The Clare People Archive

THE announcement last week that Ennistymon will play host to the first ever Dylan Thomas Literary Weekend has already ruffled a few feathers across the water in Wales with one Welsh newspaper suggesting that the poets link to Clare are “tenuous” at best.

The Dylan Thomas tourism “industry” is worth an estimated € 4 million to the economy of Swansea – where Dylan Thomas was born. Welsh tourism expert, Anne Haden, who runs the Dylan Thomas House in Swansea, believes that the Clare festival will not damage the local business in Wales.

“Those who go to this literary festival in County Clare and become fascinated by Dylan will no doubt want to come and see where he was born in Swansea and that can only be good for us,” she said. “What we should be doing is putting trade stands up at the festival to let people know there is plenty going on in Swansea to remember this writer of ours.

“This is a fantastic advert for the life of one of Wales’ greatest exports. We are not only famous for rugby, football and choirs – a short little man from Swansea proved he was a brilliant writer and a great character and became renowned across the world.”

Swansea-based Dylan Thomas expert Jeff Towns says he may even travel to the Falls Hotel for the festival.

“I remember when the hotel was creating a Dylan Thomas room they asked me for some memorabilia which I sent on the grounds I would get a free night there. I never took it so now might be a good time to go,” he said.

“I don’t think the Irish event will harm what’s going on here and in many ways could create some new Dylan fans in Ireland.

“It’s also true Caitlin Thomas had a strong love for Ireland. She was born in London but her father’s links to the Irish arts scene led her to meet Augustus John, then Dylan himself. After Dylan’s death she travelled in Ireland to discover her roots.”

HUNDREDS of parents of young children in the Shannon town area are to be surveyed to determine what kind of education they would like for their children.

Shannon was the only part of Clare mentioned in the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in the Primary Sector Report, which identified it as an area that required immediate action. If the findings of the report are carried out, it will see one of the town’s five primary schools being transformed into a multi-denominational school.

Shannon already contains one Gaelscoil and one Church of Ireland school as well as a number of other national schools. It is, at present, unclear which of the town’s national schools will be asked to change its patron should the recommendations of the report be followed through on.

The possible changes in Shannon are the first step in a series of steps advocated by the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in the Primary Sector Report. Other changes could see changes brought into some of the counties’ rural schools that will remain under the patronage of the Catholic Church.

The report recommends promoting more inclusiveness in all schools, but especially in standalone, rural schools – where divesting patronage to another body is not an option. The majority of Clare schools has been identified as standalone schools because the nearest alternative school is more than 3km away.

The report recommends that the school boards of these schools are given the responsibility to uphold the rights of children and parents with regard to own religious education regardless of their faith.

It has also been recommended that the law be changed to prevent a child from a certain faith being given a preferential position when applying to enter the school. The Clare People contacted each of the five primary school in the Shannon area in relation to this story but no official was forthcoming from any of the schools at the time of going to press.

DRUGS charges against a long-term cancer sufferer are likely to be struck out if she does not come to the attention of gardaí over the next six months, a court has heard.

Jacquelene Corris (40) appeared at Ennis District Court on Wednesday.

Ms Corris, with an address at 4 Connolly Villas, Ennis, previously pleaded guilty to cultivating, without license, 13 cannabis plants. She was also charged with unlawful possession of cannabis

The plants, with an estimated value of € 5,200, were found during a garda search of 4 Connolly Villas on October 24, 2011.

The court previously heard that Ms Corris, who has suffered from cancer since her teens, could only get relief from the condition by taking cannabis.

A judge had earlier ordered a report from the probation and welfare services.

That report was handed into Judge Patrick Durcan at Ennis District Court Court last week.

Her solicitor Joe Chambers said the report had been very favourable towards his client.

He said Ms Corris, who has no previous convictions, had fully co-operated with gardaí during the investigation and had offered an early plea.

He added, “It is accepted by the State that she is not part of any criminal network.”

