trouble for a considerable time.

“He is on disability payments and has numerous problems. He was offered the opportunity to purchase one of these licences and he foolishly accepted,” Mr Loughnane said.

After asking to see the licence, Judge McCarthy handed the convicted man a four-month jail sentence for possession of a forged document. But he suspended the jail term, provided the driver entered into a bond to be of good behaviour for 12 months. Judge McCarthy also fined Condon €150 for having no driving licence.