The Clare People Archive

CLARE will now have two respesentatives at this year’s Rose of Tralee Festival – and both of them will be named Flanagan.

Despite Clare Rose, Orla McDonagh, not making it through to this year’s final, the county will be represented by London Rose, Nóra Ní Fhlannagáin, who hails from Corofin, and also the New Zealand Rose, Alana Marshall, whose family comes from Ennis.

Alana, whose great-great-grandfather, Michael Flanagan, left Ennis for New Zealand in 1864, was among 15 overseas Roses who gathered in Dublin yesterday to be presented with a certificate of her Irish heritage.

Sporting the Clare jersey, Alana was presented with her certificate by leading Kerryman, Dick Spring. The Certificate of Irish Heritage is a Government document, signed by the Tánaiste, Eamon Gilmore, as an official recognition of a person’s Irish ancestry by the Government of Ireland.

“From a young age, I was very aware and proud of my Flanagan Irish connection. My parents took me to Clare when I was 11 and I returned again when I was 18, during my gap year.

“I felt an amazing sense of belonging and felt so at home. I am delighted to honour my ancestors and the sacrifices they made through the Certificate of Irish Heritage,” she said yesterday.

Each Certificate of Irish Heritage is a personal record of the recipient’s Irish roots, showing the name of their Irish ancestor and the town or parish in Ireland from which they came.

It is as yet unclear whether Clare’s two Flanagan representatives are in any way related to each other but they will be able to assess their family histories when the Rose of Tralee festival gets underway later this week.

Nóra Ní Fhlannagáin is an Oxfordbased PHd student but her roots are very much in County Clare, with her father, John Flanagan, living on the main street in Corofin and a collection of cousins and friends all over the county.

Indeed, Nóra even has a connection to this year’s Clare Rose as her uncle, Tom Flanagan, is a next-door neighbour of Orla McDonagh in Clouna.

A NEW constitution has been drafted for the people of the Burren – a document which, it is hoped, will help preserve the environment and way of life of the area for future generations. After more than two years of consultation with the local people, the first draft of the Burren Charter was released last week. The charter contains a set of aims for all sections of the community involved in the area and the hope is that the entire local population will sign up to uphold it.

The draft document was compiled by the BurrenBeo Trust, The Burren Farming for Conservation Group, Burren Connect, Burren IFA and both Clare and Galway County Councils.

“This has been developed through contact with the local community and it is about the people who live here deciding what they want for the future and what they can do to make this happen,” said Áine Bird of the Burrenbeo Trust.

“This is a draft charter at the moment and a lot of research has gone into it. But it is still a working document and we really want to the local people to get stuck into the document and tell us if they think we are going in the right direction.

“We need to get the community’s input into this and for them to tell us if we are going in the right direction with this or not.”

It is unclear at present whether members of the general public in the Burren will be asked to physically sign up to the Burren Charter once it is completed but the charter will have no legal standing.

“We are already working on different projects that have come about through the work already done on the charter.

“One of these is a community festival for the Burren which will take place in October and should be a great event but we are also working on a series of recordings of the farm- ing tradition with the Cuimhneamh an Chláir,” said Áine. “We are also looking at creating a one-stop-shop resource centre for the people of the Burren and also an audit of the heritage courses which are available in the Burren to see is there a gap in the market. This isn’t just a book exercise, things are going to happen ot of this.”

Anyone who wants to comment on the Burren Charter can download it at Burrenbeo.com or in the North Clare libraries.

THE future of the Burren Farming for Conservation Project (BFCP) is one of the key goals outlined in the draft Burren Charter, which was published last week.

The project, which formed part of the pilot BurrenLIFE project last year, currently supports 266 Burren farmers to farm in a way that will protect the Burren natural limestone pavement, control pollution and prevent the encroachment of scrub.

According to Michael Davoran of Burren IFA, the way of life for the people of the Burren can be saved through this charter.

“This is ground-up management for the Burren. It is about preserving the way of life for the people at the Burren and that is not something that the farmers of the Burren can do by themselves.

“We need help, we all need to work together, that is what this charter is about,” he said.

