Regional

SHANNON is about to get a jobs boost after Crosman Corporation announced that it will be opening a new European distribution centre in the town next month.

Heather Smith’s home outside Gort, basking in early spring sunshine, is a testament to her love of nature and her love of life. She enjoys gardening, cultivating tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, courgettes, chillies and herbs as the seasons permit. Vegetables are infinitely preferable to shrubs, she believes.Fossils are another of Heather’s passions. They adorn the entrance to the bungalow, symbols of life from another era.From the kitchen she points out a line of beech trees planted a decade ago while her husband was still alive, a copper wall steeling itself for the years ahead.Rust-chested robins are abundant in Heather’s garden. She feeds the birds at numerous stands around the house. It is early March and as she sits in her kitchen, a hare prances across the garden. She is momentarily distracted. Heather and her late husband, Stephen, came to Galway in 1974, 10 years after they married. She was from Kilkenny, he from Laois. Like Heather, Stephen too was a keen …

Wednesday’s St Patrick’s Day parade in Gort will have more community involvement than in previous years, it appears.

Fine Gael TD Pat Breen and his party colleague, Councillor Oliver Garry, held a meeting with Hutchinson 3G in Dublin last week to discuss the ongoing controversy surrounding their plans to erect a mast in Kildysart.

Clare and Galway county councils will have to share an overall fund of €500,000 for the repair of roads damaged during the construction of the Gort/Crusheen bypass, it emerged this week.

PUPILS from a North Clare school are to take part in an international science competition later this year, it emerged recently.

AN Art for Haiti fundraising event will take place in Quin on Tuesday when the local community is hoping to generate funds to provide a paediatric hospital dispensary tent for the Sisters of St Joesph of Cluny in Haiti.

THE wait is finally over for the children of Kilkishen as the village is to open its first community playground on Thursday.