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THE people of Bally- vaughan are in for a mu- sical treat this October as the renowned German BASF choir will perform in the St. John the Baptist Church on Tuesday the 25th. The Ballyvaughan concert 1s one of only two dates that the choir will perform at during their short Irish Tour.

The BASF choir was founded in Ludwigshafen in 1892 and recruits its members not only from the BASF factory but from all over the area as a whole. The lay choir boasts some of the regions most gifted voices and is also one of the countries most professional as it employs a full-time pro- fessional conductor.

On the programme will

be songs from musicals and films as well as a number of classical piec- es. During their short stay in Ireland, the 84 strong choir, will also perform in Dublin.

This is the choir’s first visit to Ireland, but in the recent past they have toured in Italy, Hungary, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. They have ap- peared in many television and radio programmes in their native Germany and around Europe.

All proceeds raised from the concert will go to for Ballyvaughan Nation- al School and the Bally- vaughan Christmas Task SLO) KeKomay idee r-Tnemr-LAKesee] OND OTS to stage Ireland’s first out- door Christmas market later this year. Tickets are on sale locally. Admission €12, call: 065 7077377.

THE Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern has denied recent claims that the UN Commission on Human Rights is set to in- vestigate whether the Irish Government has allowed US intelligence agencies to transport suspected al Qaeda prisoners through Shan- non Airport.

Speaking in the Dail last week the Min- ister said: “I am aware of a media reports that Martin Scheinin, the UN Commission on Human Rights’ special rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Counter- ing Terrorism, has been contacted by Irish

citizens regarding allegations about the use of Irish airports by the US to transit prisoners who are suspected of terrorist activity.

“Last week my department was contacted by Professor Scheinin’s office to confirm that neither he, nor any other special rapporteur, is currently investigating, or inquiring into this matter. I understand that the British and US Governments have received similar com- munications from Professor Scheinin’s of- fice,’ the Minister added.

Media reports earlier this month suggested that the UN had launched a major investiga- tion into the use of Shannon and other air- ports in the UK, as stop off points for prison- ers being transported to Guantanamo Bay in

Cuba for interrogation.

Last October, a group of mid-west based ac- tivists made a formal complaint to gardai fol- lowing claims that a CIA plane, a corporate- style Gulfstream aircraft with the registration N379P and nicknamed the “Guantanamo Bay Express,” had been used by the US to “effec- tively kidnap so-called high-value targets and transport them around the world.” The plane has been sighted at Shannon on several occa- sions in recent years.

Minister Ahern said that the US Govern- ment had assured him that they had not trans- ported prisoners through Shannon Airport.

“The US authorities have confirmed that they have not done so and that they would not

do so without seeking the permission of the Irish authorities. No request for such authori- sation has been received from the US authori- ties,’ the Minister said.

“This Government has on several occasions made clear to the US authorities that it would be illegal to transit prisoners for rendition purposes through Irish territory without the express permission of the Irish authorities, acting in accordance with Irish and interna- tional law.”

Last August,

THE BOIL notice in place on the Ennis wa- ter supply should be lifted this week.

According to Tom Tiernan, Town Engi- neer, the notice will probably be lifted by Wednesday, because the Council is expect- ing that results of further analysis carried out on the water supply over the weekend will be clear. The news comes following a meeting between Mr. Tiernan and the Health Services Executive (HSE).

He said that the quality of the water at the source of the supply had improved and that no new traces of e-coli had been found. The announcement was made at yesterday’s meeting of Ennis Town Council. The boil notice, which has been in place since Sep-

tember 14 has imposed an extra financial burden on 30,000 homes in Ennis and the Surrounding areas. Mr. Tiernan said that he had been assured by the HSE that there had been no evidence linking recent illnesses in the area to the quality of the water supply. Cllr Taiwo Matthew (Ind) challenged Mr. Tiernan’s assertion by claiming that he knew of at least two children from the Ennis area that had been admitted to a Limerick hospi- tal with water borne infections.

