Regional

Clare County Council isn’t in a position to extend Quin Sewerage Scheme to take in an extra three houses, a meeting has been told.Councillor Sonny Scanlan has requested the council to investigate the feasibility of extending the public sewerage scheme to Frank Enright’s on the Tulla Road.Councillor Scanlan claimed at an Ennis Electoral Area meeting on Monday that a bridge constructed by the Office of Public Works (OPW) wasn’t high enough to take the huge volume of water during the flooding of the Rhine River in the winter of 2009 and 2010.The Fine Gael councillor said three houses had their septic tanks flooded while two of them had about one foot of water in their houses, making them unusable for several months.He asked if the council could extend the public sewerage scheme about 100 yards to take in these three houses. Senior executive engineer Eamon O’Dea told the meeting the council could request the Department of the Environment to sanction …

IT is a case of full steam ahead for a semi-retired Kinvara-based master chef, who has created a life-like version of the old Gort Railway Station.  

ENNIS will scrub up for this year’s National Spring Clean with individuals and voluntary organisations throughout the town coming together on Saturday, April 14 to participate in clean-up events in their communities.    Organised by Ennis Town Council, the Ennis Tidy Towns Committee and other voluntary organisations, in conjunction with An Taisce’s National Spring Clean, the clean-up day will take place between 10am and 3pm. The event is specifically organised to clean up all the approach roads to Ennis, along with the green areas, footpaths, roads and streets in both residential areas and housing estates.Model and National Spring Clean ambassador, Sarah McGovern, joined the Mayor of Ennis, Councillor Mickey Guilfoyle, in the town square this week to call on members of the community to lend their support to the event.Mayor Guilfoyle said, “The National Spring Clean campaign is now in its 14th year and it is a testament to the community spirit all over Ireland that the participation rates have …

A FUNDRAISING tractor run, supporting The Declan O’Shea Trust, will be held in Kilmihil on Sunday.Declan, who turned 36 in January, was seriously injured in an accident last October in Faro, Portugal. He underwent an operation on his spine in Portugal and then spent a month in the spinal injuries unit of the Mater Hospital in Dublin. He has been receiving treatment at the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire since last December.A Kilmihil footballer, mechanic and part-time farmer, who completed his Green Cert, Declan is well known throughout West Clare.Organisers are keen to stress that Sunday’s tractor run is not confined to vintage tractors. Therefore, anybody with access to any type of tractor, whatever its age, is welcome to attend. Registration will be at 12noon at Kilmihil GAA field, while the tractor run is due to depart Declan O’Shea’s native village at 1pm.Organisers are confident the event will be supported by local communities, as well as the Kilmihil parish. …

Claims that the taxpayer will have to fork out over €352 million to construct a controversial new motorway through South-East Clare have been refuted by Clare County Council.The Lisnagry Action Group, which is opposing the construction of Phase Two of the Northern Distributor Road, has predicted the length of this route is similar to the existing Southern Ring Road, which cost about €352 million to complete.The proposed road has been recommended initially by the Fitzgerald Report (2007) on ‘Addressing issues of social exclusion in Moyross’. Since then, the group pointed out circumstances have changed after the downturn in the economy, the opening of the Limerick Tunnel and the subsequent drop in the projected volume of traffic. Currently, due to lower than projected volume of traffic through the tunnel the operator (Direct Route) is subsidised annually to the average amount of €6.7 million. The contract between the NRA and the tunnel operators is to run until 2035. Even with the current …

MUSE Productions will return to the Oakwood Arms next week with Run for your Wife, a classic, well-regarded farce.The comedy centres around the travails of a London cabbie, who has been successfully juggling a double life until an accident derails his meticulous schedule. The audience are made privy to his secret in the opening scene as two concerned wives simultaneously call the police regarding the whereabouts of their missing husbands and describe the same John Smith.The stage is then set for high jinks and mayhem as John (who is played by Chris Rowley) dashes from one home to the other, struggling to keep his two carefully orchestrated worlds from colliding. As he endeavours to cover his tracks, his lazy but likeable neighbour Stanley (played by Chris Willetts) becomes his unwitting accomplice and the preposterous scenarios that ensue make for two hours of non-stop action and light-hearted fun that will have you wondering what can possibly happen next.The play was written …

MORE than 70 court summonses have been issued by Ennis Town Council in respect of uncollected rates, it has emerged, with the local authority vowing that “every effort” will be made to recover outstanding monies owed. At this week’s meeting of Ennis Town Council, it was revealed that €2,427,374 in rates is temporarily uncollectable by the local authority as of March 23 of this year. This represents more than one-third of the rate demand, at 33.73%.As of December 31, 2011 the amount of temporary uncollectable rates balance stood at €2,901,374, representing 40.32% of the rate demand for 2011. However, €474,000 has been collected in rates to March 23, 2012.In 2011, Ennis Town Council had irrecoverable rates, of €502,755 which represented 6.99% of the rate demand for that year. These irrecoverable rates related to rates which were not legally collectable, such as demolished/vacant properties, charitable organisations and properties owned by the HSE.According to town clerk, Leonard Cleary, the current temporary uncollectable …

Lahinch man Ollie O’Flaherty was last week nominated in the Billabong XXL Global Big Wave Awards. This is an annual event where surfers world-wide vie for the biggest wave of the year. His wave, caught off Mullaghmore Head, County Sligo in March, has been short-listed in the biggest wave category.Ollie started surfing at age four under the tutelage of his uncle, Lahinch surfer Alan Coyne. In the last few years he has pushed hard to reach the forefront of Irish surfing, with photographs of him appearing regularly in Irish and British surf media.On March 8, Ollie rose before dawn to make the drive from Lahinch to county Sligo. “I kinda knew going up that day it was gonna be big, real big,” he explains. What he did not realise was that he would soon be surfing the biggest waves ever ridden in Irish waters.Once waves reach a certain size it becomes impossible to catch them using the conventional paddle-in method: …