The Clare People Archive

A CLARE musician says she is excited to be joining some of the giants of Irish music on their United States tour next month.

Tara Breen will play alongside The Chieftains on their North American tour.

The talented fiddle player will perform with the legendary band on their four-week coast to coast tour. The former Rice College student was offered the invitation to play by Chieftains founding member Paddy Moloney.

“I play with this Galician piper, Carlos Nunez and Paddy was saying to him they were looking to do something new and he was asking him did he know any fiddle players,” explains Tara.

“So Paddy came along to one of the gigs and I thought we were just playing with him. Nobody gave me a heads up that it was almost a rehearsal! So I got the invitation after that. It’s great.”

Tara has already played with the band, performing alongside them at a concert in the University of Limerick in November.

The four-week US tour from February 16 and March 18 will take in gigs in California and a St Patrick’s Day concert in New York.

“They’re lovely people and it’s brilliant to be get the opportunity to play alongside them. It should be a good trip. I’ve been to America before but this going to be a lot bigger,” she says.

The invitation caps a busy year for Tara, who teaches music in schools as part of the Comhaltas outreach programme.

She also appeared on TG4’s ‘Geantraí’ Christmas Day special

Tara’s multi-instrumentalist talents came to the fore at the age of 13 when, in one year, she won the All-Ireland U-15 Fiddle, U-15 Fiddle slow airs, U-15 Flute, U-15 Flute slow airs.

In 2006 Tara won the coveted ‘Fiddler of Dooney’ competition, and in 2009 she added the Michael Coleman Fiddle Competition to her list of accolades.

She is a former student of University of College Cork. In 2010 she was selected to join Ciorras, a group put together by music legend Donal Lunny.

TODAY (Tuesday) is the fifth day that six families remain isolated from the rest of the county, as part of the Loop Head Peninsula has been rendered an island.

The storm on Friday morning saw the small rural area of Kilcredaun segregated from the rest of West Clare as water gushed in from Rhinevilla. An estimated 300 acres of land is currently under seawater.

The area famed for its lighthouse and Irish school could remain dis- connected for some time with the people marooned on the “island” still unsure as to when the waters will recede enough to let them access the rest of the county.

Pat Gavin, the postmaster in Carrigaholt Post Office, is one of the people unable to leave the area and as a result the local post office must remain closed.

“God knows when we will get off here,” he told The Clare People .

The West Clare man had been able to get to the village of Carrigaholt for a brief while on Friday with the assistance of a neighbour with a trac- tor.

Sunday night and Monday’s waves however have now washed away that road and any access to the six families.

“We are an island surrounded by the sea,” said Mr Gavin.

“We are left cut off. You can imagine no fuel, no food. Except my neighbour coming up on Friday to bring me out of here for half a day to open the post office [we could not have left]. We are a good community. The post office was flooded on Friday and all the community turned up to clean it. We’ll come back bigger and better than ever,” he said.

However while Mr Gavin is marooned on the island with his neighbours, the post office in Carrigaholt flooded again yesterday morning (Monday).

“I don’t know what we will do when we get out, I am not sure what state it will be in.”

He explained that the homes still have electricity and he feels lucky that his freezer has food for now.

He in angered however that political promises made by the present Government to carry out work along the peninsula were not carried out.

THE number of people using the Western Rail Corridor which connects Ennis to both Limerick and Galway continues to drop.

Despite a number of initiatives designed to increase passenger numbers on the route, new figures show that fewer than 200,000 people used the route in the first 11 months of 2013.

Figures for the route, which was reopened at a cost € 106 million in 2010, show that only 197,780 line passenger journeys took place on the line between the beginning of January 2013 and December 1. This compares with almost 250,000 over the same period in 2012.

It is hoped that the introduction of online booking on the rail service will provide a significant boost to passengers in 2014. Nearly two years after the issue of online booking was first raised with the Iarnrod Eireann, online booking was introduce on the line last month.

Passenger numbers on the route have been growing on commuter routes such as Ennis/Limerick and Athenry/Galway in recent years and it is hoped that online booking may also help to promote business from Ennis, Sixmilebridge and Gort.

“We know this is something which our customers and the wider community have been anxious to see provided for some time,” said a spokesperson from Iarnród Éireann.

“Our fares from € 5.99 each way for adults and € 2.99 each way for children are extremely competitive, giving big savings to families at a time of year when every cent counts.”

“A PIONEER of business, a visionary and a gentleman of the old style.”