“It started off with farmers working with the National Parks and Wildlife and that is to broaden out through the Heritage Council to the management of all aspects of the Burren.

“Everyone needs to have a voice in this – it is people in once-off houses, people who live in villages around the place, people who earn a living locally through the service industry and tourism. We all interact with each other and we all need to realise that,” said Mr Davoran.

Along with the preservation of the BFCP, the charter also advocated the development of a one-stop Burren shop and helpline to support and help farmers, as well as increasing the opportunities for local farmers in the areas of conservation, tourism and enterprise to help supplement farm income.

“This is the people of the Burren managing the Burren for the betterment of all. It is the people of the Burren asking themselves, what can we do for ourselves, instead of having something imposed from above,” said Mr Davoran.

“The Burren is managed by the farmer. The archeology, the geology, the flora and the fauna are all a product of the farming which has gone on for generations. ‘If we want people to continue to support us in projects like the Farming for Conservation Programme, the more people who are playing a role in managing the Burren – farming and non-farming bodies – the better.”

A SENIOR executive of Microsemi in Ireland has said the company is considering expanding its operations in Ennis.

In light of Ennis being named Microsemi’s European headquarters, Vice President Richard Finn said operations at the plant could be increased further.

Ennis was selected as a base to consolidate many of Microsemi’s legal and human resources functions.

Microsemi also recently moved a new product line to Ennis, boosting the number of people employed by Microsemi in Clare to 300.

Mr Finn sees similar developments as crucial to the growth of the Ennis plant.

He explained, “Since January we’ve taken on 50. We’ve moved a product line out of Lawrence, Massachusetts, just 20 miles north of Boston, in January.

“We’re still hiring a few engineers and technicians. Hopefully it will continue to grow.”

Asked if the designation of Ennis as Microsemi’s European headquarters could aid expansion of the plant, Mr Finn said;

“Absolutely. My job is to find what the next thing is that we can move in here because we do squeeze some efficiencies in here and we do have economies of scale in what we do which is primarily the test and burn- ing of discreet semi-conductors, which is a fairly narrow field. But we’re the best in the world at what we do. If we can bolt on something else, then so much the better.”

Mr Finn said there was no shortage of skilled workers in the labour market.

He added, “Generally yes. We’ve had a great response.

“We advertised in January and got a great response. We got huge numbers.

“We got maybe 400 people for 30 jobs in terms of people applying. We interviewed about 100. There is no shortage of people looking for work or willing to do it.

There’s always going to be a scarcity in a specialised field.”

ENNIS is well positioned to benefit from any future expansion plans by Microsemi.

That’s according to the IDA who have welcomed the announcement that Ennis has been chosen as the European headquarters for the US company.

Barry O’Leary, Chief Executive Officer of the IDA, said, “Microsemi is a growing company with ambitious plans and Ennis is wellpositioned to contribute to this growth.”

He added, “The contribution of the company to the local economy and community is highly significant, and it is gratifying to see the partnership strengthening with the announcement that Ennis is to become its European headquarters.

According to local Fine Gael TD, Joe Carey, the news that the Ennis facility will serve as the company’s European headquarters is “a real vote of confidence in this region, its workforce and the future of the mid-west”.

He added, “The company will have done their homework and will know that we have a vastly improved infrastructure network in the midwest, easy access to global markets and a skilled and dedicated workforce, all of which will help foster future growth and development.

“I welcome the fact that 50 jobs were created this year and look forward to more announcements on jobs in the future as the company continues to grow and develop and expand its range of products and activities in Ennis.”

ENNIS has been officially named as the European headquar ters for Microsemi, one of the county’s largest employers.

The Ennis plant, which employs 300 people, beat off competition from Microsemi plants in Wales and Bordeaux.

According to the company, the announcement “represents a significant endorsement of the work of the Ennis facility and its contribution to the wider Microsemi global network”.

The statement continued, “Ennis has been a world-class facility and a key contributor in the manufacturing processes of the company’s high reliability products, and is well-poised to contribute to Microsemi Cor poration’s planned expansion and growth strategy.”

