A SOUTH-East Clare publican has vowed to drop the price of a pint to just €3, in a desperate bid to halt a dramatic 40% decline in business over the past year.The proprietor of The Mill Bar in O’Briensbridge, Kathleen Sciascia, actually closed her pub early at 10.30pm on Monday night because there were no customers.Concerned about the fall off in business over the summer months, Ms Sciacsia, who employs eight full-time and six part-time staff, has warned that if trade doesn’t improve she will be forced to curtail working hours for employees and rates of pay.

MEMBERS of Clare’s three Community Development Projects will this week march alongside their colleagues from across the country at Liberty Hall in Dublin having come out against the possible implementation of the McCarthy Report.

WITH the stroke of a pen someone in Dublin can wreak devastation for the vulnerable members of Clare’s rural community by signing off on the rural transport programme.That’s the opinion of Councillor PJ Ryan, who stressed that the community-based transport service responds to the needs of today. It keeps communities alive and, if anything, the network needs to be more extensive rather than faced with fighting for what they have, he said.

PAY cuts and redundancies may be in the offing for Aer Lingus staff at Shannon Airport, following an announcement by the airline of a loss of €93 million for the first six months of the year.Aer Lingus chairman Colm Barrington said last week that if staff don’t “work at market conditions and market rates we won’t survive”.The company is due to announce a hard-hitting survival plan in the couple of months and, as well as pay cuts, it is speculated that there will be between 500 and 1,000 redundancies.

With a new slimmed-down Shannon Airport Authority due to take office on September 16, Dermot Walsh surveys the five-year tenure of the inaugural authority   THE Shannon Airport Authority got off to a controversial start and has seldom been very far from controversy since the break-up of the old Aer Rianta and its replacement by separate boards at the three State airports in 2004.Five years after that proclamation of “autonomy” by the late Seamus Brennan when he was Minister for Transport, Shannon has yet to see Government promises delivered. Shannon has an airport authority but no independence and, as the July report of the Government Task Force documented, is still under the thumb of the Dublin parent body. Neither has the pledge that Shannon would set out as a separate entity “debt-free” been honoured.

AERIAL mapping, using the latest satellite technology, has led to unexpected deductions for alleged overpayments in grant entitlements for Clare farmers, it has emerged this week. Cash-strapped Clare farmers, who are already left reeling from a dramatic hike in production costs and falling prices due to the atrocious weather conditions, have been hit with unexpected cuts in their annual income from the Rural Environmental Protection Scheme (REPS), the Single Farm Payment and the Disadvantaged Area Scheme. The cuts have ranged from €1,000 to €2,500, depending on overall acreage.

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Inagh man Damien Queally gave up his life as a successful economist to work in some of the world’s poorest countries. Eight years ago, when the Irish economy was in full flight, Inagh’s Damien Queally turned his back on a promising career as an economist with one of the country’s top banks to become an aid worker.