The Clare People Archive

THE problems faced by up to 15,000 legal foreign workers in Clare will be the topic for discussion when Columban Priest and head of the Irish Immigrant Rights Council, Fr Bobby Gilmore, speaks in Ennis this morning.

Fr Gilmore will speak at the Civic Building at ten this morning (Tuesday) on the invitation of the Network of Service Providers for Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Ennis.

The main focus of the talk will be integration.

“The immigrants tend to cluster in certain areas and with all the industry around the Shannon area, there could be anything from ten to 15,000 immigrants here,” said Fr Gilmore.

“It is very hard to get an accurate number and there is a lot of back and forth all the time with seasonal work”.

Between 1978 and 1992, Fr Gilmore worked with Irish Immigrant’s in Britain where, among other things, he worked with the Birmingham Six and the Guilford Four.

Following this he went to work in Jamaica, where he dealt with the plight of thousands of Cuban Immigrants.

THE pupils and teachers of St Enda’s National School in Lisdoonvarna are celebrating this morning after four students from the school won the All-Ireland U11 Credit Union Quiz Competition in dramatic fashion in the RDS, Dublin, over the weekend.

After ten rounds of gruelling competition, the Lisdoonvarna team were level on 50 points with two other schools, Réalt na Mara Girls National School from Meath and Scoil na Croise Naofa from Waterford. The competition then went into extra time with three rounds of sudden death questions.

Amazingly, after the three additional rounds St Enda’s and Réalt na Mara remained deadlocked. As a tie-breaker, both teams were asked to guess the height of a statue located in London and, to the delight of parents and teachers, the St Enda’s guess was closer.

“We are absolutely delighted,” said school principal John Hehir. “To win an All-Ireland on any day is a fantastic achievement. We were expecting to do well having came so close last year. But this is really fantastic achievement.”

The Lisdoonvarna team, which consisted of Padraic Rubio-Lacey, Eimear O’Sullivan, Robert Hillary and Orla Burke, had already seen off more than 100 teams on their way to winning the Clare/Limerick qualifing round earlier in the month.

This latest victory means that the Lisdoonvarna team outdid more than 25,000 children on their way to claiming the title.

The school will receive some €1,200 (IR£1,000) for winning the competition, with each student receiving a DVD player.

“We hope to use the money to do something to encourage students to do more research, or to use new multimedia technology in some way,” continued Mr Hehir. “It might also be a nice idea to open a credit union account for each of the four students involved.”

The school, with a long tradition of producing quality quiz teams, had been in preparation for the competition for the last number of weeks.

“In the past two weeks, you could get asked any question under the sun when you walked into the school,” continued Mr Hehir. “Two of the teachers here, Maura Hanrahan and Bridget Crawford have been working really hard.”

A CHURCH on the former site of Our Lady’s psychiatric hospital has been mooted as a possible location of worship for people of different religious faiths.

At yesterday’s annual monthly meeting of Ennis Town Council the suggestion was put forward that the use of St Mary’s Church should be explored as one option by members of religious organisations in Ennis who don’t have a suitable location to practice worship. A dispute between developers and the local community was recently settled with the agreement of a four year lease that safeguarded the future use of the building.

Councillors were debating a motion submitted by Councillor Taiwo Matthew (Ind) which requested that Ennis Town Council provide a designated area within the town where members of different religious affiliations could gather for worship.

“I am aware that there is a church on Our Lady’s. Ennis is a fast growing town with different cultures and races. If we are to look at extending the town boundary we need to take into account community development as well. There have been some cases where people have complained about people using houses to worship.”

The motion wasn’t passed but councillor’s advised that religious groups should identify a suitable location and engage in the pre-planning process. Director of Services with Ennis Town Council, Tom Coughlan stated that land for community use has been designated, but that it would be unwise for the council to engage in site acquisition when they weren’t aware of the exact requirements.

Councillor Peter Considine (FF) and Councillor Johnny Flynn both expressed their support for the use of Our Lady’s as a temporary location while Councillor Donal O’Beara (GP) said religious groups should prepare a submission for next year for a variation to the Ennis and Environs Development Plan.

GORT could face into an economic crisis unless a second entrance to the town is built into the new bypass, a public meeting has heard.

Some 200 people attended the meeting, which was organised by Grace (Gort Regional Alliance for Community and Environment).

It saw senior executives from National Roads Design Office, Galway County Council and the road’s designers answering questions from the floor.

