The Clare People Archive

HISTORY was made in Ballyvaughan yesterday as passengers from both sides of Galway Bay travelled between Ballyvaughan and Galway city centre in minutes on the first sailing of the Ballyvaughan Bay Hop.

The fast ferry made the crossing in perfect conditions with everyone present adamant that they would use the service into the future.

Present on the 12.30pm crossing was Mary Unglert from Unglert’s Bakery in Ennistymon, who went to Galway for the day for a spot of shopping with her mother and daughter.

“This is a service that is definitely needed and a permanent link from Ballyvaughan to Galway would be great. With the business that I am in, we wouldn’t need to use it but for anyone who is commuting from Clare to Galway, this is ideal. This can also help to bring more tourists from Galway into Clare,” she said.

“I’m not worried about getting seasick, we’re on ferries and boats the whole time and we like going out to Doolin from the Aran Islands so there’ll be no problem with that.”

Doolin resident Dolores Delaney is hopeful that the Ballyvaughan Bay Hop will be made into a full-time, year-round service.

“I have been waiting for this to happen for years and years. I think it’s wonderful. My husband and myself are going to have a bit of lunch in Galway, do some shopping, have a little walk around – then we are coming back on the 6pm boat,” she said.

“This is a great way of beating the traffic. Sometimes it can take us more than two hours to get from Doolin to Galway. I can guarantee that I would use this service at least once a week, maybe even more.”

There was also some exciting news from Dave Brocklebank from the Burren Yoga Centre, who believes that he can incorporate the Ballyvaughan Bay Hop into the yoga packages that he offers through his business.

“We run yoga courses all year around and, as part of that, we take people on different trips. For us, this would be a fantastic thing, to be able to take people over to Galway city as part of their course,” said Dave.

“We would be able to support the service but, more than that, this surface would help to support our busi- ness, by providing another attraction to bring people to the Burren Yoga Centre.”

The Ballyvaughan Bay Hop is the brainchild of Ballyvaughan resident Gwen Ryan, who is hopeful that a full-time, year round service will be available soon.

“I am thrilled that this is happening. It is brilliant to see the positivity of everyone around here. The response has been so encouraging. This really does present so many opportunities for the area,” said Gwen.

For more information or to book, visit www.ballyvaughanbayhop.com.

ENNIS Chamber of Commerce has warned local businesses to be extremely cautious when advertising in publications that they are not familiar with and to do their research before placing any advertising.

The warning comes following a disagreement between three Clare businesses and a UK-based publications company over advertisements published in the ‘Friend for Life’ magazine.

The local businesses claim that they were sold the advertisements under false pretenses by the Vision Group, who publish the magazine. The Vision Group however, claim that the advertisements were sold to the Clare businesses legally and in good faith.

According to Rita McInerney of the Ennis Chamber of Commerce, proper research is the key for ensuring that Clare businesses get the most out of their advertising budget.

“Ennis Chamber would advise any business considering advertising with a publication that they are not familiar with to exercise caution. Businesses should ensure that it is a legitimate business and conduct a background check through some research on the internet or by requesting a company registration certificate or a charity number and then verify this with the authorising organisation,” she said.

“Dun and Bradstreet offers a credit check service on any business world- wide at a reduced fee through Ennis Chamber, which is worthwhile when considering doing business with a company you a not familiar with.

“This is particularly relevant for international trade, where business legislation can differ from country to country and it is more difficult to find out information. Businesses need to advertise to ensure their customers know what they have to offer but such marketing has to be conducted in a targeted way and businesses should investigate to ensure that the advertising does actually reach the audience to which it is intended,” she said.

“With tight budgets, businesses have to receive the most return on investment when marketing their products and services.”

LONG serving Fianna Fáíl councillor Peter Considine was last night elected Mayor of Ennis.

It is the seventh time Cllr Considine has held the office having last been elected mayor in 2008.

He beat off competition from Fine Gael councillor Johnny Flynn at the council’s AGM. He replaces outgoing Mayor, Cllr Michael Guilfoyle (Ind), who held the chain of office for the past 12 months. Cllr Considine was proposed as mayor by Cllr Frankie Neylon and seconded by Cllr Tommy Brennan (Ind).

