Regional

Just over €5,000 is available for grass cutting in Kilkee 2012, which will allow for 10 cuts over the summer season.

President Michael D Higgins will be in Scariff next month, where he will be celebrating the United Nations Year of the Co-operative by joining East Clare Community Co-op in celebrating its 25th anniversary.

A KILLALOE woman, who has raised almost €90,000 with the help of friends for cancer treatment, has revealed her devastation about the return of breast cancer two years ago.

Gort Family and Community Resource Centre is hosting a series of events in the coming weeks including a walking tour of Gort’s historical and heritage highlights and a men’s Burren walk.

Local web-based business www.pedigreecattle.ie, which became the first company in Ireland to get backing from television’s Dragon’s Den, continues to moo-ve forward, even without the involvement of the Dragons.Proving there are no hard feelings, the Ennis Mart-based company will be revisited in this week’s Dragon’s on Tour show this Sunday, even though Sean Gallagher and Gavin Duffy are no longer investors. The show, on RTÉ One at 9.30pm, sees the Dragons return to those they sealed a deal with and find out how the ones that got away are doing.

  The first recipients of the Mayor of Ennis’ Citizens Recognition Awards were this week heralded for their outstanding contribution to community life in the town.Mayor of Ennis, Councillor Michael Guilfoyle, praised community worker and athletics promoter Arthur Ford and the late Ennis General Hospital campaigner Peadar McNamara for their “many personal sacrifices over the years in the unselfish giving of their time and expertise” at the ceremony on Tuesday.The awards scheme was launched last November after Mayor Guilfoyle proposed to acknowledge people who, through their commitment to participating in unpaid community and voluntary activities, have made a significant impact on the quality of their communities in Ennis.  Ennis Town Council invited members of the public to submit nominations to the awards scheme.Commenting on the decision to honour Peadar McNamara and Arthur Ford, Mayor Guilfoyle said, “Both these men and indeed their families, have made many personal sacrifices over the years in the unselfish giving of their time and expertise …

CLARE County Council has been accused of putting a “gun to the head” of Mullagh residents over controversial plans to resurface the road in the village. About 200 metres in the centre of Mullagh village has been left without any resurfacing works following works to facilitate the €8m Quilty/Mullagh Sewerage Scheme as the council tries to tackle what has proven to be a very difficult engineering problem.Resident Tony Garfield, who is an engineer, has claimed the county council had effectively held a “gun to the head” of residents over its insistence there was no alternative to the current proposals.However, Clare County Council senior engineer Tom Tiernan said the council has engaged with residents in Mullagh to resolve the road issue in the village for over two years. “It is important to note that any works to be carried out must comply with present-day design requirements and must take account of the health and safety of all prospective users of the …

THE Irish Seed Savers’ Association, based in Scariff, has completed construction on its new seed bank and processing facility, which will not only improve their storage needs but will also help expand operations by increasing their seed-saving capacity.  Matteo Pettiti is the garden co-ordinator at Seed Savers and together with Jo Newton, the seed coordinator, they will be running the facility, bringing all the processing and storage elements together under one environmentally friendly roof.  The seed bank and seed processing facility means that when a plant is harvested from the fields, it is brought to the seed bank where it is hung and dried in the solar space located at the southern end of the building. After that, it will be thrashed and processed, the seeds will be cleaned and then dried to a very good standard before they are stored and packaged.“We will be able to do everything under the one roof with a flow of work that goes …