“Most people left the meeting feeling very frustrated with the no, no, no response that they got,” a spokesperson for GRACE told The Clare People . “Our only option now is to prepare a submission to the Environmental Impact Statement.”

The deadline for such submissions is May second and if successful a representative from GRACE will be allowed to make his/her case for the second entrance, at an oral hearing.

“There will be a real bottle neck getting in to and out of the town. Mentally, if people have to go out of a town the same way that they come into the town, it will stop people from coming in at all,” continued the spokesperson.

“There is also a serious concern over the safety of pedestrians in the town, especially of Crowe Street and around O’Sullivan’s Hotel.”

A campaign has been in place in Gort concerning the proposed bypass since 2000. Initially, the focus was on increasing the bypass from a two carriageway road to a duel carriageway. However, the focus switched in

2002 when a new set of plans pro-

vided for a dual carriageway but left

only one entrance/exit to Gort.

AFTER more than eight years of campaigning the Doolin Coastguard finally looks set to receive a new base of operation.

Discussions between the Office of Public Works (OPW) and a local land owner are moving into the final stages.

According to Matty Shannon of the Doolin Coastguard, the exact location and size of the site has been finalised. He is confident that work on the base will commence in the near future.

“It has reached the final stage of discussion between the OPW and the landowner,” said Mr Shannon. “The site has been finalised and we also know the size of the base.”

The Coast Guard’s new facilities came up for discussion is the Dáil last week following a parliamentary question by Clare TD, James Breen (Ind).

Responding to the question, Transport Minister, Martin Cullen said, “I regard the provision of a new station house for the Doolin coastal unit as a very high priority.

ENNISTYMON woman Aloma McKay is in the running to become one of the most powerful women in rural Ireland.

She is campaigning to become the president of the Irish Country Woman’s Association.

Mrs McKay, who has been a member of the Ennistymon guild of the ICA since 1992, will be up against Peg McMeel from Dublin and Carmel Dawson from Carlow, when the voting takes place later this month.

Mrs McKay believes that a number of challenges in her life have prepared her for the election campaign and her responsibilities as president, should she be successful.

“It is a difficult and demanding position, but I enjoy a challenge,” said Mrs McKay, who came to live in Clare, in 1989.

“We were only here for six months when my husband died and left me with six young children in a foreign country.

“I am also a team player and I work well with others.”

American by birth, she settled with her family in the Ennistymon area. She hopes to use her cosmopolitan background to help improve the image of the ICA, which has, in some quarters an image of being old fashioned.

“The people who have negative images of the ICA, or who think that it is old fashioned, are usually people who have never been involved in it,” she said.

“We now live in a multicultural country. Ireland is moving with the times and the ICA is moving with it.”

Aloma has held many offices, both locally and nationally in the ICA. She served as secretary of the Ennistymon branch from ‘92-’95, chairman of the National Arts Committee from 2001-2003 and the Federation President between 2000 and 2003.

STIFFER penalties should be imposed on people who commit air rage on board flights, according to pilots’ union IALPA.

IALPA (Irish Airline Pilots’ Association) spokesman Conor Nolan was speaking to The Clare People in the wake of a one month sentence being imposed on a Polish man, for his antics on board a Centralwings flight into Shannon last Friday week.

Szczepan Drzewiecki, drank almost a full litre bottle of vodka, before hitting out at other passengers.

He tried to break the window of the plane, as it flew from Warsaw to Shannon.

The father-of-three, who was travelling to Ireland to start work in the construction industry, pleaded guilty to three offences.

He admitted being intoxicated on board the plane, 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, on March 24.

The Inspector, Tom Kennedy, said this case was “above and beyond the circumstances outlined in previous cases.”

The court was told the maximum term that could be imposed – for the offences before the court – was four months.

“Why didn’t he get four? That would be our question. The penalties there should be imposed,” said Mr Nolan.

“There doesn’t seem to be a sufficient deterrent to people to do this [commit air rage],” he said.

He also said “more specific aviation legislation” should be enforced, to address the issue.

“A judge has to deal with an air rage prosecution, as he would some row outside a chipper and it doesn’t necessarily represent the seriousness of it.

“There have been serious prosecutions, but they have not led to air rage convictions per se”.

He said that quite often, alcohol was consumed before boarding an aircraft.

“This needs to be looked at. We want everybody in the chain to be vigilant at all times. It’s an issue that needs to be addressed industrywide,” he said.

This was echoed by Drzewiecki’s solicitor, William Chair, who told the court that while he didn’t wish to excuse his client’s behaviour in any way, that “airline crews should be looking out for signs such as my client displayed.”