Cllr Flynn was proposed by Cllr Paul O’Shea (Lab) and seconded by Cllr Mary Howard (FG).

Councillors Neylon, Considine Brennan, Brian Meaney (GP) and Guilfoyle voted for Cllr Considine.

Councillors O’Shea, Howard, Flynn and Mary Coote Ryan (FG) voted for Cllr Flynn.

Cllr Considine urged members to be conscious of economic circumstances of the council. He added, “Local authorities don’t escape the austerities that are around.”

He added, “I would urge all councillors to temper their expectations with the resources of the council in mind.”

However he said progress could be expected on certain projects including the completion of the Inner Relief Road and the development of new facilities for Tim Smythe Park.

On the future of local government, Cllr Considine said, “We would expect rather than hope that Ennis Town Council would be left to administer services in Ennis. It would be shocking if Ennis were left as a sub-committee of Clare County Council.” Cllr Tommy Brennan (Ind) was elected as Deputy Mayor ahead of Cllr Mary Howard (FG), Cllr Brennan was proposed by Cllr Guilfoyle while Cllr Howard was proposed by Cllr O’Shea.

Prior to the election of the deputy mayor, Cllr Meaney said he had not been asked to vote for Cllr Howard. He urged those councillors supporting her to do a little “groundwork” before hand. Cllr Flynn said he had competed for mayor on nine different occasions and never once canvassed councillors for votes. He said he would not be competing next year due to work commitments.

Cllr O’Shea was returned as Chairman of the Ennis Joint Policing Committee (JPC). Tributes were also paid to outgoing mayor, Cllr Guilfoyle.

A COUPLE who said they were discriminated against on the basis that they are Travellers have won their case against an Ennis pub.

John Mongans (33) and his wife Anne Marie Mongans (31) said they felt “humiliated” and “embarrassed” after being refused a drink at All Bar One, Abbey Street, Ennis on November 3, 2011.

The Ennis couple brought a case against Tradewell Pub Company Ltd under the Equal Status Act.

The case was heard at Ennis District Court on Thursday. Tradewell Pub Company Ltd was not represented in court.

Mr Mongans said he and his wife entered the bar at around 9.15pm on the night in question. He said the barman came over and told them that the bar was closed.

Mr Mongans said other customers in the bar were drinking at the time and “nothing looked out of the ordinary”.

The couple left the bar and came back at around 10.15pm. Mr Mon- gans said he asked for two drinks but the barman refused. According to Mr Mongans, the barman said that he was closing the bar in order to control the crowd in the pub. The court that Mr Mongans went outside and rang the Gardaí.

He said, “I felt totally embarrassed that I had to go and get the guards.”

He said “settled people” whom he played soccer with had seen what had happened at the bar.

Asked by solicitor Andrew Darcy why he believed he had been refused service, Mr Mongans said, “I was re- fused on the basis of being a member of the Traveller community.”

He added, “I don’t hide the fact that I am a Traveller.”

Ms Mongans was described in court as a proactive member of the Traveller community. She said she was a member of a committee that worked with Clare County Council on the issue of Traveller accommodation.

Ms Mongans told the court that people she knew from her children’s school were in the pub on the night. “I felt very, very humiliated,” she added.

The court heard that the couple had not been drinking on the night. Judge Timothy Lucey said that he found the case proven. He said there was no good reason why the couple should have been refused.

Judge Lucey added, “To be refused because you are a member of the Travelling community, when you are well behaved, is very upsetting.”

Mr Darcy said the couple were not seeking the closure of the bar.

Judge Lucey ordered that that couple be given € 500 compensation each, plus costs of € 250 and VAT.

THERE are now more than 3,000 uninsured drivers in Clare, new figures released by an insurers watchdog have revealed, with these offenders being held up as responsible for hiking up the premiums of lawabiding drivers.

The figures have been released by the Irish Brokers Association which has called for Clare Gardaí to be given the power to confiscate the cars of uninsured drivers.

