South Clare

A BODY recovered from the Shannon in South East Clare on Monday has been formally confirmed as missing Clonlara student Steven Kavanagh, gardaí have confirmed. Mr Kavanagh’s body was located in the water close to the Ardnacrusha power station on the Shannon at approximately 1pm on Monday. It follows a 19 day search of the waterways in South East Clare for 21 year old LIT student and Clonlara resident. His remains were brought to University Hospital Limerick for a post mortem examination on Monday afternoon.

PARTEEN National School in South-East Clare has won the prestigious Limerick Choral Festival 2014 for primary schools for the second successive year. The competition, part of the Limerick City of Culture Year, was held in the Redemptorist Church, South Circular Road and 12 choirs competed before an appreciative audience made up mostly of parents and friends. The 70-pupil Parteen choir received a very impressive 92 marks, followed by St Nessan’s National School, County Limerick with an equally impressive 90 marks and highly commended was Cor Chriost Rí, Caherdavin, Limerick with 89 marks. Announcing the results, the adjudicator, Dr Marion Doherty Hayden, formerly head of music, St Partick’s, Drumcondra, described the winners’ performance as “very polished, a lovely balance, the long notes were magical and the diction was excellent”. The second adjudicator was Mr Kevin O Carroll from Waterford, a freelance musician and teacher. Parteen choir also won the adjudicators’ award at the end of the festival. Fr Tom Carroll, PP …

THE  lifesaving exploits of a Great Dane will be fittingly honoured with a national award this weekend. Charlie’s ability to detect when a three year-old Killaloe child is going to have a seizure, will be officially recognised by the Irish Great Dane (IGD) club at a national ceremony in Dublin. The club wanted to honour Charlie following the phenomenal response to Clare Champion story highlighting the unique bond between the dog and Brianna Lynch, which enabled him to detect her frequent seizures, up to 20 minutes before the start of each episode. The once-off award, which has never been presented to any other dog previously, will be presented to Arabella Scanlan and Charlie as the Great Dane Open Show in the National Show Centre, Dublin this Saturday. Claire Daly of the IGD said the club were delighted to present Charlie with the award following the huge national and international reaction to the Clare  Champion story. “The club is 51 years …

By Dan Danaher A RANDOM meeting with Taoiseach Enda Kenny blossomed into a great working relationship with one of the co-founders of an innovative award-winning tree mapping company, who has strong links with Killaloe. Enda Keane, who was educated in Killaloe, met Mr Kenny by chance at Merrion Square, Dublin back in December 2011 and they spent about 30 minutes talking about his business, Treemetrics, which has won and been nominated for numerous national and international awards. Born in Cork, Enda and his family moved to Killaloe when he was nine.His father, Paddy was a wildlife officer with the National Parks and Wildlife Service so it was no great surprise when Enda followed in his footsteps by studying forestry in UCG and UCD. In addition to delivering an address at an official function at Treemetrics’ headquarters in Cork two years ago, the Taoiseach also gave the company a huge boost to their international profile by citing them as one of …

THE Courts Service is prepared to hand over the old Courthouse at Killaloe, Deputy Michael McNamara has confirmed. He described this as very good news, adding that he had been working on the issue for some time. The Labour deputy said Clare Council Council has already expressed an interest in acquiring the building for community use. “The Council will now have an opportunity to invite expressions of interest from local groups for the development and use of the building. I am aware of community groups in Killaloe who are interested in the using the property. The current use of Tulla Courthouse by the community is a precedent for what could be done,” he said. “A new round of Leader funding will become available for development by local community groups towards the end of the end of this year. Furthermore, at the end of last year, the Government announced a Built Heritage Jobs Leverage Scheme to assist owners/occupiers of protected structures …

THE railway line between Limerick and Ennis will remain closed for six weeks, and potentially longer, due to flooding on the line at Ballycar. Iarnród Éireann Irish Rail advised on Tuesday that instead bus transfers will operate between Limerick and Ennis, also serving Sixmilebridge, for the duration of the closure. Buses will depart all stations at the scheduled train time. Train services will, however, continue to operate as normal between Ennis and Galway. The line has flooded following a significant increase in water levels at Ballycar Lough due to the recent sustained heavy rainfall, and the slow draining nature of the karst landscape in the area. Should the recent rainfall patterns persist, this will extend significantly the duration of the closure of the rail line. according to Iarnród Éireann. Iarnród Éireann raised the track level by 60 centimetres at Ballycar in 2003 to mitigate against the effects of flooding. However, the current flood levels are at least 50 centimetres over …

RETIREMENT is still not an option for 78-year-old Killaloe shopkeeper Jimmy Whelan, despite reaching 50 years in local retailing on Friday. Jimmy still loves meeting his loyal customers in Whelan’s Foodstore at the bottom of Main Street, Killaloe, as much as he did when he opened a small shop in Church Street in January 1964. Then aged 27, he rented this building, which included the shop, a small kitchen and two bedrooms at a cost of £2 weekly. Jimmy never envisaged he would transform the old Kincora Dance Hall into a thriving business, while he was playing the button accordion with the Jimmy Whelan Dance Band at this venue from 1964 to 1970. His current premises, which is located nearby, became renowned as a popular entertainment venue during the construction of the Shannon Scheme in Ardnacrusha and throughout the ’30s. Two West Clare brothers opened a supermarket there in 1970 but were forced to shut down following a fire a …

A RETIRED businessman is hoping to reside permanently in a Killaloe ghost estate in March, after making substantial progress with the connection of services. Fed up of waiting for the completion of the sale of Ard na Deirge and the completion of connections such as water, sewerage and public lighting, John Ryan Snr decided to try to progress matters himself. In recent weeks, Mr Ryan has been busy tiling the hallway, kitchen and bathrooms and fitting out the house he purchased in 2006 but was subsequently “locked out” of for over seven years. Thanks to the provision of the watermains past his house, Mr Ryan hopes to have running water within the next two weeks, once a plumber completes some relatively minor connection works. This will, in turn, pave the way for an electrician to connect his electricity supply, which will make it habitable on a permanent basis in late February or March. John Ryan Snr has also been working …