Tag Archives: clare champion

TWO Clare Champion journalists were winners at the Local Ireland media awards last week, Jessica Quinn winning the best news story category and Carol Byrne taking the National Lottery Best Community story award. The awards ceremony took place at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Athlone last Thursday night and was hosted by RTÉ personality and Clareman Marty Morrissey. The awards were open to all 43 member titles of Local Ireland and their staff and it attracted hundreds of entries across the country. Cork newspaper The Southern Star was the only other newspaper to win two awards on the night. Jessica’s award came for a story on the proposed Supermacs development close to Clarecastle, which appeared in August of last year headlined ‘Bogus letters shocking’. In the story, Anne Marie Russell told The Clare Champion that she had received a letter in the post from Clare County Council addressed to her father, with a receipt for €20 paid for a planning …

HPV vaccine campaigner Laura Brennan has lost her battle with terminal cancer on Wednesday. The Ennis woman who had become one of Ireland’s leading patient advocates and campaigners for the HPV vaccine passed away on Wednesday at University Hospital Limerick. In a statement the Brennan family said, “Laura was a light in the life of everyone who knew her; a wonderful daughter, sister and friend. We are lost without her. “We are all incredibly proud of the work she did in the last 18 months to help protect other young women like herself from the cancer that has taken her life today. Laura used her voice, her generosity and her energy to help parents to make informed choices and protect their daughters from cervical cancer. She wanted to make a difference, and use the time that she had to right what she felt was a great wrong.” The family have appealed for privacy. Funeral arrangements are yet to be finalised. …

LIT has confirmed its plans to open a new campus in Ennis on foot of a proposed capital investment of €0.75 million by Clare County Council. Located on Bindon Street in the town’s historic core, the new facility will enable a substantial increase in higher education activity in the town. Reflecting LIT’s regional development remit, the LIT Ennis campus will join LIT’s existing campuses at Clonmel and Thurles in County Tipperary; Moylish and Clare Street in Limerick City; and a new engineering-focused campus currently under development at Coonagh in Limerick. A total of six degree programmes in Social Care, Early Childhood Care and Education, and Marketing and Management are now available through the CAO at LIT in Ennis for September commencement. Possibilities for evening and professional learning will also be opened up. Commenting on the news, LIT President, Professor Vincent Cunnane said, “We are delighted to be able to progress our plans in Ennis. We intend to provide an expanded …

AS part of the upcoming Ennis Book Club Festival (01-03 March) the organising committee and The Clare Champion have teamed up to run a window display competition for Ennis based businesses. Entrants are asked to create a book festival themed window display from Friday February 22 until the conclusion of the festival on Sunday March 3. Every business that enters will be given two free tickets to an event during the Ennis Book Club Festival. A judging committee, comprising of representatives from the Ennis Book Club Festival and The Clare Champion, will select a winner. Furthermore a 2019 window display winner will be selected at the end of the year, following two additional window display competitions, which are planned for later this year. Entry forms will be available at the 2019 Ennis Book Club Festival launch on Thursday January 31 at 7pm in the Rowan Tree Café.

EVEN in the darkest days a gesture of kindness can bring some light. An Ennistymon family who tragically lost their daughter last year, are helping to make this Christmas a little bit brighter for others in an amazing act of generosity. Amy Dutil-Wall and her partner Vincent Wall from Ennistymon have endured the deepest of tragedies with the loss of Estlin Luna just before her fourth birthday in a car crash last year that also left Vincent fighting for his life. In honour of Estlin, the family have decided to donate some Christmas gifts to two worthy young girls around her age. Amy explains that she got the idea after seeing a number of offers of help to those in need on the Clare Free to a Good Home site. “It was something I was thinking of doing for a while, to give a gift in honour of Estlin and I thought why not this year. The holidays can be …

PETER O’Connell has been appointed as editor of The Clare Champion and will take up the position on Thursday next, May 31. Mr O’Connell succeeds Austin Hobbs, who has held the position since 2006 and will remain on in the newsroom. Mr O’Connell is married with two daughters and lives in his native Kilmurry McMahon. He is a past pupil of Drumdigus National School and Kilrush CBS. His media career began with Midlands Radio in 1996, while he worked at Clare FM from 1999 to 2002, before joining The Clare Champion. In his 16 years as a reporter with The Champion, he has covered both news and sport. Four years ago, Mr O’Connell found himself at the centre of a significant story himself. He and the then Clare hurling manager Davy Fitzgerald clashed publicly in Cusack Park, with the Sixmilebridge man angered by some opinion pieces that had been written by Mr O’Connell. This week, Mr O’Connell said the newspaper …

I squinted into the morning gloom. A mist hung over the green, obscuring the flag from view. Taking a deep breath, I fixed my eyes on the ball and drew back the club. The grip quivered between my clammy palms. I looked up towards the green again, then down at my ball. If I could just chip it out of the rough- “Hit the ruddy thing!” I flinched violently, losing my balance as my club rocketed towards the ground. It struck the ground with a jarring thud, sending me reeling. I spun away, wincing, as my ball trickled over the ridge. David fixed me with steely glare. He was dressed head-to-toe in tweed. The buttons of his waist-coat quivered beneath the weight of his paunch. He wore a deer-stalker, jammed over the crown of his head and a pair of thick leather boots. His mouth was nothing more than a thin slit beneath his thick, lustrous whiskers, curling beneath his …

As our holiday in Canada drew to an end, I longed to be alone in the perfect beauty of mountainous British Columbia. In the late evening after dinner, I excused myself from the campfire evenings and headed towards the shore, mere minutes from the campsite. Settling down by an old log, I glanced down the empty stony beach. Far out on the tranquil sea, a few kayakers paddled silently through the blue water, sending ripples across the bay. The sun hung low over the distant mountain, gently changing the Pacific waters from blue to yellow to orange. On the mainland, the distant mountains turned orange as the light hit them. Far off to the south of the hills, the faint lights of the city flickered and twinkled in the fading daylight. I sat down and leaned my head against the log. I turned it towards the sun, closed my eyes and felt the rays of its soft light as it …