Category: News

THE WORDS of the famous song ‘Summer in Dublin’ were uttered during a district court case, after a judge was told that a garda stuck his head through the trees and saw a young man smoking a joint in the town park in Shannon.

Defence solicitor Stephen Nicholas made the reference in the case of Edward Dooney (26), of Cluain Airne, Shannon, charged with possession of cannabis, at Shannon town park, on July 15, 2005.

The court heard the accused was found in possession of one joint.

Mr Nicholas said his client is in good employment and has been in a relationship for the past eight years.

He said when he was younger, he used to take cannabis. On the date of the offence he had met a friend who gave him a joint.

As he lay on the grass on the fine summer’s day smoking, a garda “stuck his head through the trees and caught him,” said the solicitor and this prompted the reference to Bagatelle.

“I remember that summer in Dublin and the Liffey stank like hell…is the song that springs to mind, but I am not going to sing it,” said Mr Nicholas.

Judge Joseph Mangan adjourned the case for two months, to allow for a professional report re drug and alcohol abuse to be carried out.

A YOUNG Clare businessman, who legitimately imported a car from England to sell to a client here, has been left out of pocket by up to €23,000, after it subsequently transpired that the vehicle had been stolen in England, leaving a judge with no choice but to return it to an English insurance company.

Twenty-four year old Derek Considine, who runs a car dealership business in Miltown Malbay since he was 17, was told by Judge Geoffrey Browne at Miltown Malbay District Court that his “hands were tied” and could not return the car to him although he had “done nothing wrong.”

Gardaí had pursed the matter under the Police Property Act to have the Audi A4 car returned to its rightful owner after discovering that it had been stolen in West Yorkshire in 2004. Mr Considine was seeking to have the car returned to him while an agent for the insurance company Norwich Union claimed that his client was the rightful owner. Mr Considine told the court that he had purchased the car in England after seeing it advertised in Autotrader magazine.

“I checked with the police and everyone else and I was told that the car was not stolen, had not been crashed previously and was not subject to a hire-purchase agreement,” he said in evidence.

“I had done all the things that were necessary and the car checked out perfect. I paid £8,500 (Stg), brought it home and paid the duties to Revenue.”

Mr Considine later sold the car to his brother-in-law but it later transpired that the car had been stolen. Gardaí visited Mr Considine and inspected the vehicle and later seized it for further examination. Gardaí discovered that another chassis number plate had been placed over the original.

Also contesting ownership of the car was the general manager of an English-based company, given responsibility for recovering vehicles for insurers Norwich Union. Mr John Armstrong of Norman Marshall confirmed that the car had been stolen in England in 2004 and that Norwich Union had paid out £10,395 to the owner for the loss on September 21, 2004.

Judge Geoffrey Browne accepted that Mr Considine had acted in good faith and had “done nothing wrong”, but added, “what can I do? I would return the car to you if I could, but you are not entitled to it. I am sorry, Mr Considine, my hands are tied.”

Judge Browne granted the garda application and ruled that the car should be handed over to Norman Marshall.

BUNRATTY Castle and Folk Park has been voted the ninth least enjoyable place to visit in Ireland in a major online survey released last week.

The south Clare tourist attraction finished alongside the likes of Limerick and Belfast city in a survey of 1126 people conducted by the DoChara website.

The survey, carried out between August and November of last year, was compiled completely online through the DoChara website. This is an independently run site which offers advice and reviews about tourist destinations in Ireland.

Dublin City topped the list of least favourite place to visit and was followed by Galway City and Killarney. The top ten included Cork City, Temple Bar, the Ring of Kerry and the Guinness Tour in Dublin.

On a positive note, the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher was listed as the second favourite place to visit in the same survey. The Ring of Kerry topped this section of the pole with Dingle and Newgrange also featuring prominently.

According to Katherine Nolan of DoChara, the survey has created an amount of confusion because more people responded to the “most enjoyable” survey than the “least enjoyable” survey.

“It took far fewer votes to get onto the least enjoyed lists than the favourites one,” Ms Nolan told The Clare People .

“I have looked at those who mentioned Bunratty and there was more than a 3:1 ratio of people who mentioned it positively to those who mentioned it negatively. But that was not enough to get it onto the top 10 favourites list.”

