Tag Archives: west clare

IN recent weeks, Kilrush Town Councillor Tom Clyne retired from his role as a FÁS job initiative worker in the town. The former town mayor, who was first elected to the local council in 2004, has worked in the position since 1998. As he remembers it, a significant amount of people were employed on the jobs initiative scheme 15 years ago. That figure has since drastically reduced. “There are about 10 people on the scheme in Kilrush at the moment. We have lost a lot of people through retirement or death in the last few years. I think there was 21 on the scheme in 1998,” Mr Clyne said this week. The Westmeath man, whose wife Breda is from Kilrush, worked primarily as a maintenance man on the scheme. “I was one of the people assigned to do the house maintenance for Kilrush Town Council, who were our sponsors. I was a general operative starting off but as we progressed, …

JASON Ryan has got to know almost every back road in West Clare in recent months. The Kilrush man, who is a retained fire fighter in the town, has been partaking in four hour early morning training stints as he prepares for a five day, 2,100km (1,350 miles) cycle around Ireland. The cycle starts at 3pm in Trim on Sunday and is due to last five days. Jason, who is fundraising for the West Clare Cancer Centre in Kilkee and the Clare 250 Cycle, is confident that he is in physical shape to cycle up to 500km daily. “I’ve been out most mornings, nearly every morning, for the last couple of months. I’ve been clocking up between 80 to 100km at least four mornings a week. When it was brighter I was heading out at 5 or 5.30am but for the last few weeks it has been about 6.30am,” he told The Clare Champion this week. Once he leaves his …

SOUL Space, an exhibition by Ennis-based artist Dympna Bonfield is going on show at Glór on Saturday, September 7 and will be there until October 26. Dympna was born and raised in West Clare but was away for many years before returning to her native county. Much of her work has reflected this move and it is the people and landscape of West Clare that largely inspired her paintings. She began her career as a primary school teacher but later attended the National College of Art in Dublin and qualified as an art teacher. This led to teaching art in secondary schools and much of her early work during this time took the form of murals painted in some of the places she worked and can still be seen today. Whilst teaching in the capital, she began exhibiting work in a couple of Dublin galleries and as her reputation grew, she began to exhibit further afield. Her work has now …