Cllr Matthew also claimed that neither child had been asked to fill out forms stating where they lived. This prompted Mr. Tiernan to say that there had been a small number of incidents recorded, but that there were rea- sons to suggest that the illnesses might have been associated with other factors. Ennis

Town Mayor, Frankie Neylon, also claimed he knew of incidents where people had been ill as aresult of drinking the water. Concerns were also raised about the level of effort that had gone into notifying the public that the water was unsafe for consumption, with Cllr Neylon stating that it wasn’t sufficient to just advertise on the local radio station.

Councillors welcomed the news that Min- ister for the Environment, Dick Roche, had approved tender documents for the new En- nis Water Scheme. With the scheme not due for completion until 2007, questions were raised about what measures would be taken to safeguard the quality of water in the inter- im. Mr. Tiernan stated that he had instructed consultants advising the Council to explore all options.

THE Minister for Community, Ru- ral and Gaeltacht Affairs Eamon O Cuiv has called on farmers to face up to the fact that farming as a profes- sion 1S going to continue to decline in the future. Speaking at the Nation Ploughing Championships last week Minister O Cuiv called for radical and broad rural development policies. According to the Agrivision 2015 Report, it 1s estimated that by 2015, there will only be 105,000 farmers in Ireland, of whom only 40,000 will earn their full-time living from farm- ing. This compares to 225,000 farm-

ers in the 197/0’s.

“The recent European Negotiations were a watershed in European Rural Policy with a clear shift from a pre- dominant focus on agricultural in- come support to a new integrated ru- ral development approach with special emphasis on the rural environment and rural economic development out- side the farm gate,” said Minister O Gina

‘For the first time significant funds have been clearly ring-fenced for gen- eral rural development. Because of our unique situation we are very well placed to play a significant lead role in developing the new rural Europe.”

The Department of Community, Ru- ral and Gaeltacht Affairs will shortly be engaging with the wider rural community in relation to this plan and seeking submissions to it. The Min- ister urged people to think outside of the box and to take a full part in the most radical realignment of rural pol- icies that has ever taken place at both European and national level.

Minister O Cuiv added that a ma- jor part of this radical programme for rural renewal is the Government’s Decentralisation Policy, where it was consciously decided to focus decen- tralisation in a special way on smaller towns and rural communities.

THE IFA National Treasurer, Pad- raig Walshe has thrown his hat in the ring to become the next president of the organisation and has written to every IFA branch in Clare, canvass- ing for their support.

In a personal letter to the chairmen of all IFA branches in the county, Mr Walshe said that the new challenges facing Clare farmers demand a radi- cal new approach from the IFA in its dealings with the government, the EU and with all sectors of the food processing and retailing industry.

Mr Walshe, who is a beef and dairy farmer from Laois, also said

that his top priority as President of IFA will be to ensure a level playing field for farmers in the market place and in the operation of EU and na- tional schemes.

‘Farmers are being subjected to an increasing level of regulation which is unnecessary and unjustified and 1s putting them at a major competitive disadvantage relative to their coun- terparts in other EU states,” said Mr AWAD ates

‘Tam determined to eliminate the police-state mentality within our government departments and at EU level, which implies that farmers cannot be trusted to produce safe, quality food.”

Mr Walshe claims that more than 20 years of experience at the highest level in farming organisations puts him in a strong position to lead the IFA with commitment, energy and enthusiasm. He is a former President of Macra na Feirme and has served in a large number of senior positions in the IFA at national and county level, including National Chairman of the Dairy Committee.

“IT will also build new relation- ships with the processors, marketers and retailers of food with the aim of clawing back the margin that has been transferred from farmers into the supermarket bottom line,” he Loyal paLetsrem

Mr Walshe’s competition for the job will come from Raymond O’Malley from Louth and Rory Deasy form Roscrea. Both Walshe and O’ Malley ran for the presidency in 2001 when they lost out to the out- going president John Dillon.

Each of the 950 IFA branches in the country will be asked to elect the new IFA president when the election is held in early December. The suc- cessful candidate will be elected for two years with the option to run for a second two year term afterwards.

