Regional

An American couple who came to East Clare to trace their lineage leave the county this week with a lot more than they bargained for thanks to the assistance of many strangers but whom they now call friends.

THE nine Kilrush Town councillors are set to meet with three of the four Clare TDs on Monday. However, last week’s meeting of the town council heard Fine Gael TD Pat Breen will be unable to attend on that date. Deputies Carey, McNamara and Dooley have confirmed their attendance to Kilrush Town Clerk John Corry.

Clare Local Development Company (LEADER) is hosting a special seminar for community and rural tourism providers on Saturday, September 29, from 9.30am to 4pm at Vaughan’s Barn, Kilfenora.

COLÁISTE Muire has gone digital with the introduction of iPads for all new first years. This follows discussions early in the year with parents, board of management and staff. School principal Jean Pound explained why they decided to take the plunge and move away from traditional school books.

A UNIQUE three-peak charity challenge will take place in the twin communities of Killaloe and Ballina on October 13 and 14.

COLÁISTE Muire has become one of only a few schools in Munster where transition-year pupils can study Chinese. The Ennis school has this week welcomed teacher William Gaowei Zhang from the Shanxi province near Beijing to teach its 60 transition-year pupils.According to William, he has already been very impressed with what he has seen in Ennis. “It is already going very good. The pupils are so active and all of the teachers have been very nice. “I am working in University College Cork so I travel up to Ennis every week but it is a very worthwhile three-hour trip.”He added, “There are many languages for transition-year pupils to learn and I think it’s great that they can speak so many. Chinese is very special and different and I believe they can learn it very quickly and master its basic usage and also traditional Chinese words.”On his first day teaching at the school, he presented the class with a Chinese knot. …

Ennis will celebrate its links with The Greatest when it holds the second annual Be The Best That You Can Be seminar at Glór next Wednesday.Muhammad Ali, the three-time World Heavyweight Champion, was named the first Honorary Freeman of Ennis in September 2009 in recognition of his career achievements and his ancestral links with the Clare county capital.  Over 15,000 people watched him receive a civic reception before embarking on a drive through the streets of Ennis and a personal visit to the ancestral home of his great-grandfather, Abe Grady.Next Wednesday, 500 secondary-school pupils will attend a seminar featuring motivational talks and workshops concentrating on music, sport, relaxation and drug awareness. Speakers will include TV presenter and clinical psychologist David Coleman and Ian Taylor, the youngest Irishman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.The event is being hosted by Ennis Town Council and Clare Youth Service. According to Mayor of Ennis, Councillor Peter Considine, “On September 2, 2009, Muhammad Ali …

ENNIS has been dismissed as a “backwater” in the Mid-West Area Strategic Plan (MWASP) in terms of the county capital’s future economic development, it has been claimed. Councillor Johnny Flynn has described as “frightening” that the strategy sees Ennis’ potential for jobs as only being in domestic, traded services and tourism areas. He believes this could preclude other industries from deciding to locate to Ennis.  He was speaking as he highlighted the unemployment “crisis” in Ennis at a meeting of councillors within the Ennis East electoral area this week. However, calls by Councillor Flynn for the establishment of an Ennis and Environs Economic Task Force to be set up have been rejected.At this week’s meeting, Councillor Flynn urged the taskforce be set up saying, “The situation is at a crisis stage, in 2002 we had 8% unemployment, now in 2012 its 14.5%. We have 4,000 extra people signing on in Ennis and the Environs and nearly two-thirds of those are …