Indeed, almost 50 per cent of those who responded to the survey left the negative comments section blank. Ms Nolan estimates that Bunratty would have finished at around 15th place in the most enjoyable section, had the list been extended past the top 10.

The Director of Heritage and Tourism at Shannon Development, John King, has described the survey as “contradictory”.

“The survey seems to be contradictory in parts with a number of places featuring in the both the most popular and least popular sections,” said Mr King. “We will continue to concentrate on the superb range of attractions and natural beauty that is available in Clare.”

The DoChara website is targeted specifically at the foreign tourist market and the majority of those who responded to survey were American.

Indeed, of the 1126 valid responses 54 per cent listed their nationality as American or Canadian, 19 per cent as British, and 3 per cent as European. 14 per did not specify.

DEREK Considine has now accepted that he was cleverly conned, but has resolved to continue with his garage business, even though his experience has cost him €23,000.

He has run his own garage since he was just 17, and sells new and used cars in Miltown Malbay. He also employs a mechanic at his Ballard Road premises.

Speaking to The Clare People after last week’s court hearing, Mr Considine said, “it is a very hard lesson to learn. You work hard to ensure you are doing everything right and you get caught out like this by a crook.

“Even the judge said I had done everything right and nothing wrong. But that’s business, once in a while someone is going to catch you out. Unfortunately I got caught out for €23,000 when everything is taken into account.”

Mr Considine has already returned to England to try and locate the man from whom he purchased the car originally only to discover that the address he had for the fraudster was for an unoccupied rented house. He has also reported the matter to police there but admits he is not confident that they can do anymore.

“The police say they have tried to locate this man but have had no success. I think that is the end of it and I will just have to get on with it,” he said. “It has been a costly and embarrassing lesson. I sold the car to my brother-in-law so you can imagine how I felt when the car was taken back from him. I replaced it with a newer Audi A4 straight away, but it was very embarrassing for me.

“It goes to show that you can’t be too careful in business. All the paperwork showed the car was above board and the police had no record of the car being stolen. Anyway, it is an expensive lesson and all I can do now is put it behind me and get on with it,” Mr Considine added.

FÁILTE Ireland has this week committed its largest ever budget for the development of tourism in the Shannon region.

The 2006 organisations budget of €9 million, which was announced at their annual conference in Limerick on Friday, will be spent on marketing, business supports, training, and supporting the activities of Shannon Development.

Speaking at the conference the chief executive of Fáilte Ireland, Shaun Quinn, noted the benefits to the region of the increased Ryanair activity in Shannon Airport: “It was encouraging to note that the increase in direct air access from continental Europe has benefited the region in terms of overnight visitors.

“Activities and attractions are central to increasing the visitors spend and it this is especially important for rural areas.”

The conference was co-hosted by Tourism Ireland, the agency charged with marketing Ireland in foreign countries.

Tourism Ireland chief executive, Paul O’Toole, unveiled its new €50 million, three-year advertising campaign which they hope will reach an audience of some 200 million people per annum.

The advertisement will feature images of Dromoland Castle and the Cliffs of Moher, as well as a number of other tourist locations from around Ireland.

“Tourism Ireland will adopt a multifaceted strategy for the accelerated promotion of the regions of Ireland overseas,” said Mr O’Toole.

“We will invest an estimated €5m to support this strategy and engage in additional, co-operative marketing with all regions.”

Also speaking at the conference, John King, Heritage and Tourism Director of Shannon Development said that his priority will be to work closely with Fáilte Ireland, Tourism Ireland and the region’s tourism interests to capitalise on the potential of a greatly expanded range of direct flights into Shannon Airport and the West of Ireland.

Meanwhile, an initiative launched last week should bring training and development for tourism businesses in Clare to a new level, according to those behind the project. Learning networks, poised to meet the needs of small and mediumsized tourism enterprises in the county, will be set up over the next three years.

Essentially it will see those involved in tourism joining learning clusters, consisting of other tourism interests, with whom they will liaise.

Limerick-based May Day Management Consultants has been awarded the contract for delivering the initiative in the Shannon region. Its managing consultant, Padraig Cleary said 25 businesses in Clare have been invited to get involved.

CLARE Youth Service has drawn up a comprehensive plan for the next three years. Strategic Plan 20052008 was launched in Glór last Thursday by the Minister of State for Education, Síle de Valera.

