News

A RECENT meeting of the Loop Head Tourism Committee heard that three tourism businesses have been established in recent months as a direct result of the increased visitor numbers to the peninsula.

THE spread of ivy and increasing rainfall rates in recent years is causing immense structural damage to the county’s medieval churches, according to a new survey.

EDITORIAL “THERE are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” Mark Twain is credited with popularising the catch phrase when he criticised the 19th-century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.  

CLARE County Council’s water safety officer, Liam Griffin, has appealed to parents to keep a close eye on their children at beaches. He also said the number of beach-related incidents in resort towns like Kilkee has increased significantly this year.

COMMENT I WONDER what Michael Collins would have thought of today’s Ireland. We will never know. We can only judge Collins on what he said and did when he was alive more than 90 years ago.  

COMMENT THE Irish Times is currently running the results of a valuable and interesting in-depth analysis of Central Statistics Office data on crime figures from 2003 to 2011. It is valuable for a number of reasons. Firstly, it provides an overview of the period statistically but secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it allows us to compare the figures with perceptions on the ground.  

THE Fergus estuary and its islands are emerging as among the most “exciting and richest” maritime archaeological landscapes in Ireland, Britain and possibly Europe. This is according to a team from University College Dublin’s School of Archaeology which has been exploring this landscape for the past number of years.

DATES for this year’s Ennis Trad Festival have been unveiled with the popular event confirmed to run for five days from November 8.Plans are now fully underway for this year’s festival, attracting thousands of people to the county capital, some from as far away as Japan and America.John Rynne, chairman of the organising committee explained, “It’s early days at the moment, although we are up and at it earlier than we have in previous years. We have a new committee and new members and we have a number of plans at various stages of development. We always try to co-ordinate the concerts to give a variety of things and we will be waiting until we have all of that nailed down before we make any announcements on that side of it. But in the next month we will probably be announcing the main headline acts.“There have always been big names attracted to the festival but we also try to pull …