Ennis faced competition from Microsemi plants in Wales and France. According to Richard Finn, Vice President of Microsemi Ireland, Ennis was always in a strong position to be chosen as the company’s European base of operations.

He said, “It was something we were working on for a while. 15 years ago this was the only site in Europe but we’ve acquired a lot of countries in the past four or five years. A lot of them are small micro-units in various different countries. We’ve ended up with a total of 15 different sites and 18 different legal entities in Europe. This is an effor t to consolidate some of that and organise it a bit differently. We have all these legal and HR functions, here, for across Europe.”

He continued, “We have a site with the greatest scale. We’ve moved a lot of things in here in the last five years. Everything has worked well. We’ve a good reputation of deliver- ing what we promised. That’s probably the main reason. We have about 300 people which is well up on what it was four or five years ago.”

Microsemi provides high reliable products for aerospace programmes and satellites. Components are specially tested at Microsemi Ennis to withstand the harsh environment in space.

The Ennis facility is the largest Microsemi operation outside of the US and the company is one of the largest employers in Clare.

The announcement was made last Tuesday at a celebration commemorating the company’s 20-year anniversary in Ireland, which was attended by several senior company executives including James J. Peterson, Microsemi’s President and Chief Executive Officer.

Mr Finn added, “It’s good to get it done. We’re in Ireland for 20 years, July 1992 this site was acqui red for what was then Unitrode. It coincides with that. We’ve had our Board of Directors over here for the past three or four days for some meetings. It’s good that they are over here to see what is going on. We’ve made a lot of improvements on the site over the last five or six years.”

THE importance of Clare to the late Maeve Binchy through her unstinting support of the Merriman Summer School for over four decades has been recalled in North Clare this week as the final touches are being put to preparations for the 45th annual event that takes place in Lisdoonvarna from August 15 to 19.

Ms Binchy, who died last week, has a special place in Merriman history, having attended the first ever event in 1968 and, more recently, in 2005, by being commissioned to write a short story to commmemorate the bicentenary of Brian Merriman’s death.

“She wrote a short story called ‘A Week in Summer’. It was about people returning, discovering family connections, after being asked by the Merriman School director, Bob Collins,” revealed Marian O’Callaghan of this year’s organising committee.

“Maeve read the story and we did a live recording of her reading the story and the response to it.

“Brian Farrell wrote the introduction and introduced her on the night in question. It was very special and she had a captive audience in the Spa Wells. She was thrilled with it.

“We got the boolet published and we had a CD of the recording with it. It was brilliant, because it was the very fact that Maeve wrote it especially for the Merriman School and she read it at the school and we recorded it,” added Ms O’Callaghan.

“It’s very, very funny,” recalled Merriman School chairman, Liam Ó Dochartaigh. “It was published in The Irish Times , but then Marian O’Callaghan and Mary O’Flaherty published it along with a CD of Maeve reading it that was recorded by Sean Jordan, who is our sound man,” he added.

“The following year when the book and CD was launched,” recalled Ms O’Callaghan. “Maeve came down and spoke about how thrilled she was to have ‘a Maeve Binchy CD’. It meant a lot to her, because this was her writing her own story, then reading at the Merriman School which she loved,” she added.

PARTS of the mid-west experienced twice the amount of average rainfall during June and July, according to Met Eireann.

Figures for July recorded at Met Eireann’s station at Shannon Airport was 140 per cent of average in July.

Temperatures were also 1.4 per cent lower than average. The highest mean temperature, however, was recorded at Shannon Airport at 14.9 degrees. Met Eireann spokesman Hugh Daly explained that the rainfall for June and July was significantly higher than normal.

He said, “After a wet June and a wet July, we’ve had two pretty bad months. Not record-breaking bad or out of the ordinary like we’ve previously had. In June and July, rainfall recorded at Shannon was 240 per cent of average, which is significant. That’s twice the normal amount of rainfall for the two months.”

Mr Daly continued, “Having one bad month on top of another has really compounded the situation. A constant period of heavy rainfall meant the saturated soils did not have the time to recover. We had low pressure and northerly winds keeping temperatures down and rainfall high.”