This is the first such plan drawn up by Clare Youth Service since the enactment of the Youth Work Act 2001 and the publication of the National Youth Work Development Plan 2003-2007.

Youth Work for the first time ever now has a statutory footing and is defined in the act as “a planned programme of education designed for the purpose of aiding and enhancing the personal and social development of young persons through their voluntary participation.”

Eight areas of concentration have been mapped out by the Youth Service. These include programme development, public relations, partnerships and alliances, training and development and infrastructure and capital programmes.

Since 1974, there have been 15,000 members of Clare Youth Service and 2,000 volunteers.

Today there are 25 staff working in the service.

Since its inception in 1986, the Youth Service Bureau has had 210,000 queries from young people.

“These are very compelling statistics. Clare Youth Service has touched the lives of an extraordinary number of young people and is an extremely positive force within the community,” said the Youth Service Chairperson, Mary Cashin at the launch of the strategic plan.

“It is our goal to build on our existing external relationships with out partners, both voluntary and statutory, and to form new relationships for the purpose of working with these partnerships in the delivery of services to young people,” she added.

“The priorities of this plan are the result of inclusive and comprehensive consultation with all the various strands of the organisation.

“The Strategic plan is a process rather than an end in itself and this process is important in order to develop a real sense of ownership and commitment to the plan,” said Leslie Button of the Youth Service.

DOZENS of Clare people have been duped in a scheme which involves them losing huge amounts of money on the false promise of massive returns.

One Clare mother of two revealed how she invested her childrens’ college fund in the “gifting” pyramid scheme and now holds out no hope of getting it back.

“I can’t believe now that I fell for it,” said the East Clare woman, who asked that her identity not be disclosed.

She told The Clare People that she invested €5,000 which she and her husband “scrimped to save for our children’s college years and now there’s no hope of getting anything out of it.”

The scheme operates through people putting up money which is then paid to earlier investors.

The new investor is also told to recruit two more people to invest. The investors are told they will get their cash back eight fold or more within two months.

But while the few at the top of the pyramid payments scheme stand to make thousands, those who are duped into investing as the scam nears collapse lose everything

The East Clare woman revealed that she was hooked into the get-rich-quick scam by a close friend.

“I don’t believe that she ever intended to do me out of money because she has had nothing back either,” she said.

“She put me in touch with the man who recruited her and he made it sound so foolproof – he said he had made almost €100,000 and that he was reinvesting to make more.

“She and I were convinced that we would get €40,000 back in about eight weeks,” the woman added.

But while the Clare woman’s friend successfully recruited two more investors, she could not convince anyone to put more money up to meet her recruitment clause.

“Our kids are just started in secondary school but we had been putting savings away and we planned to put a decent lump sum in investments once we’d saved enough,” she said.

“I haven’t told my husband that I took the money out for this. I feel so guilty – that was my children’s money.”

The schemes are not covered by laws brought in 1980 which outlaw pyramid selling but Minister of State for Labour Affairs, Tony Kileen said that he will be raising the matter at a meeting with Minister Michael Martin next week.

“This pyramid scheme hits at people who are vulnerable and they can lose serious amounts of money,” he commented.

“It certainly seems that legislation is needed to tackle it.”

And Paul Woulfe of the Citizen’s Advice Bureau in Ennis said that people “should take proper financial advice before they invest big sums of money.

“It is easy to be caught out if you’re not used to dealing with finances.”

GAMA Construction Ltd has received a major boost in its plans to complete the Ennis bypass on time and within its budget.

Clare County Council has granted planning permission to the Turkish-owned company to develop a large-scale quarry to provide materials for the €190 million road.

The council made the decision to grant planning in spite of opposition from local residents and An Taisce.

However, as part of the 22 conditions attached, the company must pay €250,000 to the council in respect of public infrastructure and facilities benefiting the development.

The council has imposed the condition even though the development will not be using any public roads to transfer rock materials to the bypass project.

The go-ahead for the quarry will now allow GAMA to source rock materials for the bypass from its own resources, thereby cutting its costs for the project, which is due to finish in April 2007.

The 37-acre quarry is the third of three GAMA quarries to secure planning permission from the council and by far the biggest.

In all, the council has granted planning permission to GAMA, for two years, to excavate 900,000 cubic metres of rock material, with 480,000 cubic metres of the total to be excavated from the quarry now granted planning at Killow/Kilbreckan on the outskirts of Ennis.

