IRISH Seed Savers Association has had to implement three redundancies and cut staff hours by almost half, as a result of funding cuts it has sustained this year from a number of sources that used to fund the national charity. The organisation’s project manager Lisa Duncan confirmed to The Clare Champion that in recent weeks the charity had to cut staff and staff hours due to financial constraints. She explained the charity relies on grant aid to survive and as it had sustained cuts to grant aid this year from a number of different organisations, it had to implement the cuts. On the back of this, it has launched an appeal to ensure the survival of the organisation and to enable it to continue its conservation work. According to the organisation, it received grant aid from the Department of Agriculture for the past number of years to help support it in saving Ireland’s agricultural heritage. Projects such as the creation …

A PROPOSAL to sell land at Illaunmanagh to a man who is proposing to develop a crematorium was deferred at Monday’s Clare County Council meeting. Some years ago Tony McMahon and Sean Hillery proposed developing a crematorium there, which would tap a large potential market, as the only ones in the country are in Cork and Dublin. Now Jim Cranwell is looking to extend the period of planning permission for the development and is seeking to buy the lands in question from Clare County Council. The disposal of the land was due to be considered at Monday’s County Council meeting but was deferred. In a report prepared in advance of the meeting, Michael McNamara of Clare County Council stated; “It is proposed to dispose of lands measuring 1.29 acres approximately at Illaunmanagh, Shannon to Jim Cranwell, Doonagore, Doolin, who proposes providing a crematorium on the lands. Planning permission was granted for a crematorium on the lands by An Bord Pleanála …

Dogalogue with Bev and Daisy DOGS are sociable animals and, as such, like to be part of their pack or, as we would call it our family. There are many ways that dogs will exhibit problem behaviour, especially when left alone. Boredom may be a key factor or lack of proper training in young dogs, they have never been taught that it is unacceptable to chew items, bark or dig. Others behave unacceptably because they cannot bear to be parted from their owners and become anxious. Dogs that suffer separation anxiety should not be trusted alone, even for a short time. Some may be destructive, others are noisy and some become so distressed that they will soil in the house. The ones who tend to suffer most are adopted dogs, dogs that have had two or three homes; shy, submissive, sensitive dogs and older puppies. Tips on what to do – Exercise your dog, walk or play games about an …

TONY Petty returned from Oklahoma recently to his native North Clare. Here, the Ennistymon ex-pat recalls getting in on the ground floor of the computer industry and how his experience in the United States Air Force helped him in his most recent battle with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. In 1957 Tony Petty took a leap of faith, unusual among his peers. The 20-year-old walked out of a permanent job as a bus conductor in London, to return home to meet an uncle returning to Ireland on holidays for the first time in 50 years. Seventy-year-old Mikey Petty left Ennistymon for America in 1907. For the following five decades, he remained in contact with his family, among them his brother Joseph, Tony’s father. Now, he was coming home from Worchester, Massachusetts for two weeks holidays but in London, Tony couldn’t get time off to return home. “I gave it up [the job] because they would not give me a holiday and I wanted …

THE rescheduled Cooley Collins Traditional Music Festival will take place on December 7 and 8, it was decided this week. The festival is normally held on the October bank holiday weekend but was postponed this year. “This year’s festival was postponed out of respect to the Donoghue and Woods families following a bereavement,” explained Lisa Nolan of the Cooley Collins festival. “We are holding the festival now on December 7 and 8. As it is normally on a bank holiday weekend, this year’s festival will be a smaller version, with the Saturday being the main day of the festival,” she added. Workshops, which have been a staple of the festival, will not be held this year with the focus shifting to performance. “We had four or five workshops organised for young people but they all had to be cancelled. We are not having them this time. We are just having the music and sessions,” Lisa outlined. The festival is held …

EVER wonder how far Cratloe football has progressed inside a decade? Eleven years ago, the club’s Junior A team defeated Doonbeg in the 2002 county final. That winning panel was Cratloe’s first team, while their opponents were The Magpies’ juniors. Come Saturday afternoon, Cratloe will compete on an equal footing with their vaunted rivals when they take on Doonbeg for the 2013 Clare Senior Football Championship. Then aged 17, the now 28-year-old Michael Hawes lined out at corner-forward in 2002. “It’s some jump in 11 years. A lot of the credit has to go to Colm [Collins] for that. I know Martin Murphy was there all along bringing us to that level but Colm really brought us the next step. There were a lot of us involved back in 2002 and we’re still tipping around today,” the Connacht Hotel account assistant reflected. “I remember going to county finals in the late ’90s and watching the likes of Doonbeg and Kilmurry. …

THE teaching profession must be the most represented occupation in the Doonbeg dressing room. Páraic Aherne and Colm Dillon teach woodwork and drawing, while Brian Egan imparts his knowledge of metalwork. On top of that, Paul and Brian Dillon are in the process of joining the teaching ranks in the Magpies’ changing room. Given that Clare club footballers and hurlers are generally idle most summers, it must be a source of some frustration to Doonbeg’s collection of teachers that their summer holidays are not pock-marked by many games of championship football. “The team that comes out at the worst end on Saturday is going to suffer most maybe because they’ll have gone on for so long, when possibly it could have been avoided,” Aherne suggested, when commenting on the lack of regular championship action in the county until late autumn and early winter. The Doonbeg wing-back, a teacher in Thurles CBS, reasonably points out that retaining interest throughout the year …

SATURDAY’S county football final, which throws in at 2.30pm, brings disparate parts of Clare together in pursuit of Jack Daly. Doonbeg, hugging the Atlantic coast, are zoning in on their 19th championship since 1955 while Cratloe, with the local wood their most iconic landmark, are trying to grasp Jack Daly for their first time. The fact that the clubs have only met once in senior championship, and never in a county final, adds further intrigue to this weekend’s showdown. Ironically, this will not be Cratloe’s first appearance in a county final, although nobody is around to reveal what happened when they lost to Newmarket in the July 10, 1887 final. What is known is that Cratloe didn’t score in that game and some of their players didn’t show up because much of the Cratloe team had to herd cattle to a fair on the same day. While nothing else may be certain about the 2013 final, it is spectacularly unlikely …