“There are 51,725 licensed private cars in Clare and it is estimated that 3,100 of these could be uninsured,” Brian McNelis, Director of General Services at the Irish Brokers Association told The Clare People .

He continued, “What the general public in Clare may not know is that these uninsured drivers could be indirectly costing them an additional € 30 on their annual car insurance premiums.

“The UK have now made it illegal to own an uninsured vehicle, even if it is kept off the roads, in an attempt to stamp out uninsured driving.

“However, we believe that such measures may be a little harsh on those who have fallen on hard times and have had to take their car off the road for a period of time.

Mr McNelis went on to say, “We do, however, feel that the current penalties are not acting as a sufficient deterrent and would urge compliant drivers to report those that don’t have insurance as they are ultimately paying their insurance for them.”

Motor insurance offences are pun- ishable by a fine of up to € 2, 500, disqualification of one year or more for a first offence, and two years or more for a second offence, and, at the discretion of the court, a term of imprisonment not exceeding six months, though these maximum penalties are rarely imposed.

Where the court decides not to impose a disqualification, drivers convicted of a first offence of driving without insurance will incur five penalty points on their licence record in addition to any other penalty imposed by the court.

THREE Junior Certificate students from Ennis have been hailed as heroines by Clare Civil Defence chief Liam Griffin this week after their quick thinking helped save the life of a woman who got into difficulty after going into the River Fergus to retrieve her dog.

Rice College students Ellen McMahon (15), Aisling O’Sullivan (15) and Eve Copley (15) came to the rescue of a woman, who hasn’t been identified, who was out walking her dog on Tuesday evening last near Steele’s Rock in the Lifford area the town.

“The three of us were walking past at about 7.15pm, having been up town for something to eat after our Business Studies exam,” revealed Ms McMahon. “When we were passing, the woman was standing behind the wall and the dog was on the steps at Steele’s Rock. We walked on a bit and, when we looked back, the dog was being dragged downstream and the woman had moved to the steps and was calling him.

“Then she went in after the dog and was taken away by the flow of the water down towards the FBD offices. She was very tired because she had swum out to get the dog and the current was so strong there was no way she would have been able to swim back to the steps,” she added.

The three students quickly raced back to get the lifebuoy that’s located near Steele’s Rock and came to the aid of the woman, who was getting into difficulty.

“She had a hold of the dog and we raced up got the lifebuoy and threw it in to her and slowly dragged her in. We didn’t get her name because, after being soaked to the skin, she got a drive home from a passing motorist,” revealed Ms McMahon.

“Their quick thinking helped save that woman’s life,” Clare Civil Defence chief Liam Griffin told The Clare People . “It just shows the importance of lifebuoys,” he added, “because sometimes they get vandalised and the people who do that can cost a life. Luckily in this case, it was there and the girls were able to use it and come to the rescue of the woman.”

PRESIDENT of Ireland Michael D Higgins did not call himself a Clare man during his first offical presidental visit to the county, 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 on Fergus, 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] activites 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.

MORE and more distressed Clare families are seeking legal assistance new figures have shown.

One in every three queries to Clare’s Legal Advice Centres last year was on matters of family law according to the Free Legal Advice Centre Report.

The centre in Ennis also proves to be the busiest centre in Munster attracting 449 people last year alone.

As many as 497 people received legal advice from the three centres in County Clare last year.

And while one third of the callers were concerned about family issues, 14 per cent had enquiries about employment law and their rights.

Money matters in the form of debt problem made up 11 per cent of the calls in Clare, nine per cent were concerned about housing and property and eight per cent about consumer law. Just four per cent of the calls related to crime.

FLAC noted a particular development around increasing debt prob- lems intersecting with issues such as family, employment and housing.

