Tag Archives: Pat Hayes

A CLARE County Council official has acknowledged that if there are issues with road safety at Mullaghmore that he will do anything within his role to “push any measures” that are required through. Senior executive engineer, Hugh McGrath made these comments at a recent Killaloe Electoral Area meeting, which covers the Mullaghmore area of North Clare, following a motion tabled by Councillor Pat Hayes. Councillor Hayes proposed that a review of the parking facilities at Mullaghmore be carried out in the interest of traffic movements and safety for road users and walkers. The Fianna Fáil councillor said that, particularly during the summer months, parking is a significant problem, with “cars parking all over the place”. He said there are issues surrounding public safety, as a result of having no traffic management plan at the popular location. Councillor Hayes said he was not aware whether parking issues were the full responsibility of the National Parks and Wildlife Service or not and …

  The National Roads Authority (NRA) has been asked to attend the January meeting of Clare County Council to address public dissatisfaction over the remedial works carried out on the motorway linking Crusheen and Gort. The call came the NRA was subjected to stinging criticism of the effectiveness of work carried out on the motorway, despite two recent road closures. Councillor Pat Hayes told a recent council meeting motorists were still complaining about a section of the motorway between Gort and Crusheen and weren’t happy with recent works carried out by the NRA. “The work carried out by the NRA didn’t address the issues that people were complaining about – the dips, hollows and aquaplaning in wet weather. The NRA spent between three to four weeks working on this road and nobody seems to know what they were doing. “It was all hush hush. The public need to know what is going on. The NRA should be invited to address …

AS the HSE seeks to fill the vacancy for a GP in Feakle for a third time, the president of the National Association of General Practitioners (NAGP), Dr Conor McGee, says, as things stand, he does not expect a successful outcome. Dr McGee, who is based in Scariff, was commenting on the latest advertisement of the Feakle doctor’s position, which has opened the vacancy up to GPs based in other practices, as well as new doctors. “Since the job in Feakle became vacant, it had been advertised twice but it is worth noting that it has received a total of no applications. That’s not a comment on Feakle, that’s just people looking at the figures and saying I won’t be able to make a living out of this, and that’s what it is. There is something very tragic about it, though, because there has been a doctor in Feakle for 50 years. It is a great service to have locally …

By CAROL BYRNE EAST Clare councillor Pat Hayes is calling for the Department of Social Protection to roll back on its decision to streamline community welfare services. “The services in the rural communities and smaller towns and villages are being centralised again and people are expected to come into the main towns all the time. In the circumstances the people involved don’t always know they might need community welfare services at the end of a week. I know people who didn’t get their wages and they would have been hungry by the weekend,” he said. Councillor Hayes was responding to the revision of community welfare services which came into effect on January 20 last, when a decision was taken to close 22 community welfare clinics across the county. The Department of Social Protection has made alternative clinics available to those facilitated at the 22 clinics and these are located at five principle locations countywide. In East Clare community welfare clinics …

THE lack of ATM services over the Christmas period and banking services in general in East Clare has the potential to become “a serious crisis”, according to local councillor, Pat Hayes. Councillor Hayes highlighted the issue after the two primary towns in the area, Scariff and Tulla, experienced intermittent outages of ATM services over Christmas and into the new year. “The Friday before Christmas, the ATM in Scariff in the bank and outside the bank were out of service. All over the place, there seems to be huge closures of services to the public. It is a continuous thing. “There are two ATMs in Tulla, the one inside the bank was out of order over Christmas and there’s the one in Supervalu, where there is a maximum withdrawal of €120. There were a lot of complaints about it. There were issues still the following Monday and they were out of order several times since,” Councillor Hayes said. He continued, “What …