The council granted permission, ruling that it would not seriously injure the amenities of the area, or of property in the vicinity and would not be prejudicial to public health.

The authority ruled that granting permission will result in a vast reduction in the amount of material to be imported on the existing road network and thus represent a more sustainable approach towards the construction of the bypass.

At one juncture during the planning process, the council had “serious concern” over aspects of the proposal, but the final planner’s report stated that outstanding issues could be dealt with by condition.

In their objection to the proposal, the local residents group stated: “we now fear that the proposed major expansion of this quarrying operation and its movement much nearer to our homes, is going to result in major structural damage being suffered to our dwellings and we wish to object in the strongest possible terms to permission being granted.”

MAYOR of Ennis, Frankie Neylon, has expressed his disappointment that Ennis Town Council was not adequately informed during the consultation process for the Ennis and Environs Development Plan.

Cllr Neylon said that the council had had very little input into the plan and that it hadn’t been brought up at discussion level at council level.

The Mayor made his comments at last Tuesday’s monthly meeting of Ennis Town Council where the members voted to accept 26 changes to the Ennis and Environs Development Plan which would see large tracts of land in the town rezoned.

The council also decided to delete from the plan a proposal regarding infrastructural safeguards in the Eastern Residential Area of Ennis.

“We were always told that this was our plan but this wasn’t brought up at council level.

“We had a very small input into it.

“I think we were very badly informed on the matter and I am dissapointed that things like that happen” said Cllr Neylon.

The decision to adopt the variations to the plan was carried after 62 vote in favour of the motion proposed by Cllr Peter Considine (FF) which stated that the variations be withdrawn pending the outcome of a study pertaining to the infrastructural requirements for routes in the area.

“For once in my life I would go toward the planners because I would put people before cars. We should defer section three.

“We are morally obliged to get the full information before we make a decision,” said Cllr Considine.

Cllr Johnny Flynn (FG) proposed the non adoption of the variation on the grounds that the plan didn’t encourage the development of renewable energy; the use of public transport; it didn’t make adequate provision for road safety and the groundwater vulnerability in the Ballymaquiggan and Reskaun clusters.

Cllr Flynn was supported in his proposal by Cllr Donal O’Beara (GP) who claimed that there hadn’t been a sufficient and comprehensive review of the plan.

Deputy Mayor Joe Reidy (FF) excused himself from the voting on the grounds that his father owned a section of land in Clarecastle that was due to be rezoned under the variation.

THE Chamber of Commerce in Ennis has expressed concern that a number of prominent premises at the heart of the town centre are vacant and retailers do not appear to be attracted there.

Chamber CEO Rita McInerney made the comment in the wake of Bank of Scotland choosing to locate in a prime retail premises at the centre of the town.

The bank, which will open in April, will move to the former premises of ACC bank on High Street in the town.

While welcoming the move to the town, Ms McInerney said, “The only concern in relation to the location is we would want to see more retail in the town centre. I would like to see more retail moving into the town”.

A number of buildings including the premises formerly occupied by Japan, Fox’s butchers, the old Carrig Donn building and Cassidy’s Pharmacy, on O’Connell Street, are all vacant. Carrig Donn and Cassidy’s did move to larger premises, but their old premises remain vacant.

“We do welcome Bank of Scotland coming to the town, but I would be jumping up and down even more if it was retail,” added the Chamber CEO.

Bank of Scotland, meanwhile, says it did not move into the former ESB offices on Carmody Street – many of the Bank of Scotland outlets moved to vacant ESB stores nationwide – because it was too big.

The bank’s head of retail Chrissie Quinn told The Clare People , “It was just too big. We were looking for a particular size of unit.”

Workers are due to go on site at the High Street building next week and will continue to work there until scheduled opening in early to mid April.

Some former ESB employees – who worked in the Carmody Street office prior to its closure – will take up employment with Bank of Scotland, whose Ennis branch is one of 46 nationwide due to open over the next 14 months.

“The emphasis will be on value for money and products that customers said they wanted. The premises are very open, colourful and welcoming,” said Ms Quinn.

Asked if there is a possibility of further expansion, to include other Clare towns, she said, “We will consolidate and see where we will go from there. The first 46 branches will give us reach to two-thirds of the population.”

The Ennis branch will open from 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday and from 9am and 12 noon every Saturday.