The Clare People Archive

PRESIDENT of Ireland, Michael D Higgins did not call himself a Clare man during his first official presidential visit to the county in June, but his brother and sister both agreed it was safe to consider him “one of our own”.

Ireland’s first citizen, who spent his formative years, from the age of five to 19, living in his parental home of Ballycar, Newmarket-onFergus, would not describe himself as a Clare man but a man with many associations with different counties.

“Yes, indeed, I associate myself with Clare. There are many origins I have that are very simply understood,” he said.

“My father and my grandfather and my greatgrandfather have been associated with County Clare since time immemorial. I am glad to say in the 1901 census, in the townland of Ballycar, there are four families of Higgins. And once again, as a result of my brother’s [John] activities and his sons, there are four families in Ballycar again.”

The President explained that his mother came from an area near Charleville in Cork and her family continue to live there.

A former TD for Galway West, he described how the city accepted him as a migrant and its mayor twice.

“Galway is where my own fam- ily have been born and rared,” he added.

While the president maintained his life experiences have been made up of many counties, including the city of Limerick where he was born, all have a common thread of both rural and urban life. It is these experiences that have formed the ninth President of Ireland, who admited that coming back to Clare as the country’s first citizen was like coming home.

A LONG-AWAITED rescue centre for the Doolin Unit of the Irish Coastguard is the next top priority of the Department of Transport, according to Minister for Transport, Leo Varadkar (FG).

Speaking at a joint Coastguard/ RNLI event on Sunday, December 30, Varadkar named Doolin as the next station-house for construction, once a new building for the Killybegs Unit of the Irish Coastguard has been completed.

Construction is already well underway on the Donegal station, with work set to be finished early in 2013. With no new cuts to coastguard funding announced in last month’s budget, this could leave the way open for the start of construction in Doolin later in 2013.

A campaign for a new station at Doolin has been ongoing for almost two decades and has been delayed on a number of occasions over the years because of planning issues, difficulty in acquiring land and uncertainty about funding for the project.

Planning permission for a new rescue centre at Doolin was granted in 2010. The centre will include a new two-storey rescue centre on the site of the current facility as well as a single-storey, three-bay boat and vehicle store.

The current station is prone to flooding and is too small for the Doolin Unit to store all of its rescue equipment and boats. This means that some of the unit’s crafts have to be stored off-site, creating the possibility of a delay in responding to some emergency situation.

“Funding for the Coastguard has been protected for the second year running in the Budget. Similarly, funding for the RNLI and Mountain Rescue will be maintained at current levels through to 2016,” said the transport minister.

“These are essential services and much of the cost is met by volunteers. But I particularly want to pay tribute to the huge number of volunteers who save lives every week of the year. Without these volunteers, it simply wouldn’t be possible to provide the same level of emergency response.”

The 2012 Irish Coastguard statistics were also released on Sunday and showed that the year had been the busiest on record for the service. Nationally the coastguard saved 161 lives and recovered 88 in thousands of operations over the last one month.

While individual number of the Doolin and the Killaloe units of the Irish Coastguard have yet to be released, the Shannon based Coast Guard helicopter recorded its busiest year on record with 191 missions.

The coastguard also fielded a total of 325 hoax calls from members of the public, a figure described my Minister Varadkar as “unacceptably high”. A we e k o f m ild we a t h e r a n d a lo t le ss ra in t h a n we h a ve b e e n e xp e rie n c in g o ve r t h e p a st we e k o r so .

MAGIC mushrooms located in the Burren could hold the key to tackling world hunger in the coming years. Scientists have discovered that networks of microscopic fungi play a key role in aiding plants to extract and process nutrients from the soil, it emerged.

According to Dr Ray Woods of the British organisation Plantlife, intensive farming, fertiliser and human intrusion have destroyed these fungal networks across Europe, with the Burren’s wild grasslands now considered as a fungal “arc” for the future of European farming.

Studies showed that these tiny fungi can help plants to fight off disease and can even allow for the flow of nutrients from one plant to another over large distances.

“We are just starting to learn how vital these fungi are for growing crops. They are intimately connecting with well-known plants, such as hazel, using 50 or 60 different types of fungi to grow,” said Dr Woods.

“The wild flowers of the Burren are a perfect example of this. There are so many different plants and flowers there and none of them ever seem to dominate.