Traditionally, IFA presidents seek- ing a second term run unopposed for the position.

THIS weekend saw a huge increase in the pulse rate of doggie people with the opening of the coursing season and a meeting in Liscannor. The main focus on the track however was the final of the Tote Retention stake at Limerick on SP TMUU Ker Nyap eu rca ale

Despite a big entry of Clare dogs in the first round heats there was no Clare representatives in the final. Victory went to Galdare Romeo, owned by PJ Fahy and Dermot Cox of Glenamaddy and trained by Paul Hennessy.

This valuable stake was worth €10,000 to the winner. There was a very good run by Redzone Run in Race 9 over 300 yds. The dog, which is owned

by Kathleen Carroll of Newmarket on Fergus, came in with a winning time of 16.45 seconds.

Three Clare dogs will be in the final of the Galway Tote A5 stake after win- ning place finishes at the Galway track on Thursday. Drinking Solid, owned by Sean Allen of Shannon, finished second in the first semi final, Cricket Player owned by Janet Downes of Killaloe finished second and Now It’s Nancy owned by Eimhear Lillis and Ian Kelly of Cooraclare finished third in the sec- ond semi final.

Going to traps also this weekend at Galway for the final of the Buster 525 stake will be Baby Leyton owned by Bertie and Mary O’Doherty of Clare- castle. The dog is handled by Johnie

Burke of Tubber and finished third in the semi final.

Supporters of Fianna Fail are turning out in big numbers for various stakes presently underway. Also at Galway the finals of these stakes are set for Friday night, October 14. Glengall Lad, owned by Joe Longe of Ballyea continued his good run with another win in Race 10 on Thursday night.

Sharon Sexton of Mullagh , who owns Sharon’s Bonus – the winner of Race 4 on Friday, will be hoping to capture some of the Fianna Fail prize money.

Other Clare winners over the past weekend were Burrow Twilight owned by Patrick Cronin and Niall Heaney of Ennis, and Clonreddan Tina owned by Thomas Keane of Cooraclare.

WHILE some might feel it’s a classic case of ‘closing the stable door after the horse has bolted’, Clare County Council nonetheless last week issued the second edition of its ‘Clare Rural House Design Guide’, aimed at setting higher stand- ards for rural housing design.

According to the council’s planning office, these design guidelines will make it very clear that housing develop- ment in rural areas needs to be of a high quality and should complement rather than dominate its surroundings.

The new rural house design guide takes account of new national guide- lines on sustainable rural housing. Liam Conneally, Acting Director of Planning with the Council said “it is the princi- ple aim of the new House Design Guide to create a clearer understanding of the components of good house siting and design. Without a well informed public it 1s difficult to achieve the high qual- ity building design that the landscape of Clare deserves”.

Conneally commented that “the land- scape of County Clare is one of its greatest natural assets and the achieve- ment of a high quality built environ- ment in the county is important to its physical and economic well-being. We all share in the responsibility to achieve this end; local authorities, design and building professions, building industry, chents who commission buildings and the community itself,”

He emphasised “the new House De-

sign Guide recognises that contempo- rary design can develop interesting and attractive buildings that contribute to the landscape character of the county.”

He stated that “the guide does not pre- scribe design but draws to the attention of applicants, architects, builders and their agents the benefits of drawing on traditional design elements in the design of new buildings and to give special consideration to siting, materials and orientation in the design process.”

Responding to the launch of the De- sign Guide, Liscannor based architect Alex Russell commented, “in the ideal world the proper profession would do the proper job, and there wouldn’t be any need for planners to impose design parameters. However, in the context of Clare, where a broad range of people think they can design, and have had a go at doing so in the past, with disastrous consequence, the council obviously felt that the need had arisen to produce such parameters”’.

Russell views the guidelines as a “kind of rescue mission’, although he concluded, “for large swathes of the county, they arrive, after the event”.

