News

Allianz Hurling League Division 1 Group B Round 3 Laois v Clare at MW Hire O’Moore Park Portlaoise, Sunday 3pm (Patrick Murphy, Carlow) With Clare being one of only three teams yet to register a point in Division 1 alongside Laois and Westmeath, the relegation trapdoor candidates will become a lot clearer following this Sunday’s showdown in Portlaoise. In reality, Clare should have won their opening two ties and have the potential to also beat their remaining trio of opponents in Laois, Dublin and Kilkenny. However, even in terms of kickstarting their season and rebuilding confidence ahead of the start of the championship in five weeks time, a victory this Sunday is just what the doctor ordered. One thing’s for sure, Brian Lohan and his management team are certainly finding out a lot about their players after two soul searching defeats but there are still plenty of positional and personnel boxes to be ticked on the Banner’s pre-championship checklist. Injuries …

THE number of people accessing the refuge provided by Clare Haven Services during the Covid-19 pandemic was four times higher than the reported incidence of domestic abuse to gardai, The Clare Champion can reveal. Figures released to by Justice Minister Heather Humphreys to Deputy Michael McNamara show the incidence of domestic abuse crime and non-crime incidents that were reported to the Clare Garda Division increased by 5% from 638 in the period April 2019 to March 2020 to 670 between April 2020 to March 2021. Crime incidents include any incident with a recorded motive of “domestic abuse”. Non-crime incidents are of the PULSE incident type “domestic dispute – no offence disclosed”. Clare Haven Services manager, Dr Siobhan O’Connor has confirmed there was a 21% increase in the number of people accessing their refuge from December 2019 to December 2020, which covers a large portion of the Covid-19 pandemic. There was also a similar hike in the number of people using …

IRISH Water has confirmed that it is working with Clare County Council to carry out repairs to two rising main bursts that may result in a wastewater discharge at Kilkee beach. Crews are working to repair the bursts as quickly and as safely as possible in adherence with current HSE and government Covid-19 advice. Tankers are on-site collecting wastewater to minimise any impact and discharges to the stream which leads to the beach. As a result of this incident, Clare County Council, in consultation with the HSE, has placed a bathing prohibition notice at Kilkee beach. It is likely that this notice will remain in place for a number of days pending the repairs of the wastewater and stormwater rising mains and the results of sampling of the bathing waters early next week, at which point the notice may be lifted. Updates will be available from www.beaches.ie. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other relevant stakeholders have been notified and …

Allianz Football League Division 2 South Round 2 Kildare v Clare at St Conleth’s Park Newbridge, Sunday 2pm (Fergal Kelly, Longford) It’s Newbridge or nowhere for Clare this Sunday as fresh from the timely jolt of a comprehensive opening win over Laois, Colm Collins’ side are gunning to finally break their Lilywhite hoodoo. Successive National League defeats at the Kildare venue in 2016, ’17 and ’19 by an average margin of four points have created an unwanted pattern that they will be eager to redress this time around. After all, the carrot for the winners is a guaranteed place in the last four of Division 2 while for the hosts, a victory would also clinch top spot in the group that includes a semi-final showdown with the runners-up in the Northern half of the divide. There were eerie similarities between Clare and Kildare’s first round successes as both had impressive debutants in Daniel Walsh and Alex Beirne who could well …

CLARE County Council, on the advice of the HSE, has placed a prohibition on swimming in Kilkee due to a malfunction of Irish Water sewage infrastructure. Emergency remedial works are being undertaken by Irish Water. The notice states, “Do not swim until further notice.”

Clare v Wexford at Cusack Park Ennis, Sunday 2pm (Shane Curley, Galway) Realistically, with away trips to senior sides Meath and Kerry to come in the coming weeks, this is Clare’s best chance to grab an early positive result and set their stall out for what could legitimately be a lucrative season ahead. Clare have been embroiled in some compelling battles with Wexford in recent seasons, most notably the 2018 group decider in Cahir that saw Fidelma Marrinan (3) and Laurie Ryan (2) raid for goals to power the Banner into the All-Ireland Quarter-Finals and the subsequent revenge mission twelve months later in the opening round when Wexford stunned their hosts with their own goalfest in Doonbeg. However, while Wexford failed to reach the business end of last year’s All-ireland Intermediate Championship for the first time since re-emerging to the grade as Junior champions in 2014, on the flip side, Clare were on the up after contesting a first semi-final …

RESEARCH involving Clare natives at NUI Galway and the Western Development Commission (WDC) shows that the vast majority of employees favour some form of remote working. The National Remote Working Survey was led by Professor Alma McCarthy from Labasheeda who is Head of the JE Cairnes School of Business and Economics and Tomás Ó Síocháin, CEO of the WDC, a native of Quin. The survey is the second of its kind since the pandemic began and found that among those who could work remotely, 95% were in favour of doing so on an ongoing basis. The majority of those, 53%, said they would like to work remotely several times a week, 32% said they would like to work fully remotely and 10% several times a month. The number of people who would like to work fully remotely (32%) has increased substantially from the first national survey conducted in April 2020 when it stood at 12%. The figure of 95% is …

Thousands of appointments fall foul of HSE cyber attack PUBLIC hospital appointments for thousands of Clare patients have been cancelled amid fears it may take weeks to fully resolve the serious disruption caused by the cyber attack on the HSE’s information technology systems. Waiting lists for in-patient and outpatient procedures look set to soar over the coming weeks following the cancellation of all outpatient clinics and all elective inpatient and day case procedures except time-critical cases, diagnostic investigations including radiology and endoscopy services. This major unexpected disruption to health services in the Mid-West coincides with the release of official figures from the National Purchase Treatment Fund, which revealed the number of in-patients on waiting lists in the region increased by 34% from 4,798 in January 2020 to 6,465 in April 2021, while the number on outpatients jumped 6.4% from 47,134 in January 2020 to 50,189. There are currently 41,035 patients on the out-patients waiting list at University Hospital Limerick (UHL) …