Mr Chambers said the incident had been a salutatory lesson for his client. He added;

“There is a strong likelihood that she will not re-offend.”

Judge Durcan said, “The report is very positive and one must compliment Ms Corris on the efforts she has made to remedy the situation.”

Noting her early plea and good record, he added, “She was not part of a ring.

“What was grown and cultivated was for personal use.”

He remanded Ms Corris on continuing bail to appear at Ennis District Court on October 10.

He said that if no further matters arose in the next six months, he would strike out the charges.

CLARE planning is in the dock this week after the county capital of Ennis has been held up by heritage watchdog, An Taisce, as being “an example of some of the most senseless zoning excesses of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ era”.

This damning indictment has been delivered in an Taisce’s hard-hitting annual report, ‘ State of the Nation – A Review of Ireland’s Planning Sys- tem 2000-2011’ that was published on Monday.

Ennis and wider Clare have been singled out for special mention in the 45-page report that turns the microscope on 32 planning authorities throughout the country.

Clare has been ranked 23rd out of the 32, the planning in Ennis coming in for special mention because of a range of decisions that were made during the 11-year timeframe covered by the report.

“Clare was the most over-zoned county in the State with 3,208 hectares allowing for an overall additional population of 273,000,” the report says, while noting that between 30 per cent and 50 per cent of all planning decisions in the county was for one-off housing in unzoned land.

In Ennis, An Taisce have said that “almost 4,500 acres of land was zoned for development, sufficient to increase the population of the town from 26,000 people to over 100,000”.

And in turning the microscope on Clare, An Taisce mentions one high profile planning case – the 48 acres of zoned land sold by Clarecastle man JJ McCabe to a Galway developer for € 18.8m that was subsequently re fused planning permission because it was located on a flood plain.

“Despite the fact that Ennis was one of the worst affected areas by flooding in 2009, and that the town only needed a maximum of 175 acres, the Department of the Environment encountered significant difficulties from local councillors in seeking to get this land de-zoned,” said An Taisce.

Commenting on the report, Clare County Council has said that “through its Clare County Development Plan 2011-2017, was one of the first local authorities in the country to adopt a ‘Core Strategy’ as required under the Planning & Development (Amendment) Act 2010”.

And the council has also stated that as part of local area plans in east, north, south, west Clare and Shannon “hundreds of hectares of lands previously zoned for residential use have been dezoned”.

“In addition, in 2011 Ennis Town Council and Clare County Council adopted variation No. 2 of the Ennis & Environs Development Plan 2008-2014 to introduce a phasing of zoned lands to bring the amount of zoned land in Ennis fully in line with agreed national and regional population targets for Ennis”. Tue17April12

A MAN’S explanation for how he came to possess a stolen laptop in Ennis was described in court last week as a “cock and bull story”.

At Ennis District Court on Thursday, Shane Constable (23), with an address at 24 Toormore, Ruan, was convicted of handling a stolen Sony laptop valued at € 600, knowing that the property was stolen or being reckless as to whether it was stolen.

Detective Garda Kieran Kelleher told the court that he carried out a search under warrant of 24 Toormore, Ruan on January 7 (2012). He said he found the laptop on the floor of the accused’s bedroom.

Detective Kelleher said that Mr Constable told him that he bought the computer “off a retard in Ennis for € 100”.

Detective Kelleher told the court the laptop had been stolen from a Polish woman in Ennis.

He said he arrested Mr Constable on January 16. Mr Constable told the court that he bought the laptop from a red-haired man in Ennis who needed money to pay his rent. He said he was told the laptop was

for sale by a group of people he met in the riverwalk area of Ennis. He said he did not know any of the people in question.

Mr Constable said that he did not tell Detective Kelleher that he bought the laptop off a “retard”.

Inspector Tom Kennedy told the court that Mr Constable had struck up a conversation about buying a laptop with a group of people he did not know.

He described this version of events as a “cock and bull story”.

Speaking to Mr Constable, Insp Kennedy said;

“What you are saying is nothing short of incredible.”