“In the Burren, you have one of the last unimpacted areas of grassland anywhere in the world. It is really one of the very few places in the world where research into fungal networks can still be done. It is an arc for these fungi.”

One of the most important abilities of these fungal networks is helping plants to extract nitrogen from the soil.

At present, virtually all world agriculture is built on the use of large amounts of industrialised nitrogen fertiliser, which is made using large amount of oil.

As global oil supplies continue to dwindle, the use of oil in producing fertiliser is considered by many to be the biggest challenge facing world agriculture in the next 50 years. This has prompted many people to examine the role that the intact Burren fungal networks could have on world agriculture.

“People are already coming to the Burren [to study the fungi] but it is difficult at times to know who is coming and what they are doing. You come across people from universities in Germany, Holland, Ireland and the UK in the Burren,” said Stephen Ward of the BurrenBeo Trust.

“If they are doing original research, then chances are they would contact an organisation like the BurrenBeo Trust because we can be helpful.”

THE number of people born on Clare soil swelled by one in May when baby Eirinn Christina Robbins Logue came into the world on the side of the road in Corofin.

Eirinn’s parents, Caralyn Robbins and Phil Logue, were about to drop their two older children at their aunt’s house at Laghtagoona in Corofin before carrying on to hospital in Galway, when Eirinn decided that her big moment had arrived.

The momentous birth took place on the road outside Caralyn’s sister Crystel’s house, with dad Phil acting as a more than capable midwife.

“By the time I got to the driveway, I couldn’t even drive up to the house, I had to stop right there. I was like a headless chicken,” said delighted Phil.

“It was me that delivered the baby. Caralyn was standing up, she had got out of the car to try and get into the house, so she was standing up leaning on the door of the jeep. She said ‘the baby is coming, the baby is coming’.

“Sure enough, the baby’s head was already out. She told me that the baby was coming right then so I cupped the baby’s head in my hand. There was a big whoosh and the baby came flying out and I caught it.

“Crystel was on the phone to the 999 operator, who was giving us advice, and she then came over and helped wrap up the baby and we handed it up to Caralyn. Out of the three of us, I think Mum was the most calm. Myself and Crystel were panicking but Caralyn was the most calm of all of us.

“I really have to give my sincere thanks to Crystel, I don’t know what I would have done if she wasn’t there, and Peter and the rest of the ambulance crew and paramedics and also the 999 operator for their professionalism and for taking care of us so well.”

According to Phil, his partner Caralyn had a dream last week that the baby would be born in the car on the way to the hospital and the baby would be born a girl. Weighing just over six pounds, baby Eir- inn is fit and healthy and is already being doted on by her four-year-old sister Isabelle and her three-year-old brother Aiden.

Figures released by the Central Statistic Office (CSO) last week revealed that the number of people born in County Clare have plummeted since the removal of maternity facilities from the county’s hospitals in the late 1980s.

“This is the first of my children to actually have been born on Clare soil and that is something that we are very happy about,” continued Phil.

“I think if we hadn’t already decided on a name for Eirinn, we would have called her Clare, but we already had the name picked.”

CLARE County Council revealed that they would examine eight unfinished housing estates in the county in April where they believe that safety and security has become a serious issue.

The local authority has also con firmed that it believes that half of the county’s Category 4 ‘ghost’ estates should no longer fall into this category, which is the worst category of estates.

According to the local authority, only three of the six housing developments that have been classified by the Department of the Environment as unfinished and developer-abandoned, or Category 4 estates, should still be in the category.

The council say that they intend to contact the Department of the Environment and inform them of their opinion on this.

Speaking at last night’s meeting of Clare County Council, Director of Services, Ger Dollard said that the local authority is deploying “quite a lot of resources” to the issue of the Category 4 developments and said that safety was the responsibility of the developer.

He was responding to a joint motion put forward by Cllr John Crowe (FG) and Cllr Paul Murphy (FG) which asked for details on the condition of so-called ghost estates in the county.

“It is the responsibiity of the property owner, the developer or the receivers to ensure that the site is secure and safe,” said a council spokesperson.

“The council has written to developers and receivers with housing developments on the unfinished list, explaining to them their responsibilities in relation to the safety of the site.”