Centralwings, which commenced its route between Shannon and Warsaw in November, declined to comment on the incident, despite requests from The Clare People.

AN Ennis man has told of the flight of fear he endured, while sitting next to an enraged passenger trying to break a window on their plane.

Seán Morgan (30) was flying from Warsaw to Shannon with his Polish wife Ewa and two-yearold son Leon, when drunk Szezepan Drzewiecki went into a blind rage.

Ewa and Leon were left in state of panic, while Seán tried to calm Drzewiecki, before he could do serious harm. Drzewiecki had drunk almost a litre of vodka.

The Morgans were returning from a two-week holiday in Poland when mid-air nightmare began.

Sean – who described Drzewiecki as a “time bomb” told The Clare People that the commotion started when they were boarding, but terror erupted during the flight.

Drzewiecki who had never been on a plane previously, first came to Seán’s attention when he spoke to another passenger.

“He was in his face a lot, leaning in on top of him. He then stood up, put on his jacket, took it off again,” he said.

“He started drinking and pounding the man beside him, smacking him on his face and then he went for another guy who was sitting on the inside seat on his row,” he said.

At that stage Seán intervened, and using the best Polish he had acquired, tried to calm Drzewiecki down.

“He settled for a minute, but then started swearing and shouting. Somebody had to take control of it. I told him there were other passengers, mothers and young kids, on the plane,” he said.

“Then, out of nowhere, he just flipped and pushed the seat in front of him, at which stage he started to punch the windows. He completely lost the plot,” he said.

Seán and a number of other passengers restrained him and in the process Drzewiecki sustained a nasty eye injury.

“Between the injury and the alcohol he lay there in a state,” he said.

Seán said while the incident was a hugely distressing for everybody, he would have no fears flying again.

“I felt a bit frightened but felt in control of the situation. It was a nightmare because everyone on the plane was in a serious state of shock and panic. It is the last thing you would expect,” he said.

He said if he did not intervene, Drzewiecki might have assaulted other passengers.

“If I had not taken action, he would have gone loose,” he said.

AN AMBITIOUS new proposal that would see over €4 million spent on upgrading broadband facilities in Ennis has been submitted by Clare County Council to the Department of Communications, Maritime and Natural Resources.

Councillors in the Ennis electoral area were informed at last week’s area meeting that a detailed submission aimed at addressing the shortfall in high speed Internet within the town had been forwarded to the department.

A total of 15.2km of fibre optic cable would be laid in Ennis under the proposal.

Government funding would account for 90

cent of the cost with both Clare County Coun cil and Shannon Development providing a further 5 per cent each.

Broadband technology would be installed in Ennis under the Department’s Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) scheme, which proposes the laying of “carrier neutral” fibre optic cable, where previously access to fibre optic technology was exclusive to the company that had installed it.

Councillor Joe Carey (FG) said he was astounded that Ennis had not been prioritised for Broadband access given its status as an information age town. He also stated that there were several blackspots around the Ennis area where broadband was unavailable.

“It is impossible to access broadband in Clarecastle. We are in limbo, it is a problem. It’s hard to fathom that Ennis hasn’t been prioritised and now we have top go with our begging bowl to the Government”

Councillor Brian Meaney (GP) said that many consumers found existing broadband suppliers too expensive and said that the problem could be traced back to the privatisation of Eircom.

FUNDING for public patients attending the radiotherapy unit at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital is being delayed, partly because of Department of Health guidelines, according to a senior health manager.

The clinical practice guidelines adopted by the department were highlighted as problematic for the satellite radiotherapy service, by John O’Brien, Hospital Network Manager for the Mid West Region.

The Health Service Executive Mid West has already applied for the €2 million funding necessary to run the Mid-Western Radiation Oncology centre every year.

“We have got some funding for cancer services, but we feel this service should be funded separately,” said Mr O’Brien, former assistant CEO of the health board.

The satellite unit on the grounds of the hospital in Dooradoyle, Limerick is currently treating 140 public and private patients from Clare, Limerick and Tipperary.

Patient referrals to the consultant radiation oncologist in the unit arise through the twiceweekly new patient clinics, or for in-patients at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital.

More than 1,600 treatments have been delivered by the on-site multi-disciplinary team of specialists in radiation oncology medicine, since it opened last October. There is now one linear accelerator at full service with capacity for a second.

Mr O’Brien told last Tuesday’s meeting of the Regional Health Forum West that the Department of Health now wanted to bring that second line on stream.