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Clare county councillors should be able to publicise what tax they pay on their statutory allowances and expenses, according to Councillor Christy Curtin.Welcoming the publication of councillors’ expenses on the council’s website last week, Councillor Curtin said that it would be a worthwhile exercise if elected members were permitted to publish the tax they paid in a particular year.However, the county council has decided that the publication of a councillor’s tax affairs is a private matter and haven’t included it on the website.Councillor Curtin revealed he paid €5,000 to the taxman last year and suggested that other councillors should also consider publishing their own individual tax payments.“I welcome the publication of the list of councillors’ expenses in the interest of openness and transparency. The expenses are there for anyone to view online. I drove over 4,000 miles last year attending conferences in various parts of the country,” he said.Councillor Curtin’s comments came after Environment Minister John Gormley reduced the maximum …

AN independent review of the performance of accident and emergency departments in the country has highlighted deficiencies in acute hospitals in the Mid-West, including Ennis hospital.The Comptroller and Auditor General published its review of the performance of A&E departments last Friday. It examined departments by cost per attendance, capacity, speciality access and availability, diagnostics and bed-waiting time, based on information and official statistics provided in 2008. According to this analysis, the average cost per attendance in Limerick is the 13th highest in the country at €163 for each casualty patient. The average cost of treating a patient in Ennis is €141, while Nenagh Hospital is the least expensive at €107.In 2008, up to 19,662 patients attended the accident and emergency department in Ennis hospital compared to 16,257 in Nenagh.The survey found decision capacity – the extent to which consultants and specialist registrars in emergency medicine were available in the department – was inadequate at Limerick, Ennis, Nenagh and St John’s. …

A wreath-laying ceremony will be held on Sunday week, February 28, at 10.15am in Clouna graveyard, Ennistymon, to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the death of Martin Devitt.He was a 25-year-old draper apprentice and vice officer commanding of the Mid-Clare brigade who was fatally wounded after a failed IRA ambush on an RIC patrol on February 24, 1920. Mary Crawford, who lives in the house outside which Devitt was killed and is one of the organisers of the ceremony, says that he was a native of Cahersherkin, Ennistymon. According to the Clare library website, plans had been made to deprive Sergeant Giles and Constables O’Donnell, Hughes and Glynn from Maurices Mills Barrack of their rifles and consequently, their movements had been closely watched for some time.  “They were lying in wait here,” Mary Crawford explained with reference to the IRA brigade. “There was a wall running down through our field. What happened was there was a civilian travelling either with …

Facts and figures on how tourism in the Shannon Region fared in 2009 were not available for an industry roadshow recently.  The chief executive of Fáilte Ireland, Shaun Quinn, made an illustrated point of the absence of statistics when he delivered the first key pitch when the Tourism Roadshow get-together returned to the Radisson Hotel, Limerick, on Thursday of last week. With an image of leotard-clad ladies shaping up in a fitness centre projected onto the big screen, he commented, “This is the extent of the figures you are going to see.”It was much the same when the focus zeroed in on the immediate region. The Shannon Development regional tourism agency was again making use of the gathering to launch its tourism-marketing plan for the year. The format was identical to the previous year but with a marked difference in content. While the 2009 publication carried a review of figures from the previous year and set out targets for the …

PEACE protestors marked St Valentine’s Day with a demonstration at Shannon Airport.Around 25 people gathered outside the airport entrance, displaying black hearts and calling for an end to the American use of Shannon.The protest went on for an hour and ended with the protestors giving their black heart Valentine cards to the gardaí.According to the Shannonwatch group, close to two million American troops have passed through the airport since the invasion of Iraq seven years ago. In 2009, over 970 US military contracted aircraft transported troops and cargo through Shannon.Flight records maintained by Shannonwatch also show that an additional 360 US Air Force and Navy aircraft landed at Shannon in the same period. The next event scheduled at Shannon to protest against its involvement in war and human rights abuse is a women’s peace camp on March 6-7. It will be followed on March 14 by another vigil at the airport.

Enda Kenny is a liability to Fine Gael and everybody apart from himself knows that. So what, you might ask.Under his leadership the main opposition party has become the most popular party in the state for the first time in its history. The party had been written off before he took over the reins of leadership but today Fine Gael TDs are feeling secure in their seats.Under Kenny’s leadership, Fine Gael is set to form the next government, whether the election is called in 30 months time or in three months time.Former revered leaders of the party, such as Dick Mulcahy, John A Costello, James Dillon, Liam Cosgrave or Garret FitzGerald, failed to do as much for Fine Gael as Enda Kenny has done.So why should his parliamentary party colleagues be muttering against him? Remember that those “mutterings” that George Lee spoke about last week were just that, “mutterings”. There has been no heave against Kenny, no plot to get …

“There is a grave danger that Shannon Airport is on a downward spiral,” the chief executive of Shannon Development, Dr Vincent Cunnane, has warned.In demanding urgent measures to underpin recovery, he maintained, “Shannon will not survive on passengers alone” and further warned that without government funding it would be difficult.Dr Cunnane, recently appointed to the board of the Shannon Airport Authority, bluntly stated, “Aer Lingus is the key problem”, when questioned at Monday’s launch of the 2009 review of Shannon Development performance. Accusing Aer Lingus of prevaricating on the services to operate from Shannon this year, he said, “What we want from Aer Lingus is certainty”.He pointed out that the network of travel contacts developed by the agency in the USA “want to use Shannon”. With Aer Lingus protesting that off-season losses nullify peak season profits, he pointed out that by using smaller aircraft on the Shannon-Newark service “Continental Airlines are showing the way”.He pointed out that Aer Lingus had …

Forty businesses attended the re-launch of the Ennis Chamber Tuesday2Network event that took place at Sherry Fitzgerald McMahon, O’Connell Square, Ennis, to celebrate their 110th year in business in Clare.Ennis Chamber vice-president John Dillane reiterated the importance of businesses working together to support each other in these challenging times and the strong attendance showed the continuing appeal for businesses to use networking as a way to boost their business through one-to-one contact. Facilitator and guest presenter for the networking night, Laura Reddy of Sherry FitzGerald Group then gave an overview on consumer sentiment. In her report, Ms Reddy noted that in a KBC/ESRI survey revealed that consumer sentiment improved in January 2010 to its highest level in two years and that “the mood of consumers is brightening”.“While consumers remain cautious, they are notably less pessimistic, which points to a clear and broadly based pick-up in confidence,” she added.Ms Reddy revealed that a PriceWaterhouseCooper Report stated that consumers are hunting for …