Speaking on last night’s motion, Cllr John Crowe said that some Clare estates were in a “very, very bad condition”.

“There are estates which are not even one-quarter finished and no place for children to play in. There are open drains and other dangers,” he said.

THE 500 year-old body of a Clare teenager discovered in April is helping to paint a clear picture of what life was like for the people of Ireland during one of the most violent periods in the country’s history.

Carbon dating of human remains, discovered in a cave on Moneen Mountain, just outside Ballyvaughan, has revealed that the dead person was between 14 and 16 years of age, and was severally malnutritioned.

According to Dr Marion Dowd of IT Sligo, the evidence suggests that the youth crawled into the cave and died, rather than being placed in the cave after death. This suggests that Moneen Mountain was being used as a refuge or meeting place for poor Clare people at this time.

This period, around the time of the Tudor conquest of Ireland, was one of the bloodiest times in Irish history.

“At this time in Ireland, there was religious persecution, a lot of warfare, Gaelic people are being dispossessed of their land and there are lots of famines.

“But to find the remains of one of these individuals and to see, first hand, the evidence of what was going on is very interesting,” said Dr Dowd. “Another mystery is why the remains were in the cave and not in a burial ground – because there were a number of official burial grounds quite close to the cave. It seems that this young person went into the cave, crawled into a small recess in the cave wall and died there.

“This person may have been completely on his own and died in the cave or there may have been a few people hiding out there.”

The excavation also revealed evidence which suggests that Moneen Mountain may have been a significant place for Bronze Age people.

“The other material dates back to 1,000 BC. We discovered a large quantity of broken-up pots and a deer antler. There is something quite unusual about this also, it does not look like a refuge, there was no-one living inside the cave at the time, and we know that the pots were weathered outside,” continued Marion.

STAFF shortages and overcrowding at Ennis General Hospital was once again in the headlines in April with ongoing cuts resulting in “dangerous conditions” for patients in the hospital.

One one day in early April one nurse was left alone to care for 22 acutely ill patients in the county hospital, while care assistants replaced nurses in vital areas of care. The under pressure staff are also dealing with overcrowding at the hospital, as 12 to 15 patients are regularly cared for over-night in the medical assessment unit.

Nursing staff have to be taken from other wards to care for patients in the unit, which was added as part of the hospital reconfiguration programme and is supposed to be closed at night. The Irish Nurses and Midwives Association described the situation as unacceptable stating “this level of care is dangerous for patients”.

Sources close to staff at the hospital told The Clare People in April that they are concerned for patients and frustrated that they do not have the time to care for patients the way they should and would like to.

INMO Industrial Relations Officer, Mary Fogarty explained there is an acute shortage of nursing staff at the Ennis hospital since the moratorium was put in place. This has been exacerbated by a number of retirements.

While the staffing freeze does not allow vacant nursing posts to be replaced, the HSE is employing care assistants through an agency at € 12 per hour in an attempt to fill the wid- ening staffing gap.

“We are very concerned about the standard of care across the system,” she told The Clare People .

“While care staff have a vital role to play they cannot replace nurses. They do not have the education or experience,” she said.

Ms Fogarty was also critical of the reconfiguration process that took 25 beds out of Ennis General Hospital without having replacement infrastructure in place.

“This is a very inefficient way of managing,” she said.

THE FIRST meeting of Ireland’s newest political party, the Irish Citizens Party, took place in Ennis in April.

The party, which was founded by West Clare man, Jim Connolly, has styled itself as a humanitarian party which promises a number of “radical ideas” on how to approach the future of Ireland.

Mr Connolly, who has ran both as an Independent and Labour candidate in previous elections, says he will not be putting his name forward for election again, but says that he hopes to have a number of candidates in Clare and other counties in time for the local election in 2014.

“I will extend an open invitation to everyone who wants to attend that meeting. There will be no membership fees charged, nothing like that. The meeting will be about throwing the idea of the party around and seeing what people think of it,” he said before the April meeting.

“I need people to get involved for this to progress. This is entirely people-orientated but there are a lot of radical proposals to it that people may need time to absorb.

“In my view, there is no alternative but to go back to basic humanitarian values, and a system based on rules that the people are happy to live under. I have decided to launch this party long in advance of any election. I have declared that I will not be running again for politics. I think there is need for this party, but it is the party itself that will select the candidates and I won’t be one of them.