These were just some of the quotes used this week to describe Michael Lynch Snr who passed away early on Monday morning aged 85. The Newhall native owned, built and operated the iconic West County Hotel for a number of decades and was known throughout Clare and beyond for his business acumen.

Affectionately known as ‘Mickey’ Lynch, he opened the West County Hotel back in the late sixties originally as a twenty bedroom hotel with a restaurant, bar and grill room. Then Minister from Clare Dr Paddy Hillery cut the ribbon on the original West County Hotel on March 15th 1968.

The first manager of The West County was John Madden, who moved from the Gresham Hotel in Dublin to take over the operation of Clare’s newest hotel. He recalls Mickey Lynch as wonderful to work for, a man of enthusiasm, vision and generosity:

“Mickey Lynch was a man of great ideas, a true visionary. He built and grew The West County. He did that with flair, enthusiasm and he was wonderful to work for,” recalled John this week.

“He never went away anywhere without coming back with new ideas for The West County. Mickey really was ahead of his time. Anytime we spoke about the need for additions, like the function room or more bedrooms, something that might attract tour operators, Mickey would get straight to work and deliver whatever was necessary to grow the business.

“The function room was a perfect example. Once he was convinced of the need for it, it went up in no time. Before we knew it we had over a thousand people coming to our hotel weekly for functions, dress dances, dinners and shows. People came from all over Munster to attend events in the West, Mickey was the instigator of all that,” remembers John.

Mickey Lynch was also remembered this week as a proud Clareman, good to his community and generous to a fault. As John Madden pointed out, he was very supportive of his native county and its people.

“If a local organisation was in need, Mickey was first in line to give. He was generous with both his time and his money. He was also very good to his employees. And I suppose one of the qualities I most remember was Mickey’s ability to have a good dis- cussion, disagreement even, then five minutes later we moved on, it was forgotten about. I learnt a lot from Mickey Lynch,” John told The Clare People. Mickey Lynch originally was a builder and set up Lynch’s Joinery across the road from where the West County is now situated. Michael Lynch Limited is now fifty seven years in business and over that time has employed many hundreds of Clare people from all over the county in the various family enterprises.

One of Mickey Lynch’s oldest friends Pakie Tuohy from Tiermaclane in Ballyea remembered Mickey Lynch this week as a business man with the common touch:

“Mickey was a gentleman of the old style. He was a very visible presence in the West County and a wonderful host. Always generous, Mickey was great company, he knew everyone and everyone knew him. It was always ‘hail fellow, well met’ with Mickey,” Pakie recalled this week, going on to emphasise the impact the newly opened West County had on Ennis in the late sixties, seventies and eighties.

“It should be remembered Mickey really brought entertainment back to Ennis with The West County. From dinner dances to music in the bar on Saturday nights, the hotel very quickly became a focal point for gatherings. Always a well run establishment, we had many great nights there and Mickey was on hand for all of them. He really was ahead of his time,” Pakie fondly remembered.

Michael Lynch is survived by his wife Chrissie, sons Seamus and Michael Jnr, daughters Geraldine, Colette, Martina, Annette, sons and daughters in-law and a host of grandchildren. He will be reposing at the family home on the Clare Road, Ennis, on Tuesday and Wednesday, with the house private on Thursday morning. Funeral Mass for Michael Lynch will take place on Thursday at 1pm at the Cathedral in Ennis, following by burial in Drumcliffe.

IT IS estimated that almost one third of Clare babies are delivered by caesarean section.

According to a Health Service Executive (HSE) survey of the country’s 19 maternity units, the c-section rate at Galway and Limerick maternity hospitals is almost twice that recommended by the World Health Organisation.

At the Regional (UCHG) Maternity Hospital Galway as many as 29.56 per cent of deliveries were by caesarean section in 2011, and 27.43 per cent of births at Limerick Maternity Hospital.

The WHO recommends that the nation birth rate by caesarean section should be no higher than 15 per cent. The highest caesarean birth rate was in St Luke’s Hospital, Kil- kenny, at 38 per cent, almost double of that in Sligo General Hospital at 19.3 per cent.

As well as showing a wide regional variation in caesarean section deliveries, the survey released under the Freedom of Information Act, also revealed that Limerick Maternity Hospital had the lowest breast-feeding rate in the country.

The 2011 figures show that 32.5 per cent of babies at the Limerick hospital were exclusively breast fed on discharge. Just 38.6 per cent were combined fed – bottle and breast.

In Galway the figure for mothers exclusively breast feeding on discharge was at 39.8 per cent, with the majority of mothers – 59 per cent – opting to combine feed their new borns.

