North Clare

Pupils in Corofin National School brought together a range of diverse themes recently when they invited members of the Ireland India Council and the India Embassy in Dublin to take part in their Walk for Water. A week of celebrations before the Easter holidays marked India Week and the pupils’ Active School and Green Flag endeavours. Partha Ray, First Secretary at The Embassy of India, Dublin and Mr Ray’s wife, Temina, took part in the school’s celebrations, as did Prashaut Shukla, director of the Ireland-India Council and board member Aparna Shukla. The group spent two days in the school teaching the pupils about Indian culture, history and heritage. Pupils took part in Yoga, Bollywood dancing, Laughter Yoga, Indian music workshops and Indian food-tasting as part of their week-long celebrations. Guests from the Ireland India Council and the Embassy took part in the Walk for Water alongside the school community, as part of Scoil Mhuire’s Water Action Day for their Green …

A NORTH Clare hotel has reopened, securing 20 jobs, after it was bought by a prominent local business family. The Hylands Burren Hotel in Ballyvaughan reopened on Friday having been purchased by the Quinn family, who own holiday cottages, a craft shop and Italian restaurant L’Arco in the village. Madeleine Taylor Quinn is a former TD, senator and mayor of the county. According to Ms Taylor Quinn, retaining jobs in the area is vital. “The hotel has 20 staff and these have been kept on. Keeping people employed is critical and especially being able to offer secure employment is very important. There will also be a spin-off for other businesses in the village. The hotel had a very good reputation when it was owned by the Hyland family and later owned by a family from Donegal, before being owned by Canadians. They have had it for the past two years and we bought it from them,” she explained. While the new …

Ennistymon Choral Society will bring the Australian version of HMS Pinafore to the stage in Lahinch this week. The rejuvenation of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera will run from Wednesday to Sunday, in Seaworld Hall, beginning at 8.15pm each night. “Everyone in the society has been working very hard since October in order to create the best show possible for our local and visiting audience. Music rehearsals began in October under the guidance of music director Mary Madigan O’Callaghan, with dancing and production rehearsals beginning under director Peter Kennedy in January,” explained Emma Jane Brown, secretary of Ennistymon Choral Society. The Ennistymon Choral Society’s productions attract full houses each year and those involved expect this year will be no different. The group performed Oklahoma last year and this time chose HMS Pinafore, a humorous story of love, mistaken identity and subterfuge. “This is the society’s 42nd annual production, which is an amazing feat. This would not have been possible without …

Ennistymon basketball folk will celebrate 60 years in existence this spring. The club held a major event for the golden jubilee back in 2005, culminating in a tournament dinner attended by a large number of past and present members, among them some of the club founders from 1955. This year’s celebrations will be more modest and will be marked on the court with the 23rd Frank Gallery Tournament, to be held at the Inagh Community Centre on Easter Saturday, April 4. This tournament sees past and present players, male and female, come together for the weekend to acknowledge Frank Gallery, a key personality, player and coach of the Claremont Admirals. Further details of this year’s tournament will be released next week when teams are finalised. The longevity of this event is testimony to the respect that Ennistymon basketball people have for their past members. The 60th anniversary was also highlighted in the Cascaders club float at the Ennistymon St Patrick’s …

FORTUNE tellers were on the receiving end of councillors’ wrath this week, for parking their camper vans in Lisdoonvarna for the months of August and September. Parking problems in the North Clare town were raised at Tuesday’s meeting of the West Clare Municipal District in Kilkee, when councillors Bill Slattery and Richard Nagle outlined their concerns. “You have traders and you have fortune tellers who take up their positions in the square, along the bog road and remain there for the whole month of September, taking up prime parking spaces,” Councillor Nagle claimed. The Clare Champion contacted a number of fortune tellers for their take on the suggestion that they park up for weeks on end in Lisdoonvarna. However, just one, on the understanding that she remained anonymous, was prepared to comment. “I predict that there will be no issue this year, if we are provided with somewhere to park. However, I also predict bad tidings for anyone who makes …

A  325 acre residential farm in the Burren, where the parishes of Carron and Ballyvaughan meet, is to be sold at public auction. Described as a ‘one off’ property by Vaughan Hannon, auctioneers;  Glenslade, Carron offers any purchaser huge potential for farming in the Burren, with support, both knowledge led and financial based, from organisations such as BurrenLife. The owner, who was previously involved in the BurrenLife project and REPS, farmed a sucker herd, claimed entitlements in 2014 and had a lot of work done to improve the farm, such as rainwater harvesting, which feed water to troughs throughout the land. The house is a two storey farmhouse with a new roof; however the house is in need of modernisation/renovation. Offered as one lot, the public auction will be held in the Old Ground Hotel, Ennis on May 15.

A MAJOR row about Ennistymon Community Centre rumbles  after it emerged that its annual general meeting was held in private, despite calls to open it to the public. The newly-formed Ennistymon Community Action Group accused the board of the centre of “ignoring” their call for their AGM to be held in public. The group organised a public meeting at the beginning of last month, at which a resolution was passed calling on the directors of the community centre company to hold a general meeting in public on Thursday of this week. However the AGM, the former chairman of the centre told The Clare Champion, was held last week, with seven people in attendance. John Garrahy, former chairman and current manager of the centre, explained that the members are made up of the founders and directors of the organisation. According to Mr Garrahy, the board held its AGM on Monday, February 23. It was not open to the public. He added …

This week, Enistymon CBS students started working with Sky Sports ambassador Thomas Barr, who is hoping to represent Ireland in the 400m hurdles at the World Athletics Championships in Beijing later this year and at the Olympics in Rio in 2016. The Barr family, who are from Ferrybank in Waterford, could have double representation in Rio if Thomas’s sister Jesse also makes it. Jesse is already an Olympian, having represented Ireland at the London Olympics in the 400m hurdles. Thomas, who is studying for a Masters in Sports Performance at UL, will seek to help the Ennistymon pupils in sporting and academic terms during his visits to the school. “We’re using sport as a model. We do this thing called the Six Keys To Success. We go through all of the different attributes of an athlete and what it takes to get to the top. You can apply that to anywhere in life, no matter what you’re doing. It could …