The court heard that the accused previously paid € 599 for a new laptop.

Judge Patrick Durcan said the issue in this case was whether or not the accused was reckless as to whether the property was stolen.

He said the fact that Mr Constable knew the value of a new laptop indicated that he was “reckless in the extreme” when he purchased the stolen item.

He said, “Dealing recklessly is an attack on every retailer.”

He fined Mr Constable € 500 and gave him six months to pay. Recognances were fixed in the event of an appeal.

PLANS to development a major new visitor attraction at the Vandeleur Walled Garden in Kilrush has now gone to “part-eight planning”, Kilrush Town Council has revealed.

The move comes only five months after ambitious plans for a redevelopment of the visitor facility on the old landlord estate were unveiled by Clare Council architect Ruth Hurley at a meeting of Kilrush Town Council that took place at the Vandeleur Walled Garden.

The news was relayed to members of the local authority on Thursday night, in tandem with a confirmation that Kilrush Amenity Trust which oversees the management of the Vandeleur Walled Garden has voted to allowed free access to visitors for the rest of the year.

Plans to develop enhanced visitor facilities at the Walled Garden, which was opened to the public in 2001, hinge on a successful application to the Clare Local Development Company for Leader funding.

“An application has made to Leader to seek funding,” said Town Clerk, John Corry, “and it is something that we’re excited about as we’re hopeful that our application to Leader for funding will be successful,” he added.

“We have to a little bit of work on the theme of the project,” said Town Manager, Nora Kaye. “We got an informal response from Leader that we have to develop the theme of what we’re trying to do at the Vandeleur Garden. Leader need to see the planning application before they can consider funding,” she added.

“They are very exciting plans and every effort should be made to secure the funding”, said Cllr Liam Williams (FG), who as a member of Kilrush Amenity Trust proposed that free access be given to visitors to the Vandeleur Walled Garden for the rest of 2012.

“We had free entry into the Vandeleur Garden last August and it proved very successful in what ever money we lost from ticket sales, we generated extra money in sales in the coffee shop,” revealed Town Clerk, John Corry.

“It was decided by the board to extend the option during the off-season, when traditionally the numbers of visitors to the facility would have been minimal and then at our meeting in March it was decided to offer free entry to the Garden until the end of the year.

“You are losing out on ticket sales but the wider picture is that you are providing access to the facility and we’re hoping that the people visiting will bring along friends and neighbours and will spend money at the centre. We will take it on a trial basis until the end of the year to see how it progresses,” he added.

KILRUSH Town Council is to launch its campaign to play host to the National Famine Commemoration in 2013 – a project that has the capacity to bring thousands of extra tourists into West Clare. The local authority is to apply to the Department of Arts Heritage and the Gaeltacht to play host to the commemoration and in conjunction with Kilrush Local History Group have pledged to organised a weeklong event.

The move was heralded at Thursday night’s monthly meeting of Kilrush Town Council, which was attended by members of the Kilrush Historical Society, which since its establishment over the past 14 months has raised new awareness about history in west Clare.

Paddy Waldron of the Local History Group told Thursday’s meeting that Kilrush and West Clare had a compelling case to host the famine commemoration that has been organised by the Government since 2009.

“After the Skibereen, this was one of the worst hit areas. It was also one areas who’s famine history is best documented,” he revealed.

“We have a database of hundreds upon thousands of names of people who were evicted in the West Clare peninsula during the Famine. Those people have descendants all over the world who might like to come back and commemorate their ancestors in Clare. It would be a great opportunity to bring tourists back to West Clare.

“If we publicise it along the lines of the Ireland Gathering Project to try and bring back the descendants of the Irish diaspora to help the tourist industry. It would be good for the town to get national publicity and get national figures to come to the peninsula,” he added.

“It would be great to tie it into the Gathering next year,” said Mayor of Kilrush, Cllr Ian Lynch (FG), who revealed that representations have already been made to bring the prestingious event to West Clare. We are in with a fighting chance of getting this. It would spark something. It would really highlight the great work the historical society is doing,” he added.