“We had no string of pleasant days, it was constantly interrupted by rain. I was looking through the charts there and I couldn’t find one day in where it wasn’t raining in any part of the country. It was always raining somewhere,” he added.

Apart from being bad news for farmers, the poor weather is also contributing to a decline in domestic tourism in the west.

According to Eugene Maher, CEO of Shannon Ferries, the near constant bad weather is convincing many families to cancel short breaks and day trips.

He explained, “The biggest decline has been in domestic traffic. People just can’t afford to go anywhere anymore. People are not taking long journeys, long trips. That’s a consequence of both domestic economic woes, less money in the pocket, as much as it due to the weather. In tandem with the economic downturn, Ireland has probably experienced five of the worst summers in history that has had a huge damaging effect on domestic tourism.”

THE East Clare community of Ogonnelloe will say a final farewell this morning (Tuesday) to a father of three who drowned following a boating accident on Lough Derg.

Pat Danaher lost his life in the picturesque lake after his 20-foot speedboat capsized on Thursday. It is understood that the boat ran aground after hitting rocks.

It was later found upturned and a search of the waters was immediately carried out. The massive search involved volunteer members of the RNLI, Coast Guard, Civil Defence, Mountshannon Search and Rescue and Killaloe/Ballina Search and Recovery Unit.

Divers from the Killaloe/Ballina Search and Recovery Unit recovered the 44-year-old’s body on Friday.

His death has been described as a tragedy by Parish Priest Donagh O’Meara, who said the whole community was still in shock.

“Pat’s tragic death is an awful loss to his family and the local community. Pat was a great character, larger than life, and the community is still in shock at the news. It’s a terrible tragedy.”

Fr O’Meara was confident that the community would provide support to his widow Pauline and their three young children, Rachel, Laura and Leo.

“There is a fantastic community here in Ogonnelloe and people are great. I know they will all rally around Pauline and the children and Pat’s own family at this terrible time. Many from the community were down in Garrykennedy during the search to show their support for the family,” he said.

Mr Danaher was originally from Ballinacurra Gardens in Limerick, but the painting contractor had set- tled with his young family in Nancy’s Well, Ogonnelloe.

Gardaí and the Marine Casualty Investigation Board are continuing to conduct separate inquiries into his untimely death. Gardaí have confirmed that they are treating the death as a tragic accident.

Requiem Mass will take place this morning in St Mary’s Old Church, Ogonolloe at 11am followed by a private cremation.

Mr Danaher is survived by his wife Pauline and three children Rachel, Laura and Leo, his parents Bridie and Tony, and sisters Monique, Samantha, Sonia and Natasha.

KILRUSH’S most senior garda has reassured those who may be the victim of illegal loan sharks that they can meet his colleagues in the strictest confidence. At Thursday morning’s meeting of the Kilrush Joint Policing Committee (JPC), Superintendent Gerry Wall said he was aware of the is- sue of illegal money-lending in the town, but he needed people to come forward and make a statement if an arrest was to be made. He told the committee members that there are two ways open to the Gardaí to tackle the issue – firstly through direct reporting, and secondly throgh the assistance of specialst gardaí based in Dublin. “I have as much access to these specialist gardaí as any of my colleagues. “They are not a million miles away just because they are based in Dublin,” he said. The most direct route to an arrest is through victims and witnesses coming forward. “We are drawing a blank on people reporting this,” he added. The superintendent said he would encourage people affected to come forward and speak to Gardaí in strict confidence. During the last few months, problems associated with illegal moneylending have come to the fore in the West Clare town, with reports of lenders standing outside the post office waiting for payment as borrowers collect social welfare payments. There are also reports of lenders holding on to people’s social welfare cards to ensure payment. Those at the mercy of the moneylenders have said they are not willing to talk about their situation as they are afraid of reprisals. Many who signed up for these exorbitant loans fear the unscrupulous lenders too much to even tell the Gardaí. Gardaí in Kilrush have reassured people, however, that they will meet them in confidence.