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GARDAÍ are advising people in Clare to be wary of rental scams. “While it can be more common to happen when students are beginning their academic year, it can occur any time of the year,” warns Garda Eimear McDonagh, Ennis Garda Station. She outlines the scams fall into three broad categories. In one, the scammer claims to be out of the country and cannot show you the property and requests a deposit. In another the scammer is living at the property and shows a number of people around, takes a deposit from several interested people and then disappears with the money. While in the third type the transaction appears to be normal until the renter finds that the keys don’t work and the landlord has disappeared. Gardai are advising, “People need to establish that the property does in fact exist and that it is available to rent. “Ideally only do business with bona fide rental agencies. Always meet a prospective …

A FIRST year student of Gort Community School has released his debut novel, which was written when he was just 11. Now 13, Joe Fahy from Derrywee West, Derrybrien, has launched a futuristic tale, entitled Glitched, detailing a battle for control of the world. Joe has also been enjoying the media attention surrounding the book. He made an appearance on Today FM’s Dermot and Dave in recent days, along with proud dad, Jimmy.  “[Glitched] is about a 12-year-old boy called Billy who was injected by these nanobots and he meets with some teenagers and he tries to stop a company called AEN from taking over the world,” Joe explained. “All the school kids in Ireland were injected one day by the company. It’s passed off as a vaccine. The chairperson comes into school to see if all the nanobots are working. Billy’s isn’t. It’s glitched.” Joe, also known as JE, told the Today FM duo that he wrote the book …

TRAGEDY struck in North Clare at the weekend, with the death of Lisdoonvarna woman Stephanie Fitzpatrick in a car crash, writes Owen Ryan. Ms Fitzpatrick had recently turned 38 years of age and was part of a large and well known family from Doolin Road, Lisdoonvarna. Local councillor Joe Garrihy knows the family well and he said the tragedy has cast a pall of gloom over the area. “It’s an absolutely devastating event. It comes on the back of a number of very sad and difficult events for the parish and the North Clare area. I think it’s particularly tragic when it’s such a young person. “It affects everyone, her mother is a wonderful woman and she must be feeling this at an unimaginable level, losing one of her precious children. “It is surreal and people are walking around in a little bit of a daze. Everyone is so affected by it, deeply affected. She was such a young person, …

WORKING as a guidance counsellor Fiona Christie is used to supporting students as they navigate their way through life’s journey. However, the Ennis woman took on a navigation of a very different kind recently when she set sail across the Atlantic ocean. A keen sailor Fiona had long hoped to take part in the ARC (Atlantic Rally for Cruisers) race from Gran Canaria to St Lucia, however with work keeping her busy she didn’t have the time. Finding herself between positions last August she decided to listen to that little voice inside her telling her to go for it, and she is delighted she did. Now returned from her travels and working with students in St Caimin’s Community School in Shannon, Fiona tells us, “I always thought I’d love to do the race some day, but being a guidance counsellor in a secondary school I was always working in November when the race is on. It was something I thought …

A major multi-agency emergency operation, also involving an RNLI lifeboat, was put in place in Clare this morning for a cargo aircraft which declared a Mayday over the Atlantic. The Cargolux Boeing 747-400(ER) jet, which was travelling from Miami in the US to Amsterdam in the Netherlands, was about an hour west of Ireland when the crew declared a Mayday reporting a possible fire in a hold. There were three crew on board. Once the crew of flight CV-92F had notified air traffic controllers here of their emergency, a major multi-agency response was mounted at Shannon involving the airport’s own fire and rescue service; local authority fire service, National Ambulance Service and Gardaí. The Irish Coast Guard and RNLI were also alerted. The flight crew advised controllers that they had a fire alarm on the main deck but they were unable to conduct a visual inspection to confirm whether there was actually a fire on board. The flight was cleared …

THIS month marks 60 years since the first national school was opened in Shannon. It was in February of 1962 that St Senan’s opened its doors, as the town was being established, with thousands having received their education there since. School principal Tori Hehir said that plans are being made to mark the milestone. “We’re doing a school mass on February 23, and we’ll have past pupils and past teachers there, all of that. With fun days we’re going to push them out to March and April and see will the remaining Covid measures lift.” She said the school now has 129 pupils, with the numbers not as large as they once were due to demographic changes in Shannon and the opening of a number of other schools. St Senan’s board of management is chaired by Geraldine Lambert, who has deep family ties to the school. “I’m actually the first great grandparent of a child in the school. My great …

A CLARE farmer and teacher will appear on TG4 later this month, as part of a six-episode observational documentary titled Contractors, writes Conor Clohessy. The show will air on Thursday, February 24, at 9:30pm, and will explore the working lives and personal narratives of seven agricultural contracting families from diverse locations over the critical period between April and September. Eoin Collins, who teaches Irish at Ennis Community College, is part of Collins Agri, a business his father started in 1994; Eoin specialises in silage, baling, tillage and slurry alongside his father and three brothers. Eoin said: “The camera crews came around first in April and stayed with us until the end of October. They were in no way invasive; they were able to be a fly on the wall, shooting as we went about the day’s business from morning to evening. It’ll be very true-to-life and straightforward.” He admitted that the process was a busy experience, to have the camera …

IT will be a family reunion of sorts for comedian Neil Delamere when he takes to the stage in glór this Friday, writes Jessica Quinn. Among the audience at the Ennis venue will be Clare hurler David Reidy, and the comedian reveals he won’t be holding back when it comes to making fun of his Ennis cousin. Neil tells us that David had been due to join his team on Ireland’s Fittest Family Celebrity Special last summer supporting the Alzheimer Society of Ireland. “Fair play to him, he was going to do it originally but he got injured and couldn’t do it so we had to draft in another cousin. “He’s flying it now. He’s coming to glór and I’ll be slagging him off. It was great craic to do the show, wading through a bog in the middle of Wicklow with your six foot two cousin dragging you over a log. “It was a strange way to spend a …