Russell aired concerns that the guide- lines seemed to be misguided in that they are directed towards the visual look of a house and also relied on a cer- tain interpretation of traditional archi- tecture. He suggested, “it would be bet- ter to guide in terms of proportion and scale and the arrangement of the build- ing, rather then prescribing in terms of visual or aesthetic appearance”.

Paul Conway, partner at Leahy and Conway Architects, Ennis said, “ a number of rural counties have produced House Design Guides in recent years. Considering the extremely poor quality of siting and design of much of what was built throughout the countryside over the past few decades, these guides have, at least, been well intentioned, though some are more successful than others.

He continued, “The new Clare De- sign Guide is aimed at the ‘user’, whom I understand to mean the people who will live in the houses. It is a reason- ably good effort, with new sections on modern design, conservation and an improved section on sustainability, and most professionally qualified architects will welcome it. A lingering concern re- mains as to how it will be operated by the planning authority, with the danger that it will be used as a rule book where the ‘good’ examples illustrated are to be badly copied without reference to the particular siting or circumstances, and an innovative design is reyected because it does not match one of the approved models”.

Conneally, for his part encouraged members of the public and house plan designers to use the design guide when preparing planning applications for one-off houses in the county.”

The House Design Guide is available at libraries throughout the county and at the offices of Clare County Council, Unit 1, Westgate Retail Park, Kilrush Road, Ennis at a cost of Eurol5 per

fe) 94

Business People section recently, has 118 fulltime employees plus contractors.

Building on its past success and local ex- pertise, Tecnomen announced that it will

invest heavily in the future development of its Charging Business Unit products and this means further growth in its Shannon operation.

“This commitment to significant invest- ment in the Shannon operation further un- derlines the confidence that Tecnomen has in it’s Shannon staff and in the local region to provide the quality of personnel and in- frastructure we require.

“IT have every confidence that this expan- sion will be a success and that the plans will further secure the future of Tecnomen” said Kari Penttilaé, Director of the Charg- ing Business Unit.

Tecnomen has been operating in Shannon since 1991. The company first started as a manufacturing base to service the needs of Tecnomen’s paging and messaging custom- ers. The Irish operation has now grown to

be a central part of Tecnomen’s global op- erations and the headquarters of its’ Charg- ing Business Unit.

The Charging Product Development which is supported from Shannon is used by telecommunication operators to man- age their interface with pre-paid end-users. This is a significant growth area for Tec- nomen especially in the Latin and Central American markets.

Tecnomen develops and supplies mes- saging and charging solutions for telecom operators and service providers worldwide. Founded in Finland in 1978 the Company has over 25 years of experience in the tele- communications sector with many industry firsts including first to deliver voice mail, first to deliver unified messaging and first commercial MMS interconnection using different vendors’ systems.

Tecnomen systems are in use by over 60 operators in 40 countries worldwide.

This innovative multinational regards Shannon as a very advantageous global R & D production and logistics base, having Skilled labour, tax incentives and business infrastructure coupled with a strategic lo- cation beside an international airport are among the chief reasons why the company located in Shannon.

Most of the company’s R & D staff are third-level graduates from colleges in Lim- erick, Cork and Galway.

Shannon is the sole manufacturing and global distribution operation within the group and product is shipped by air to Tel- ecoms operators throughout the world.

All open positions in Shannon can be viewed at www.tecnomen.com.

A SERIOUSLY injured man lay in agony for an hour after a road accident in Scariff on Sun- day night, because the Scariff ambulance was locked up.

Distraught locals did their best to comfort the injured man, who was thrown from his motor- cycle into a garden. The motorbike demolished the pier of a garden wall.

He is now in the intensive care unit at Limer- ick’s Regional Hospital and is being treated for serious lower body injuries.

The accident, which also involved a car, hap- pened at 7.30pm at Ballyminogue on the Scar- iff to Portumna road.

One local woman who tried to help the in- jured 28-year old said that it was “absolutely dreadful. The man was in terrible pain but he had to wait nearly 45 minutes for a doctor and a full hour for an ambulance to come out from Limerick.”

