Regional

PUPILS from an Ennis school have demonstrated their futures are bright when it comes to identifying and solving health issues in Ireland today. Transition year students of Coláiste Muire Isolde Hegarty, Molly Hennessy, Hannah Clune, Sinéad Ní Dhúlaing and Éabha Warner have received an award at the second BD STEM Stars competition. The local students scooped €5,000 in funding for STEM projects after coming in second runner up place. Their entry proposed an app to support teenagers in managing their mental health. The Vedriti App and Panic Button Technology is a safe space online to support the mental health and well-being of teenagers. The students identified the challenges of the pandemic as putting even greater pressure on mental health and looked at how they could provide teenagers with peer-to-peer support as well as information on where to go for further help. They beat off competition from across Limerick and Clare in showing step-by-step how they firstly identified an issue and …

A CENTENARIAN, living in West Clare, recently celebrated her birthday with a letter from two heads of state. Joyce Mabel Heppell lives at St Theresa’s Nursing Home in Kilrush, where staff and residents helped her to mark the milestone birthday on April 14. Joyce Mabel Heppell née Morris was born in 1921 in London and grew up in the family-owned sweet shop in Ealing. Joyce had one sibling, a sister who passed away around 50 years ago. At the outset of World War II, Joyce volunteered to join the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), being posted to a radar site on the Thames estuary in Kent. The low point of this time was a period of three weeks, when there were only sardines to eat. After the war, Joyce joined the Foreign Office and went to Moscow, Washington and later to Paris. The birth of her son brought Mabel back to England to live in Surrey and work at the Department …

A SIGNIFICANT planning initiative, designed to create a roadmap for the strategic regeneration, development and sustainability, has recently been launched across a group of communities in North Clare. The catchment for the project will comprise the communities served by Mary Immaculate Secondary School and the Stella Maris Day Centre in Lisdoonvarna. This covers communities such as New Quay, Ballyvaughan, Fanore, Carron, Doolin, Lisdoonvarna, Kilfenora and Kilshanny. The project is a joint initiative of Lisdoonvarna Fáilte and Clare Local Development Company (CLDG). “The project is premised on the need for communities in North Clare to be ready for and be able to respond to change,” said Councillor Joe Garrihy of Lisdoonvarna Fáilte. “We have seen dramatic changes in the region in recent years, for example to patterns of land usage and employment. “We have observed increased centralisation of public services and employment opportunities and this has led to substantial migration of our young from the region. “Correspondingly, we have seen the …

CLARE Drama Festival stalwart Tom Hanley is among 15 actors and organisers chosen by RTÉ to feature in a special short film to celebrate Ireland’s vibrant amateur drama circuit. While May is, ordinarily, the month when the RTÉ All Ireland Drama Festival takes place in Athlone, the Dean Crowe Theatre will lie empty for a second year in a row due to pandemic restrictions. In existence since the early 1950s, the festival has been deferred to 2022. However, actors from a range of the regional festival locations, including Clare, have come together to mark what should have been the 69th RTÉ All Ireland Drama Festival. Mr Hanley is among those to lend their voices and faces to a 2-minute film entitled ‘Interval’, a piece written by Joseph Hoban. Produced by RTÉ’s Tracey Diamond, the film focuses on the enforced ‘interval’ the pandemic created in the lives of people nationally and globally. It is a reflection on lockdown and the restrictions that have …

Owen Ryan reports on a feisty exchange between Deputy Michael McNamara and An Taoiseach Michéal Martin THE Taoiseach is destroying his own legacy and Shannon Airport, Clare Independent TD Michael McNamara warned in the Dáil this week, shortly after the Aer Lingus decision to close its Shannon cabin crew base became known. The Scariff man vehemently criticised the Government’s approach to aviation. “When are we going to have a debate on what the State’s aviation policy is? When can we even find out what it is? “There are announcements from the Tánaiste every day that contradict each other. There are announcements from all the members of the Taoiseach’s Cabinet that contradict each other constantly. “We do not have an aviation policy or aviation recovery plan. We need one before it is too late. It is already too late for my constituency. The Taoiseach’s is next. “He might not care much about the rest of the country but if he cares …

THERE has been unanimous criticism from the county’s politicians of the Aer Lingus decision to close the Shannon cabin crew base, writes Owen Ryan. Fine Gael deputy Joe Carey said the decision was “hasty and ill advised”, while he said he would work to try and bring about a reversal. The Clarecastle man accepted that the Government should have published an aviation plan by now. “Mr Vardakar is going to ask Aer Lingus to defer this decision until the aviation roadmap is published. The aviation lobby is blaming the Government for not publishing a plan and I feel they have a point on this. “I feel that Eamon Ryan and his department should have published an aviation plan at this stage. “Additionally, I have spoken to a number of Shannon-based Aer Lingus workers, along with Shannon Group CEO, Mary Considine. Shannon is much more than an airport. There’s a reason why there are so many Foreign Direct Investment jobs in …

THE Mayor of Ennis reflected on “an extremely strange year” in his last meeting in the chair of the Ennis Municipal District. Councillor Paul Murphy described the past year as sometimes being “frustrating” adding, “I think we’ve all found that, but that’s what happens when you have a pandemic around us. It’s been a learning curve for everybody.” The Clarecastle native praised the executive and staff of the municipal district for their support during the year, and made a special mention of appreciation for the outdoor staff who have “been front and centre of the temporary mobility plan” and “taken a bit of abuse on the streets for that matter”. Councillor Murphy said that, in terms of Covid while, “we are not out of the woods yet, hopefully we are getting there.” He thanked his Council colleagues, particularly Deputy Mayor, Councillor Mark Nestor. “I thought I would get an opportunity at some stage in the year to give you the …

AER Lingus has this afternoon announced it will close its Shannon cabin crew base. A virtual meeting was held at 1pm in which staff were told about the financial impact of the pandemic, and that severe cutbacks are being introduced. In a statement this afternoon, the airline said, “Aer Lingus staff were today advised that the cumulative impact of the crisis over the last 15 months means immediate actions and structural changes are required at the airline. The airline must be more cost-efficient and productive in order to generate the cash required to rebuild its financial health. Disastrous news for Aer Lingus workers in Shannon Airport and the Mid-West region today. The pandemic has done huge damage to the aviation sector. The Irish government's response to Covid has been unique in Europe at least, in making a bad situation worse. pic.twitter.com/oWnsGIELaC — Michael McNamara TD (@MlMcNamaraTD) May 18, 2021 “Immediate actions announced today by the airline include the permanent closure …