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Tag Archives: Lough Graney

Public meeting on €20m EU water project in Flagmount

A COMMUNITY information meeting will take place in North East Clare to highlight the work of an important water quality initiative.  The event, which will focus on the catchment of Lough Graney, will be held at Lough Graney Community Hall in Flagmount at 7.30pm on Wednesday, October 5. The Graney Catchment is one of six pilot catchments in Ireland which have been selected for inclusion in a new €20 million European Union funded project called ‘Waters of LIFE’. The initiative aims to address the decline in water quality in Ireland’s most pristine and sensitive river catchments, like the Graney Catchment, which covers East Clare and part of South East Galway. Pristine, or near pristine waterbodies (rivers and lakes), are called ‘high-status objective waterbodies’ and are assigned a ‘Blue Dot’ to distinguish them as ‘the best of the best’ among Irish waterbodies. Blue Dot waterbodies are mainly located in remote and lightly populated areas, with many of them found in upland …

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Youth Club Cook up a Storm for Christmas

CHRISTMAS comes but once a year but in the lakeside community of Flagmount, young people get to celebrate it twice, as each year they create from scratch their own Christmas dinner, complete with turkey, Brussels sprouts and carols. The Lough Graney Youth Club members, from the ages of 12 to 20, design the three-course menu and prepare starters, cook a turkey and bake desserts for up to 25 people. As team leaders, Rebecca Smyth from Killanena, Louise O’Connell from Flagmount and Ella MacNamara from Caher, explain, this is the one time of the year when the whole group comes together. “We’ve been doing this for six or seven years, since we all went into secondary school,” Louise said. “It’s nice we all make the food together and we all have different parts we look after. Some people will be on the apple crumble and some people will be on the turkey and then we all come together to eat it …

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50 years of swimming lessons at Lough Granery

FOR 50 years, children have been learning to swim and lifesave in Lough Graney, thanks to a community initiative supported by Irish Water Safety Clare. On Saturday, July 29, the thousands of people who learned to swim will be invited back to the shores of Lough Graney to celebrate this milestone. To mark the occasion, the community will run a number of free, water-based activities. On the day, two locals who both participated in the swimming lessons, Ken Collins and John O’Mara, will take to the water to show off their skills, as part of a charity swim, in aid of Raheen Hospice. Each year, the swimming lessons take place over the last two weeks in July and between 50 and 60 children partake each week. People come from all over East Clare and South Galway to join in and learn how to swim. This annual event has been made possible by a team of dedicated local volunteers, including Kathleen …

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