“FLAC has focused on reforming laws around personal debt because we have seen the terrible impact of over-indebtedness on people contacting us, having dealt some 83,000 legal queries since the start of 2008,” said Noeline Blackwell, FLAC Director General. “We have kept it simple: we need an independent, out-of-court debt settlement structure that will examine people’s personal debt in a holistic way and where possible aim to keep people in their homes.” Clare has three of these NSO centres in conjunction with the Citizens Information Centres in County Clare. The busy Ennis centre is open every Monday afternoon, Thursday evening and Friday evening at the Ennis CIC on Bindon Lane, while there are also evening clinics in Kilrush on the first and third Tuesdays of the month and an evening clinic in Shannon on the last Monday of the month. FLAC is an NGO that relies on a combination of statutory funding, contributions from the legal professions and donations from individu als and grant-making foundations to support its work. FLAC offers basic legal information through its telephone information line and free legal advice through its network of 80 volunteer evening advice centres. It also campaigns on a range of issues including personal debt, fairness in social welfare law, public interest law and civil legal aid.

MEMBERS of the public have been invited to a meeting on Monday night aimed at drawing up a communityled development plan for Clarecastle. Organised by Clarecastle Community Development Ltd, the meeting will take place in the Abbey Hall on Monday, June 25 at 8pm.

Clarecastle Community Development Ltd (CCD) is a non-profit-making company that was established six months ago. Its main objective is to promote the educational, cultural, social and economic wellbeing of all the members of the community of Clarecastle and its environs

The first phase of mapping out a new blueprint for community-led development in Clarecastle was launched in January. At the time, the company sought feedback from local people.

A CCD spokeswoman explained, “Clarecastle Community Development Ltd has finally concluded a lengthy consultation process with the people and organisations of Clarecastle through which it aimed to establish the community’s future vision for the village. It has received input from individuals, the business community, schoolchildren, youth and individuals. It has met with over 40 organisations within the community and has received useful feedback from them.”

She continued, “From this feedback, Clarecastle Community Development Ltd will put together a development plan for the next few years but, in the meantime, certain projects have been identified as being of significant importance to the community. CCD Ltd is now considering how best to develop these.” She added, “The interim Board of Clarecastle Community Development Ltd would like to share some of the feedback and ideas for potential development with the community of Clarecastle, identify some priority projects and look at our next steps.”

In May 2011, a public meeting was held which identified positives and negatives about Clarecastle and produced ideas for developing the village and its environs. The then Acting Development Group made a recommendation in September 2011 that a Selection Committee would nominate a new Development Committee. An interim Board of Directors of the new development company was nominated and met for the first time in October 2011.

SEVEN out of every 10 Clare families have had to sacrifice their teeth in order to see them through the recession.

A survey completed by DentalCover.ie has revealed that 73 per cent of Clare families have decreased the number of yearly visits to the dentist since the recession started in 2007.

Indeed, only 32 per cent of Clare people surveyed said that they were able to visit the dentist at least once a year.

Money was indicated as being the biggest factor for preventing Clare people from attending the dentist with 64 per cent of those surveyed, saying that a check-up fee of € 60 would prevent them from visiting the dentist.

One of the main areas to be cut back has been dentistry for children, with the majority of young Clare people not visiting the dentist until after they begin primary school.

“Worryingly, more and more children are now presenting with large cavities that can only be dealt with by extraction and often requiring general anaesthetic,” said Ger Gavin, Chief Dental Officer at Dentalcover. ie.

“As well as being an unnecessary ordeal for young children and expense for the family, it can make children reluctant to attend the dentist in the future. All children really need to attend a dentist in the first two years of their lives.

“It’s at this stage that the dentist can identify and remedy any unhealthy dietary habits or inadequate oral hygiene routines. This establishes a healthy relationship where children are associating dentistry with preventive dental care.”

Separate research has also indicated that the recession may be having another negative impact on Clare teeth as a result of an increase in the frequency of teeth grinding.

More than 30,000 Clare people suffer with bruxism, more commonly known as tooth grinding, and dentists have reported a dramatic increase in the number of patients presenting with the condition since the economic downturn.

“Those figures mean up to 1 million people in Ireland alone may grind their teeth. This is a much higher figure than many people would expect and one that is likely to rise if present trends continue,” said Dr Padraig McAuliffe.

“As many of these people mainly grind their teeth during sleep, they may not realise it is happening until they start to notice some signs – most commonly, tenderness or stiffness of the jaw in the morning, headaches and wear or damage to the teeth.”