Future looking bright as West Clare Resources Centre celebrates 20 years

WEST Clare Resource Centre in Miltown Malbay has a bright future. Guests were assured of this at the annual dinner for its staff and representatives of the agencies delivering wide-ranging community services in the complex, which was once a vocational school.

Councillor Christy Curtin, co-founder of the centre with the late Michael Mahony, expressed a vision of continued expansion of services and their delivery in the next 20 years.

He was reflecting on the development of the centre, which in 2013 will celebrate its first 20 years.
Only recently, those services had been extended to Ennistymon and Inagh, he said, predicting that they would go further into north and mid-Clare in the foreseeable future.

Remembering his late co-founder, he added that it was also an occasion to recall the great contribution of the recently departed Joe Ryan. “Based on their work and the wholehearted co-operation of all agencies involved in the centre, we will go on to make it bigger and better,” he predicted.

During the function, the chief executive officer of Clare Vocational Education Committee, George O’Callaghan, was presented with a framed line drawing of the centre by its co-ordinator, Cora O’Grady, in recognition of his consistent sterling support.

He will shortly be joining the Department of Education & Skills for a period on an education development survey of the Clare-Limerick region before returning to the region as chief executive officer of what is to become Clare-Limerick Education & Training Board at the amalgamation of Clare and Limerick County Vocational Education County Committees and Limerick City sister committee.

Dr Sean Conlan, education officer of Clare Vocational Education Committee and secretary to West Clare Resource Centre Partnership Board, recalled the remarkable development of the centre from the vocational school, which had closed in the 1980s due to demographic changes.

Today, it is the home of a diverse range of community services delivered by, as well as his committee, Clare County Council, the Health Service Executive, Spraoi Child Centre, Department of Social Protection, ClareCare, Clare Local Development Company and Seanóiri Leachtín Naofa. Behind all this was a team of dedicated workers, he pointed out.