Grand plan for Shannon Estuary

EDITORIAL

THE Shannon Estuary has the potential to become one of the country’s greatest economic assets, as a location for a range of industrial, fisheries and marine-related projects.
There is the potential for the creation of thousands of jobs and the development of national and international trade if proposals in the Draft Strategic Integrated Framework Plan (SIFP) for the Shannon Estuary are delivered upon. A cluster of projects around the estuary could elevate it to the same level of importance to the Mid-West as Shannon Airport and the adjoining Shannon Free Zone.
The vast area covered by the plan stretches from the Shannon Bridge in Limerick City, to the first bridge in Clarecastle, along the Limerick and Clare shorelines, past Foynes and Moneypoint towards Loop Head and Kerry Head. A number of key sites within this zone are earmarked for possible future development for industry, tourism, energy, fishing and aquaculture and other marine-related industry.
Launched last month by Minister of State for Housing and Planning, Jan O’Sullivan, the plan has been commissioned by a multi-agency steering group comprising Clare County Council as lead authority, Kerry County Council, Limerick City and County Councils, Shannon Development and Shannon Foynes Port Company.
The people can have their say, however, before things are advanced any further. An open invitation has been extended to all to attend one of a series of public consultations on the farsighted plan. The consultation events most suited to people from this county are at Kilrush Town Council office on Monday, January 28 and Tarbert Community Centre the following day.
Meanwhile, the SIFP for the Shannon Estuary is also on display until February 15 to give the public an opportunity to view the proposals and put forward their opinions to the appointed project consultants, RPS Consulting Engineers.
Mayor of Clare Pat Daly is encouraging the people of Clare to get involved in the process.
“The Shannon Estuary is a fragile resource that needs to be protected, while it also presents huge opportunities for development that will have a positive and lasting impact on the counties that surround it. This is an ideal opportunity for people to voice their views on how best to manage this important resource.”
There’s no point in people whinging down the line if they pass up the opportunity to express their views on a project, the importance of which can be measured on a national and international scale.
It’s also important to get cross-party political support for the project as it’s obviously going to be rolled out over many years. There should be no room for any future government to weasel out of backing it, like has happened to so many major infrastructural and public building projects in recent times.

Famine commemoration in Kilrush

THERE is something rather repugnant about the idea of hosting a national commemoration to mark the deaths and displacements of thousands upon thousands of people due to the 19th century Great Famine in Ireland. It’s not the commemoration in itself but the very fact that we have one at all.
People dying in workhouses or on the side of the road and huge numbers having been evicted from their small-holdings for being unable to pay rent when the crops failed is a part of our history that is painful to dwell on. That it happened and the reasons behind it – political inaction and incompetence coupled with landlords’ greed – is repugnant to every decent human being.
Yet, we must face our past and honour those who suffered and died in such a horrendous fashion, as well as those who survived starvation, displacement and journeys on famine ships to rebuild their lives in far-flung places.
Kilrush, recognised as one of the locations worst affected by starvation, disease and emigration between 1845 and 1852, has been selected to host the main event for this year’s National Famine Commemoration Day, on a date yet to be announced.
Additionally, Clare can lay claim to two disturbing facts, uncovered by historian and author Dr Ciarán Ó Murchadha, during research for a book. The first identified victim of starvation in Ireland during the Great Famine was a widow near Dysart and the last recorded starvation death, in April 1851, was a man in Ennis.
Dr Ó Murchadha has also said, “I can state without any fear of contradiction that although all of Clare suffered grievously, no part of the county endured as much as Kilrush town and Kilrush union and for such a prolonged period.”
In a contemporary account, the awfulness of the situation comes from a reporter in West Clare in 1846, who wrote how locals “died as the birds do when the frost comes”, while coffin-less burials were widespread and dead children were brought to burial in panniers slung on donkeys.
Evictions, fever and emigration decimated the population of Kilrush and its hinterland and it has never recovered. During and after the famine, there were over 20,000 evictions in the area.
The national commemoration in Kilrush will undoubtedly bring to the surface memories of individual cases handed down over several generations. It will be an emotional time for people to be reminded in a very public way about the cruelty inflicted upon their forbearers during the Great Famine. There are, of course, countless families lying in unmarked mass graves all over Ireland that have no descendants to mourn them.
We should spare a silent moment or a prayer for all of them.