The local woman said that residents on the road “came out to do what they could, but it was terrible. He was obviously badly injured, but we didn’t know what to do. An hour is a very long time when you’re lying injured on the ground yet there was an ambulance just up the road. It’s a disgrace.”

One eye-witness who came on the scene said that the “bike was mangled. It looked as if it had been cut in half.”

One Scariff resident said that the “fire bri-

gade were there very quickly, way before there was any medical help for the poor man. We need that ambulance available to us and a lo- cal number that we can ring for a doctor when

something this serious happens. It took far too long for medical help to reach him.”

Local Councillor, Colm Wiley (FF) called just last month for a full-time ambulance serv- ice for the Scariff area.

“That ambulance is under lock and key from about 7pm until after midnight because there is no funding to crew it,’ the councillor said.

He said that the injured man might well have had to wait for an ambulance to come from even further away, if one had not been avail- able to come out from Limerick.

“It’s a very serious situation and lives are be- ing put at risk because of it. I am calling for funding to be made available immediately to provide 24 -hour crewing for the ambulance which is already here,’ he said.

East Clare Senator Timmy Dooley said, the Scariff ambulance service needs to be upgrad- ed as a matter of urgency.

A report on the ambulance services for the Mid-West Region, including the service in Scariff, has been submitted to the Health Serv- ice Executive for consideration.

“This is something we have been campaign- ing for, for a while and it has been brought to the attention to the Minister for Health,’ he Sr ntee

ENNIS Town Council has given the go-ahead for a commercial development that is expected to further reyuve- nate the Drumbiggle part of eTom Kenai e

Earlier this year, Pat Hans- bury, Alan Collins and Do- nie and John Dillane lodged plans with the Council for a four storey building to con- tain 18 apartments and four retail units, along with an underground car-park to ac- commodate 46 car-parking Sey: eke

Currently, the site is waste- land opposite Ennis town Council’s Drumbiggle head- quarters and was the former site of the rundown Drumbig- gle flats before they were de- molished by the Council.

The Council subsequently sold the property and plans were lodged for the develop- ment earlier this year.

In its decision, the Council ruled that the development would not seriously injure the amenities of adjacent dwell- ings, is acceptable in terms of traffic safety and is in the interests of proper planning and development.

However, the plan has en- countered opposition from residents in the Buttermarket

area of Ennis. In an objection lodged with the Council, the residents claim that “the de- sign of the proposed structure is more appropriate to a city or sea/harbour location than a central location in a medium size town with streetscape of traditional design.”

SU ileaar Uomo t-b bee mm ner:l mmm lets proposal bears no relation- ship to any development in the vicinity with respect to scale or density and the scale of the building is excessive and will be unduly prominent in its setting with respect to all developments in the gen- eral area.”

They also claim that the building detracts from the visual amenity of the Town SEV o eel Cebuetcanysavloe miei Ker Kor@] Coxe CLO MELCLRU KOR

The residents also raise concerns over the impact the development will have on traffic in the area.

They state: “access to the underground car park is off the side road and will result in large volumes of traffic coming up and down Butter- market Street.

“This street is not capa- ble of taking the volumes of traffic that would be gener- ated by the development. The Council should also note that this street is used extensively

by school children walking to the nearby schools. Traffic generated by the development in these circumstances would be a serious traffic hazard.”

The residents also pointed out that the proposal is lo- cated within Ennis’s archi- tectural conservation area (ACA) where new buildings will be permitted where it can be clearly demonstrated that that such developments reflect the character of the area and its streetscape.

In the planner’s report on the case, it is stated: “the development now proposed, contains 18 apartments. The scale and extent of the pro- posal has now been consider- ably reduced from previous applications.

“The majority of the devel- opment now faces Drumbig- gle Rd. Rear return section has been omitted thereby reducing significantly the im- pact of the development on the adjoining cottages.

“The basement holds 46 car-parking spaces. This is not considered to be of such number that it would give rise to traffic hazard.

The council granted plan- ning permission, subject to 39 conditions including that the developers contribute €217,000.