Tag Archives: Ballinruan

JUNE 2, 1962 was a warm summer day at the Coton Parish Church in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. It was there and then that John and Marlene Phipps were married, and 60 years on they will celebrate the occasion in Ballinruan, which has been their home since 1995. The couple first met on a quiet Sunday in 1959, when Marlene was just about to turn 16. Not much older himself, John was already working on the railways, and was whiling the afternoon away at a social club for its employees. “On a Sunday there’d be a bit of a dance in one room and there were three rooms there. Marl’s friend, her father was a guard on the railway. They were fed up on a Sunday afternoon and her friend said I know where we’ll go.” Marlene says Sundays were for church and little else and her father wouldn’t have been a bit impressed if he’d known where she was off to. …

LATE last week, there was surprise and then anger in Ballinruan as it emerged that there were no plans to use the local community centre as a polling station in the General Election. The community centre is where Ballinruan people have voted for decades and some works have been carried out on it even since last year’s local elections, with a view to keeping the facility up-to-date and as user-friendly as possible. Frustration was even more acute, as there was no notice given of the decision to close. “It’s very disappointing for people in Ballinruan, who always voted there and something else they have removed from a rural community without even telling us,” was part of the content of one post put on the Ballinruan Development Association Facebook page. However, local people were not about to take the decision lying down and quickly began to mobilise to ensure that the centre, which would have been used by generations of local …

GALWAY-based traditional music teacher and singer Róisín Rodgers has always been inspired by the iconic traditional singers of our time, among them the late great Robbie McMahon. His passing has been felt throughout the traditional music community and the title of his traditional song, The Fleadh Down in Ennis, is being used as a slogan for this year’s All-Ireland Fleadh. Róisín took on the challenge of learning and singing this song, which is 10 verses long, and carries the history of the first All-Ireland Fleadh to be hosted by Ennis in 1956. It was one of two songs that earned her a first place finish in the Connacht Fleadh last year. Now the 25-year-old singer will be filmed by Fleadh TV singing the iconic song. Although she hails from Ballinruan, Róisín now lives in Galway, where she teaches music privately. “I started learning it out of love for the song. I entered the Connacht Fleadh and it was amazing what …

Chronic overcrowding in University Hospital Limerick (UHL) is back in the spotlight after a 101 year-old Clare woman was forced to spend 25 hours on a trolley last weekend. Councillor Ann Norton has condemned the length of time it took the elderly woman to get a bed in the region’s flaghship acute hospital as a “disgrace”. This is the second time in a matter of days that a centenarian has been forced to spend over a day on a hospital trolley. Tallaght Hospital apologised last week for leaving a 101-year-old patient over 26 hours on a trolley and said it would put in place measure to minimise the risk of it happening again. Councillor Norton said the situation in the Emergency Department at UHL was like a “war zone” in comparison to the positive experience the lady had in Ennis Hospital. “No patient should spend over a day on a hospital trolley, particularly someone who is very elderly. “The situation in casualty in …

“THE worst form of cruelty” was how a local woman described the treatment of three horses which are said to have starved to death in Ballinruan. Its understood that two of the horses she was referring to died some time ago, while the third one died relatively recently. The woman said, “It was shocking, it would have taken them a few months to die and they would have been in agony. They hadn’t had a pick to eat and it’s happening every winter; someone keeps putting the horses in the same place. “They obviously weren’t getting a scrap of hay and they would have had a horrible death. The cold weather probably just finished them off.” She said it has been a big topic of discussion in the area lately. “A lot of people are talking about it and they are disgusted by it.” The woman also said that a foal was one of the dead animals. “One of the …