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The 2022 Inter-County season will commence on Sunday, January 2, when the Clare senior footballers travel to Dungarvan to take on Waterford in the opening round of the McGrath Cup (Munster Senior Football League) at 2pm. In a hectic first week of Colm Collins’ historic ninth season in charge, the Banner welcome Group 1 rivals Cork, under new manager Keith Ricken, to Hennessy Memorial Park in Miltown Malbay four days later for the first time since winning the McGrath Cup on home soil in 2019. The Group 1 winners will subsequently face their Group 2 equivalents (Kerry, Limerick or Tipperary) in the final on Sunday, January 15. In contrast, it’s winner-takes-all for Brian Lohan’s Clare senior hurlers who also face Waterford, this time in the more familiar setting of O’Garney Park in Sixmilebridge for their Munster Hurling Cup Semi-Final on Friday, January 14 (7pm). With the championship spoils evenly split between the counties over the past two years, it marks …

AS is customary in Shannon, the long-running custom of selling Goradiche gift vouchers is continuing this year at the Parish Office. The Gift Tokens/Christmas cards go on sale every December to raise funds for the Goradiche orphanage in Belarus, said Parish Priest Father Arnold Rosney. “It’s going for over 20 years. In the year 2000 we started off the campaign to support the children and the orphanage, following the Chernobyl disaster. We started it as a Jubilee project and it has been going ever since.” Local people have traveled to the Orphanage to help for many years, and even though visits are not a runner right now, there is still much being done in Shannon to help. “At the start of Covid we did an emergency collection and people were very generous, but the fundraising has been more challenging since Covid came along and obviously people can’t go out. I understand they are send out clothing there now.” The Orphanage …

KILNAMONA author Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s debut prose book A Ghost in the Throat has been named among the New York Times Best Books of 2021. The book has featured among the Times’s staff critics choices of the best fiction and nonfiction works of this year. The book, which last year scooped the An Post Book of the Year Award, sees Doireann weave two stories together, with eighteenth-century poet Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill haunting the life of a contemporary young mother who turns detective. Ní Chonaill composed the great poem “Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire” after her husband was murdered by a powerful British official. The book which includes a translation of the poem, is a hybrid of essay, biography, autofiction and scholarship and a daily accounting of life with four children under the age of six. “The book is all undergrowth, exuberant, tangled passage,” New York Times critic Parul Sehgal  wrote. “The story that uncoils is stranger, more difficult to tell, than those valiant …

THREE North Clare councillors have tabled a motion urging people to inform themselves about the changes proposed in the new Draft County Development Plan. At the December meeting of the local authority, Councillors Joe Killeen, Shane Talty and Joe Garrihy asked for an outline of arrangements for information and consultation sessions. They also sought clarity on proposed taxes on vacant, zoned sites, “to give confidence to relevant landowners”. Proposing the motion, Councillor Joe Killeen said it is vital that members of the public inform themselves. “This plan is going to last until 2029 so it is significant,” he said. Councillor Garrihy noted that “long, hard process of workshops” had gone into producing the draft. “I think all of our strategies – Housing for All, our tourism strategy – everything is impacted upon and needs to converge in a joined up way. The more engagement we get with our communities on this the better.” Councillor Killeen noted that the draft plan …

A CALL has been made for branded signage at access points to the county, to highlight Clare’s unique musical and cultural heritage. At the December meeting of Clare County Council, Councillor Pat McMahon made the appeal, saying such an initiative could help to rejuvenate tourism and hospitality in the wake of the pandemic. “We all know about the decimation of our hospitality over the last couple of years and that we need to get the rejuvenation going,” he told the meeting. He then explained that his motion was inspired by his own travels and seeing how different regions are promoted around the world. “In Florida, each county you go through, there’s a symbol of that county,” he said. “It leaves a seed in the mind. You see the same in Cornwall and in Oranmore in Galway. It leaves a seed as to what that area produces. “What I would love to see is that, no matter from what direction you …

Fiona McGarry speaks to former Flannan’s teacher Liam Ashe whose NGO’s school in Kolkata is changing lives AT 76 years of age, Doonbeg native Liam Ashe is a great advertisement for what he describes as “late adulthood”. A teacher with four decades of experience, Liam is the driving force behind an NGO that is currently teaching 320 children in one of the most deprived parts of Kolkata in the Indian state of West Bengal. He describes psychologist Maureen Gaffney as his “guru” and lives her precept that if you are active in retirement, you are still in late adulthood. That, in part, explains the huge energy which the long-timer Ballyea resident puts into Balo Children Ireland which he set up after a visit to India over 15 years ago. Liam is known to several generations for his work at St Flannan’s College, Ennis, where he taught History and Geography for 40 years. “I idolised those subjects,” he told The Champion. …

Councillor urges creation of more apprenticeship roles A WEST Clare councillor forecast success in the stars, as he called on the local authority to create more opportunities for apprentices. Councillor Gabriel Keating, with permission from the Mayor, read his horoscope at the December Council meeting. The prediction, he said, was that “a dynamic influence can add extra sparkle to your social life and community activities’. He then called on the authority to “expand its role in this regard with the initiation of the process for recruitment of apprenticeships into the trades and green skills”. These would include opportunities for carpenters, block layers, plasterers, plumbers, fitters, mechanics, electricians, retrofitting personnel, alternative energy technicians, and others. The Fine Gael member said the measure would help the Council retrofit its housing stock. There was a generally positive response, with Mayor of Clare, Councillor PJ Ryan describing the motion as “fantastic”. Councillor Donna McGettigan said she would like to see more women taking up …

A NEW plan for the twin towns of Killaloe-Ballina has been hailed by the council’s CEO as an example of “political and executive collaboration across the water”. Pat Dowling made his remarks as an eagerly-awaited mobility plan was formally ratified by local authority members at their December meeting. The Killaloe and Ballina Town Enhancement and Mobility Plan (TEMP), outlines a number of key projects for both sides of The Shannon, including the future pedestrianisation of the old bridge once the new bridge and bypass are completed. Measures to boost walking and cycling are outlined as well as actions to connect the flow of traffic to the bypass, reducing the number of vehicles in the centre of the two towns. The drafting of the plan involved expensive public consultation and cooperation, over the course of more than a year, between the local authorities in Clare and Tipperary. “Killaloe and Ballina are often referred to as two towns, but one community,” Mr …