This year’s Famine Commemoration takes place in Drogheda on May 13, with an international evetn taking place the same day in Boston.

A NEW application for funding to create state-of-the-art sports facilities in Kilrush will be made by Kilrush Town Council within the next month, amid renewed hope that the project earmarked for Gallery Park on the Cooraclare Road area of the town will receive grant aid under the 2012 Sports Capital Programme.

Town Manager, Nora Kaye, told the monthly meeting of Kilrush Town Council that a new deadline of May 11 has been set by the Department of Sport for grant applications for sports capital projects and that work was already underway putting the application together.

“There are very tight rules and regulations,” revealed Ms Kaye. “Last year we made two applications – one for the astro-turf and one for the grass pitches, so that two contractors could work side by side and get the project finished early. This year we have to cost each separate element of the project.

“The maximum grant is € 300,000 so we have to break them up into packages of less than € 300,000 and to prioritise them. There is a bit of work to go into them yet,” she added.

The first phase of the € 1.3m development is set to include an artificial surface facility, grassed pitches (to include a full size playing pitch and two full size training pitches), fencing, lighting and associated works. The second phase of the project will include the development of dressing rooms, car parking, footpaths and associated works.

Plans for the ambitious project were unveiled were unveiled last summer when it was revealed that Clare County Council had reached an agreement with Gallery Park landowners Department of Education and the ESB to develop the site, but the initial application for funding for inclusion in the 2011 Sports Capital Programme made last September wasn’t successful.

“The maximum grant for the whole project is 90 per cent,” revealed the Town Manager, “but in awarding the grant and the monies, one of the terms of the scheme is that if you put more money towards it, you might jump the queue.

“We’ll have to look at matching funding. If we get funding we will have two years to complete the works,” Ms Kaye added.

“I would urge that every effort be made to ensure that we get this grant,” said Cllr Liam Williams (FG) who has tabled a number of motions on the need for developing sports facilities at the Gallery Road site.

“We have to keep the pressure on,” he added.

INCREASED links between Clare and its Australian twin, the Clare Valley, is helping to give Clare people who have been forced to emigrate ‘down under’ a little taste of home. That is according to Councillor Sue Wurst, of the Clare and Gilbert Valley’s Council, who visited Ennis last week.

According to Cllr Wurst, the connection has also led to a boosting of the local tourism trade in both Clares, with tourists travelling back and forth between the two areas.

“We are out of the way of the major cities so we haven’t seen a lot of people from Clare coming to live and work with us, but we have seen a lot of Clare people coming to Adelaide, and making their way up to us.

“It would be hard to put a figure on how many people from Clare have come to us but we know it happens,” said Cllr Wurst.

“I know that a sizable number of people from the Clare Valley visit County Clare and I know that the reason that they do visit is because of the twinning link. We read the Clare papers and we know that Shannon has been going through difficult times so we made sure to use Shannon Airport and support that.

“While we are here, we like to buy as much stuff and we can eat and drink as much as we can. We want to contribute to the local economy. I know that when the Mayor of the Clare and Gilbert Valleys was here last week that he spent € 400 on clothes in one shop.

“The Australian dollar is quite high at the moment so we are very happy to come over here and to visit a place that is very much close to our heart.”

THE 500 year-old body of a Clare teenager 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 Irish 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 re- mains 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.

“It is possible that these were some kind of special offerings that were placed inside the cave. The material was brought into the cave and deposited very carefully on top of a large rock.

“Broken artifacts can have a symbolic value in prehistoric communities and pieces of pottery can be placed in ritual context.”

Research into the excavation, which was funded by the National Monuments Service, is still being evaluated. Ove ra ll a ve ry we t st a rt t o t h e we e k b u t t h e ra in b e c o m in g m o re sp o ra d ic a ft e r t h a t . Ne xt we e k lo o ks so m e t h in g sim ila r.