Regional

Young musicians from across the West will congregate in Gort at the weekend for the third annual Junior Orchestra Festival taking place in the South Galway town on Sunday.

THE Western Writers’ Centre is again appealing to the public for support for the third annual Forge at Gort festival.

IN a major TV coup, North Clare and the Aran Islands will feature on the popular RTÉ One TV travel show No Frontiers at 7.30pm this Sunday. Watched by over half a million viewers from all over Ireland, this will be the second time in three series that North Clare has featured on the programme.

THE Western Development Commission will examine the potential development of creative industries as part of this year’s Burren Spring Conference, Business in the Burren: Sustaining Vibrant Communities, which is running this weekend from Friday to Sunday.

The public has been “penalised” arising from a court case where Clare County Council was fined €3,000 plus costs for discharging raw sewage from the old Scariff sewage treatment plant into the river in Scariff.

The late Flagmount fiddler Mike Brady has recently been added to the Comhaltas Mid-Atlantic Regional Hall of Fame.

THE dispute between the residents of the Cloughleigh Road and Ennis Town Council over the proposed location of the Ennis Youth and Community Building took another twist this week when the council advertised for tenders for the construction of the building.

DESPITE an ongoing media focus on the ever-increasing number of headshops opening throughout the country, only three people turned up at a protest organised by Sinn Féin at the Harmonisation Headshop on Woodquay this week.All three protesters were involved in organising the protest and voiced their disappointment at the apparent complacency of the general public towards headshops.Seán Hayes of Ógra Sinn Féin said that they expected more people to join their protest. “We are disappointed that more people did not turn up. There is still a level of complacency and a lack of understanding about headshops and the products on sale in them and we want the risks highlighted so that people, including parents of teenagers and young adults, will be aware of what is available legally in shops nowadays,” Mr Hayes said.He believes that the matter is a “tragedy waiting to happen”. “It is only a matter of time before someone sustains a long-term effect or even dies from …