Limerick hospital had a higher rate of non-instrumental deliveries in 2011 at 55.98 per cent compared to Galway at 52.92 per cent.

A MOTHER has spoken of the terror felt by her family when their home was the target of a suspected gun attack in Ennis last week.

Shots were fired at a family home in the Cloughleigh area of the town in the early hours of New Year’s morning. No one was injured in the attack but windows and the front door of the house were damaged.

A husband and wife and seven children including a one-year-old girl were in the house at the time. A 46-year-old man was questioned and subsequently released without charge.

Gardaí in Ennis yesterday issued a renewed appeal for information.

They are interested in a grey saloon type car that was seen leaving the area at the time with two occupants on board. A garda spokesman said that investigations into the matter are ongoing. A large downstairs window and door remained boarded over at the house yesterday.

In her sitting room, the mother of eight, who was present in the house on the night, relived the horror of the attack.

The couple were upstairs watching television having just returned from a New Year’s Eve party when they heard the sound of windows breaking, according to the woman.

“We looked out and saw three men well known to us driving a silver private car. We shouted down at them,” she said.

The woman, who did not want her name to be published, said shots were then fired at the front door and at the upstairs bedroom window where her husband was standing while “rocks came through the sitting room win- dow”.

The couple’s daughters (ages eight, three and 16) and one-year-old grandchild were asleep upstairs at the time. Their three sons were asleep in a downstairs bedroom.

“We were terrified but the kids were probably more terrified,” the woman said.

The incident may be linked to a recent court case in Ennis, which the family had no direct involvement in.

The woman says the family’s car has previously been damaged while she says her son was the victim of a serious assault in Ennis last June.

She said, “We feel like our lives have been taken away from us. We are afraid for our children.

“We know nothing about any feuding that’d be going on in this town. We have nothing to do with anything like that. My husband has never been in trouble in his life. All we want is justice for this.”

Members of Ennis Town Council will meet in private today to discuss the incident in Cloughleigh.

Independent councillor Paul O’Shea yesterday warned that lives will be lost if violent incidents in Ennis do not stop.

MORE than € 100,000 worth of damage has been inflicted on Lahinch Seaworld which will remain closed to the public until further notice. The facility was hit with a severe flood on Friday morning as flood waters from Lahinch Golf Club and the Liscannor Road Car Park, overflowed into its control room – severely damaging both the structure of the building and the swimming pools facilities.

Manager of Lahinch Seaworld, Joe Garrihy, said that his team are work ing hard to get the facility up and running as soon as possible.

“We have extensive damage to our plant room, to the boiler house, to the cinema and the multi purpose hall. The big systems in the plant room and the boiler house, like the heating system for the pool, had been submerged in about three foot of water. So that is a big problem,” said Mr Garrihy.

“The flood actually came from the Golf Club side. There was so much flooding in that area that it eventually flooded down to ourselves. So we had it coming at us from both directions.

The damage comes at the worst possible time for Seaworld, as this is their busiest time to secure new members for the gym and pool.

“We need to reopen again as soon as possible. This is the busiest part of the year for people in the fitness sector, so it is a big blow. We are going to be closed until next Monday [January 13] at least,” continued Joe.

“Once the heating is off it can take as much as much as a week to get the water to heat up again and to get the water filtered properly. We are targeting that week at the moment but we can’t say for sure.

“We need to be back up and running soon. We service around 30 school in the North Clare area and they need somewhere to swim. Membership is our core business, and if they don’t have somewhere to go they will either go somewhere else or give up on out new years resolution.

“We are all really determined to get this back on track. We have had a great response from the public – local people and people from all over the country. Everyone is really determined to get this back on track and I’d like to thank everyone from all their support.”

THE face of Whitestrand beach in Miltown Malbay could be changed forever as the weekends storm ripped away a 50-year-old sea wall and washed large sections of the beach and nearby land into the sea.

According to local landowner Noel Shannon, the beach and surrounding areas have been left devastated after this once-in-a-hundred-year storm.

“It is absolute devastation up here at the moment. The sea wall has been washed away and caravans have been hit and damaged. Most of the sea front at the Whitestrand has been wash away and the rest is covered with rocks. I was just there this minute [Monday morning] and the place is a disaster,” he said.

“The biggest issue is the concrete sea wall, which has been just swept away. I’ve never seen anything like it. That was was holding the sea back; it’s been there for 40 or 50 years.

“There has been a lot of attention for other areas, and rightly so, but the Whitestrand is a very popular spot for young swimmers and for lifeguard training and it needs to be looked at and given some attention.”