“What I am bringing is the drive to set it up but also I have a track record for setting up organisations that work. This is not for financial gain or any other motivation like that; this is about me trying to respond to what is going on in Ireland over the next few years, however long I am alive. I want to combat what has been hap- pened and where it is going.”

Mr Connolly, who is also the founder of the Rural Resettlement Ireland and the man behind the Open Fairs – which are designed to promote new small businesses – believes that his party can spread beyond Clare before the 2014 local election. Wed02January13

NEWS that smoking on the grounds of the Mid West Regional Hospital in Ennis was to become a thing of the past came to light in March.

At a HSE meeting in March, it was revealed that visitors and patients alike would have to have to leave the hospital campus and walk to the public roadside if they planned to light up a cigarette.

This is despite the purpose-built covered shelter which is in place for smokers on the grounds and just yards from the main entrance of the Ennis hospital, smokers will have to leave the hospital grounds to light up according to new regulations.

The new regulation raises the distinct possibility of patients in dressing gowns, pyjamas and fluffy slippers being visible to passing traffic and the elements if they decided to smoke.

From May 1, all hospitals in the mid- west, including the maternity hospital in Limerick, became smokefree, following in the footsteps of other HSE West hospitals.

But not everyone is a fan of the new regulations that must be imposed in all Irish hospitals by 2015.

Chairman of the HSE West, Pád- raig Conneely (FG) asked if the HSE had gone a step too far by banning smoking on all hospital campuses.

“How are you going to stop people outside accident and emergency in an inebriated state who are smoking, or a person dealing with a tragedy who wants to go outside to smoke?” he asked at the time.

According to figures released at the time, the annual security costs at the Ennis facility are € 34,000.

Clare representative to the HSE West Forum, Cllr Brian Meaney (GP) said he agreed with the policy, but raised concerns about hospitals like the Mid Western Regional Hospital Ennis, which has a psychiatric unit.

“It is more than a dependency for people with psychiatric problems,” he said.

He also asked if the HSE planned to extend the practice of allowing unhealthy behaviour on campus, by ceasing to sell sugary foods in its hospital shops, given the rise in typetwo diabetes.

Fellow Clare representative Cllr Tony Mulqueen (FG) asked about the size of the hospital campus and was told it was a 150-acre site.

“If there were 1, 500 acres, would you have the same rules? Where does it stop?” he asked.

A CAMPAIGN to save a number of small rural schools in Clare got underway in March, with a number of organisations mobilising to fight against government cutbacks in the education sector.

West Clare group Rural Resettlement Ireland (RRI) emerged as the organisation at the vanguard of a new campaign to help West Clare national schools in Querrin and Doonaha, Boston in North Clare and another school in Mayo.

This move comes after RRI was directly approached by the schools.

“We had four phonecalls over the past week from four different schools, looking to see if we could help them secure students to secure their future,” said Ailish Connolly of RRI in March.

“Those schools are in Doonaha, Querrin and Boston in Clare and another in Mayo. As a result, Rural Resettlement is now doing a specific, targeted campaign assisting schools looking for children. We are advertising those schools and the local communities that they are in,”

Rural Resettlement Ireland was set up by Kilbaha-based Jim Connolly, 21 years ago. In 2005, an RRI initiative to build four houses in Tullycrine helped save the national school there from closure, while the new campaign comes despite severe cut-backs in the organisation that has seen its full-time staff numbers cut from five to one in recent years.

“Our own budget has been cut and cut and cut but what we still have to do is try and get the message out there in Dublin that rural resettlement is an option for them. The need is stronger than ever,” said Ms Connolly in March.

“Schools are very much aware now that to survive they need families and therefore they need to forward plan. Thirty nine is the magic number for schools to hold onto two teachers.”

The McCarthy Report, if implemented in Clare, would see the closure of all schools in the county with under 50 pupils, a cut-off point that puts the future of many rural schools in the county, but according to RRI schools under threat are determined to fight back.

“The schools that contacted us are sourcing houses for Rural Resettlement to have a look at in the areas where the schools are located,” said Ms Connolly. “It has now become a campaign to try and save those schools. Rural Resettlement are going to do everything to try and get families to move to these areas to save the schools.”