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Ennis apartment building evacuated following fire

AN apartment building in the centre of Ennis was evacuated this afternoon following a fire. The blaze was reported at around 12.45pm in a ground floor apartment at Bindon Lane off Bank Place. Two units of Clare County Fire and Rescue Service from Ennis station responded to the call along with Gardaí and National Ambulance Service paramedics. The response was mobilised by controllers at the Munster Regional Fire Control Centre in Limerick. On arrival, fire crews found a fire in the bedroom of a ground floor apartment. Firefighters quickly began tackling the blaze while other personnel commenced evacuation procedures knocking on apartment doors to alert residents. It was soon established that almost all residents made their own way to an assembly point after they followed the building’s own evacuation procedures when the fire alarm was activated. Fire crews found one elderly man in his apartment and helped him to safety. The man was assessed by ambulance paramedics and was found …

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Siemens to invest €7m in Shannon R&D facility

SIEMENS Digital Industries Software has annnounced it will invest €7m in a new software research and development group in Shannon. The multimillion-euro investment will focus on High Performance Computing (HPC) in the Cloud for semiconductor design and is expected to create 25 jobs over three years. The project, which is supported by the Irish Government through IDA Ireland, is the first ‘Cloud EDA’ R&D group to be established by Siemens Digital Industries Software globally, and enhances Ireland’s already strong reputation of in Cloud Software Development and HPC R&D. This division is expected to create more than 25 new and highly impactful R&D roles in Shannon over the next three years, focused on delivering cutting edge cloud HPC environments for Siemens EDA workloads. Tánaiste & Minister for Enterprise Trade & Employment Leo Varadkar said: “This is great news from Siemens, investing €7m in Shannon and creating 25 new highly skilled jobs over the next three years. It really demonstrates the skill …

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Joint initiative in Ennis sees kids show bottle on plastic question

YOUNGSTERS at one Ennis GAA club are proving themselves to have a lot of ‘bottle’. A joint initiative between Ennis Tidy Towns and Éire Óg GAA has resulted in the creation of very special recycled and reusable water bottles. The bottles, which have been specifically designed to reflect the club’s colours of red and white, have been given to the club’s younger members in a bid to cut back on plastic waste. As well as looking good and helping make sure the kids stay hydrated, they also aim to discourage the proliferation of single-use plastic bottles. According to Cormac McCarthy, chair of Ennis Tidy Towns the young players have been “delighted” with the new bottles which have become a popular accessory at training sessions. He explained, “One of the main focuses of the national Tidy Towns movement, as well as tidying towns is to develop sustainability initiatives. “We are always looking to partner with local groups and organisations in the …

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Pat to step back from swim after 50 years and a whale of a time

AS a 17-year-old boy Pat Conway was behind the first Lahinch to Liscannor swim in 1972, and he will complete it for the 50th and last time, on August 7.  While different charities benefited from the swim in its early years, for a long time now all of the proceeds have been going to the Burren Chernobyl Project. That will be the case again this year, and while Pat won’t be directly taking part after 2022, he plans for the event to continue and his favoured charity to continue to benefit. In the summer of 1972 Pat was a teenage lifeguard in Lahinch, and was one of a small group that organised the first swim, but he could hardly have thought it’d still be going 50 years on. “It’s something we started as a fun challenge, going from the lifeguard box over to Liscannor. Then we said we might as well do it for charity. It kind of built from …

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Ennis teens draw out connections with German twin town

FIVE Ennis teenagers have got making European connections down to a fine art. Alysha Casey Hanrahan, Mahia Rahman, Gabrielle Cullinan, Eimear Fitzgerald and Cameron O’Grady have travelled to Germany for an international meeting of young people at Ennis’ twin town of Langenfeld. The teens are taking part in a ‘youth art camp’ in the town, located between Cologne and Dusseldorf, where they are meeting other art lovers from Langenfeld and its other European twin communities. Here at home, the Ennis youngsters brush up their artistic skills with tutor and Ennis Langenfeld Twinning Committee member Carmel Doherty, and they were delighted to have the opportunity to visit Germany. In Germany they are learning from local artists as part of the week long initiative, and their resulting works will be exhibited at the Kunstverein gallery in Langenfeld. Ennis has been twinned with Langenfeld since 2013 with a twinning a formal arrangement formed with the old Ennis Town Council. This art week is …

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Trace your family roots at Scariff Harbour Festival

EMIGRATION stories from East Clare parishes to the United States will be the focus of a talk at Waterways Ireland Building in Scariff on Bank Holiday Saturday and Sunday, July 30 and 31 during the local Harbour Festival. It will be followed on both days by free individual genealogical sessions to assist people in creating their family backstories or guiding them through stages of that journey. ‘An Epic Journey – from East Clare to Ellis Island’ is a story told through the eyes of professional genealogist, Jane Halloran Ryan, who will explore the reasons why a cross section of East Clare emigrants made the journey through Ellis Island at the turn of the 20th century. “I will be telling the story of what brought people from parishes like Scariff, Mountshannon, Whitegate, Tuamgraney, Ogonnelloe and Killaloe, to board a ship for Ellis Island, looking into whether they remained in New York or went elsewhere and what they ended up doing,” said …

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Fears Clare will miss out on billions in offshore wind revenue

OFFSHORE energy opportunities could turn West Clare into the “Aberdeen of the wind industry”, local authority members have heard. A debate on the potential of the renewable energy sector to transform the local economy was triggered at the July meeting of Clare County Council by a motion from Councillor Joe Killeen. The Fianna Fáil member sought an outline of current and future efforts to harness offshore wind and wave energy and “efforts to position Clare as the location that companies throughout Europe will choose when considering investment in renewable energy”. Councillor Killeen also called for a seminar, in the autumn, on renewable energy. “If you’re not pushing forward, then you’re in reverse,” he said. “We will be overtaken when it comes to renewable energy. This is a Europe-wide issue. The most appropriate place for this industry is along the West Clare coast.” Referring to the deadline for submissions on the work of the Shannon Estuary Economic Taskforce, which is Friday, …

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Minister: Lahinch Leisure Centre to make big splash in Clare

THE €6 million redevelopment of Lahinch Leisure Centre will attract thousands of visitors to this North Clare hotspot and create in the region of 100 jobs. That was the confident prediction of Rural and Community Minister Heather Humphreys before she officially unveiled the new state-of-the-art leisure facility this week. Minister Humphreys said the spectacular view of the Atlantic Ocean from the centre reminded her of Seamus Haney’s poem Postscript where he urged people to drive out West to the Flaggy Shore. As part of the government’s Our Rural Future, she outlined old buildings were receiving a new lease of life to regenerate rural towns and villages. In February 2019, she recalled the centre secured €2.9 million from the Rural Regeneration Development Fund, which was one of the first in the country to receive money from this fund and also received €250,000 from the LEADER programme. Funding from the RRDF also provided improvement for the public realm, car park, promenade and …

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