Mr Shannon, who operated the nearby Whitestrand Caravan Park, and says that he has lost a considerable amount of the land to the storm – with massive waves simply washing sections of land into the sea.

“There is a lot of ground lost to the sea and there is an awful lot of work that needs to be to done to get the Whitestrand up and going for the tourism season. Parts of my land are no longer there anymore, they have washed into the sea,” he said.

“The council [Clare County Council] were out to us over the weekend but there is not a lot can be done until the storm blows over.”

LAHINCH businessman Antoin O’Looney, who was pinned by raging waves against the wall of his bar for almost half an hour on Friday morning, braved the elements again last night to protect his business through the last of the storm.

Mr O’Looney, who owns O’Looney’s Bar on the Lahinch Promenade, risked his life in the early hours of Friday morning to enter his premises, which had been breached by the storm.

Just after 6am on Friday, he tried to enter his premises but became trapped as heavy waves and storm surges pinned him against the outside wall of O’Looney’s Bar and Restaurant.

“I ran over but I was pinned to the door, I couldn’t get in. The waves were so powerful, I was pinned there for about 20 or 25 minutes. If I had stepped out to try and get in any of the door I would have been swept away; it was that big. There is a wal kway between our two buildings on the prom; the water in that walkway was up to chest level at this time,” he said.

“The storm had popped the two front door of the bar. So in came the water, which covered the bar area and then it filled up the basement. The crew from the fire brigade helped me to close back the doors and secure them.

“They [the fire brigade] were incredible. Within an hour or two hours they had the basement fully pumped out. There was a lot of damage done, especially to the electronics. The basement contains the public toilets, the prep kitchen and the offices and there were a lot of computers, cameras, alarms, things li ke that which were severely damaged.

The storms is the worst to hit Lahinch in recent years and has been described by many as a Perfect Storm.

“It was a combination of three different things: you had a very high spring tide, which is a 5.2 metre tide; you had a very strong gale behind it; and you had a massive surf running as well. Those three things rarely happen altogether, and when they do they can cause savage distraction,” he said.

“I don’t remember a storm li ke this ever. It’s funny though, this building has been built to withstand a lot of punishment and only for the doors opening I would have come out of this scot-free.”

Mr O’Looney said last night that he plays to ride out the remainder of the storm in his premises.

“I will be here tonight [Monday night] for sure. I need to. If anything breeches and you can get to it quickly and stop 80 per cent of the water from getting in, you can save yourself a lot of trouble in the long r un.”

MONITORING of sections of the River Fergus described, as a “concern” will continue in Ennis after the town was spared the worst affects of flooding.

Water levels peaked in the river on Saturday after heavy rainfall on St Stephen’s Day sparked fears of a repeat of the widespread flooding that hit the town in December 2009.

On that occasion residential areas and parts of the town centre suffered major flood damage when the river burst its banks.

Ennis Town Council says that while river levels were “significant” in recent weeks, they were below those recorded during flood events in 1999 and 2009.

Senior executive engineer with Ennis Town Council, Eamon O’Dea explained, “If we have no heavy rainfall over the next two to three days, it will drop off. The Fergus peaked two days ago, but if you look at levels in Ballyalla Lake, it is slowly starting to decline.”

However the council, working alongside Clare County Council and the Office of Public Works are implementing precautionary flood measures along the lower section of the Fergus, below Knox’s Bridge.

“The Ennis area is at a precautionary level. We are implementing measures such as over-pumping at different locations on the lower River Fergus. We have one or two areas of concern along the lower section,” Mr O’Dea said.

Spring tides did result in brief flooding on a section of the old N18 road in Clarecastle on Friday morning.

Work on phase two of the Ennis Flood Relief Scheme between Bank Place Bridge and Doora Bridge is ongoing at locations around Ennis.

It is anticipated that when completed, the works will lead to the protec- tion of 849 residential and 425 nonresidential properties on completion.

Defences including enhanced river walls, pumping stations and new drainage systems are included in the project, which is aimed at protecting Ennis against a 100-year flood event.

Works carried out during phase one at Mill Road and Woodquay are credited with preventing widespread flooding of Ennis town centre in 2009.

Though it is thought the works so far prevented major flooding in the town centre, the exact areas to have directly benefited from the improved defences will not be known until the scheme is certified as completed by the OPW.

Under the latest scheme of works, new ramps and walls are to be constructed at the two entrances to Clare Mart, while a new wall is to be constructed at the rear of properties between Aldi and Clonroad.