Tag Archives: shannon

INNER torment, fear of rejection and depression marked much of the early life of 21 year old Jamie Walsh, but he is now far happier and hopeful about what the future holds. What has changed for Jamie is that he can now be open about who he really is and what he feels. Raised in Shannon as a girl and named Saoirse, it was never a good fit but now he is living with a new name, has embraced his transgenderism and is planning to have hormone therapy within the next year or so. His mother Donna McGettigan was recently co-opted onto Clare County Council, and last week the two spent an hour of their morning talking about Jamie’s journey, in the sitting room of her Shannon home. Donna has been supportive all along – when Jamie was deeply depressed, when her only child came out as a lesbian and when she was told that the person she knew as …

LAST Friday evening Sinn Féin formally chose Donna McGettigan to fill the County Council seat left vacant following the death of Mike McKee. She was the only person nominated, and the nomination came from Mike’s wife, Eileen. On Monday Donna met with The Clare Champion and spoke about her own background and her views on her new role, as one of two Shannon based county councillors, and Sinn Féin’s only representative in Clare. She left Belfast as a young child, with several of her male relatives interned in Long Kesh and her own granny on the run from the authorities in the North. “She was a strong woman. So that’s where I obviously picked that up from,” Donna laughs. The Belfast they left in the 1970s was a very violent place, with frequent bombings and shootings. “When we weren’t down herethat long, my Mum’s Granny, our Great Granny, had died in her sleep. And me uncle came to pick us …

A SHANNON mother has this week opened up about the struggle she is having to get her little son a place in an ASD unit, when he begins national school in September. Lesleyanne Casey is a mother of three, who lives in Cluain Airne. At the moment her youngest son, five-year-old Noah attends an early intervention class in Stonehall, where he has made huge progress. “His speech when he first went there was basically non-existent. It has really improved. He’s more sociable. He’s just come along so much; he has matured that little bit as well. “He loves being out there, loves being the centre of attention. The kids inside in that school are fantastic. They’re very open-minded, all of the children, all the staff. “They run lots of days of autism awareness and they make them feel like they’re the most important people in the world, which is brilliant.” She says the staff there are immense, while she praises …

“THE comment where he said that it is winter and there is an increase in viruses, that children that are having chemotherapy shouldn’t come to hospital. Where does he propose we go?” Shannon’s Agnes O’Shaughnessy has a lot to be angry about this week. Bad enough that her 10-year-old son was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year, bad enough that he had to get some of his treatment abroad, bad enough that he was hit by an 11-day delay for his last round of chemotherapy at the National Children’s Hospital, without the Taoiseach making such comments. Make no mistake, insult has been added to injury. She says the other parents of children suffering with cancer are also unhappy. “We have a closed Facebook group and all the other parents are confused about that comment. Where does he propose we go? We can’t not have chemotherapy from November to April. The new children’s hospital won’t be available for three years. Alex …

SHANNON company Modular Automation has announced it will create another 100 jobs by 2023. It has also acquired eight acres of land for future development and 60,000ft2 of ‘ready to go’ production space, to support immediate capacity requirements. An Irish company, it has been in business since 1986 and is now involved in the MedTech manufacturing sector. Ireland is the second largest exporter of medical devices in Europe, with nine of the world’s top 10 MedTech companies based here. Modular Automation’s customer base includes the likes of Johnson & Johnson, Stryker and Boston Scientific. “Our team has doubled in the past five years to over 170 employees and due to growing demand, we now plan to create another 100 jobs over the next three years. We are also investing to substantially expand our facility to give us the capacity to deliver more for our customers, both at home and across the US,” said Vivian Farrell, CEO of Modular Automation. Modular …

SHANNON parish priest Arnold Rosney paid tribute to Councillor McKee at Monday’s funeral mass. Ss John & Paul Church was packed for the ceremony, while large numbers had also attended the McKee house on Saturday as the remains were reposed. “I and many more of you knew Mike McKee as a man of courage, of kindness, honesty and fairness. I and many more, while not always agreeing with Mike, held him in the highest esteem and respect as a family man, and as someone who had a mandate to represent our community. Mike represented this community, this town, without fear or favour for over 30 years.” Addressing Councillor McKee’s wife, he said, “Eileen, I know there are many people thinking of you and your family this afternoon and many who are very grateful for what Mike and your family have done, and while today is your personal loss, it’s also a huge loss to our community. “I saw Mike’s best …

Many tributes have been paid to the late Shannon Councillor Mike McKee in recent days, while large numbers attended his funeral. Originally from the North, his family left the Protestant area of Belfast in which they lived during his youth, under threat from loyalists. They relocated to Omagh and came to Shannon in the mid 1970s, as many others did. In 2017 he described arriving in the town. “I was about 17 and it was quite traumatic coming down here from the North, leaving all your friends behind and coming down to not just a strange place but to a strange country. I knew nothing about the Republic at that stage and I’d heard that it (Shannon) was just full of housing estates. The removal people who brought our furniture down said it was just houses, houses, houses everywhere and I couldn’t get my head around that until I arrived in Shannon.” However he said he was easily won over …

THERE are hopes that a substantial number of the 500 redundancies at Shannon company Molex might yet be avoided. It is understood that a particular section of the Shannon plant has been particularly successful in recent times. The section in question provides products that are bought mainly by medical device company Aerogen, which has a base in Galway. According to Molex employees, around 100 staff have been working in this area and revenue in the region of €1.5 million per month has been coming in. If production of the items required by Aerogen is moved away from Shannon, it is likely to cause huge disruption for the Galway company. It is understood that the possibility of them being supplied with product from another Irish site has been raised but Aerogen management are said to be uneasy about such a move. On Wednesday, Patrick Power, director of business development with Aerogen, acknowledged that the closure of the Shannon plant would create …