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 Our recent post on Illegal Dumping and Weee collection here in Thurles, forces Thurles native Proinsias Barrett to put ‘pen to paper ‘ or should I say, in his case, ‘fingers to keyboard.’
More is the pity that others of our discerning readers do not follow suit, (Hint, Hint ) and express their views, remembering the quote by Irish political philosopher Edmund Burke “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
(Note: Leave a Comment tag is directly under each daily Post and we do really love hearing your views.)
Proinsias Comments:
“Where do we recycle unwanted politicians, or indeed unsuccessful former City Council Managers?
In Ireland Seanad Éireann is a good hiding place for rubbish politicians. They can keep their heads down and draw a good salary, or as recently mentioned in a national press article, they can decide to slip away to spend more time with their outrageously generous pensions…. and reminisce on all those great deeds they performed for the sake of Ireland. City Council Managers who presided over numerous fiasco’s simply find a gullible County Council to take them on as ‘County Managers‘, it’s great!
I see Thurles now has a third recycling bin added lately, a brown bin for food waste and garden clippings, grass etc. We got the full three bin system here in Galway City back in 2000/2001 and in general we are told is working out well enough. But where is this ‘fly-tipping ‘ (illegal dumping) epidemic emanating from? Obviously there are people who don’t subscribed to any collection service and these facts are well known by Councils. If a household is not signed up to a collection service then what are they doing with their rubbish?
The simple remedy for this situation is to ensure that everyone is subscribing to a collection service, and if they are not then it is up to the Council to find out why? If it is for financial reasons, then some arrangement has to be made with these ‘go-it-alones‘ until such time as the three bin system evolves and recycling achieves an 80% re-use rate and charges are substantially dropped for the household. Recycling will have to become just another routine in everyone’s life.
But I have always disagreed with the flat charge for household waste collection. From the first introduction of the wheelie bin system here in Galway a decade ago, I submitted my ideas to the City Council (for all the interest they showed) when the public was invited to submit ideas relating to waste management etc. If households are properly separating their refuse, with intent, into the corresponding bins, the only charge on the household should be on the land fill bin, the one which contains items which cannot be recycled.
I went so far as to suggest that if households comply completely with recycling directives and recommendations, they should be paid for the raw materials they are giving the collection companies every week for free.
The Recycling industry is obviously a financially viable one, else no-one would be in the business. Why charge for what is essentially a raw material being collected and re-used (paper, cardboard, plastic, tin etc)
Again it’s a case of just not following through on introduced legislation. People are left to their own devices as usual. There are no inspectors (yep, bin inspectors, we had them in Galway for about two months when the bins were first introduced, then removed due to a lack of funding). Still almost twelve years on from the recycling initiative in Galway many apartment complexes are still operating a communal skip system … just throw in your black plastic sack full of everything and off it goes to land fill, and the Council aren’t interested. Some apartment dwellers share a three bin system with their neighbours resulting in one apartment making huge efforts to recycle everything and their neighbour dumping black sacks of mixed refuse into which ever bin appears least used.
Without a common sense approach backed up by information, encouragement and finally enforcement, our recycling system here in Ireland is becoming another half hearted attempt, handed over to private operators, and now there is a multinational demanding that an incinerator be opened at Poolbeg in Dublin which will require massive tonnage to ensure viability, this is a complete reversal of recycling initiatives…. one hand doesn’t seem to know what the other is doing! Oh Man! “
 Labour Party - Kathleen O'Meara Tipperary communications consultant, journalist and former Senator Kathleen O’Meara is to seek the Labour Party’s nomination for the Irish Presidency. Kathleen (born 24th January 1960) is widely expected to formally launch her bid for the nomination later today.
Michael D Higgins and Fergus Finlay have also declared an interest in the Labour nomination, which is expected to be decided on June 19th next.
The 51 year old is a native of Tipperary, a triplet, and the identical twin of journalist Aileen O’Meara. A graduate of NUI Galway, before entering politics, she was an RTÉ journalist and served in the 21st and 22nd Seanads, elected by the Agricultural Panel. She has also worked as a freelance journalist and is now head of Advocacy and Communications with the Irish Cancer Society.
During her second term in the Senate (2002–2007) O’Meara came to national prominence as a health campaigner. She drove the Nenagh Hospital Action Group, as vice chairperson, latter being one of many groups formed to oppose recommended health policies contained in the Hanly Report and campaigned against the removal of emergency services from smaller general hospitals around Ireland.
Kathleen was an unsuccessful candidate for the Labour Party in the 2007 general election in Tipperary North, getting 10.3% of the vote. She did not contest the Seanad elections in the same year.
The presidential election itself, will not take place until this Autumn.
 Templemore Garda Training College here in Templemore, Co Tipperary, was once among the most elite of police academies within in Europe. Its future seemed excellent with the purchase of a further 220 acre site at Clonmore, situated close to Templemore, for the inflated price of €5.5 million, but that was five years ago.
Latter had been purchased for use as a Firearms and Tactical TrainingFacility, but was shelved following major required spending cuts under the last Fianna Fáil government.
Now Fine Gael Deputy Noel Coonan states he is confidently again advancing plans for a Garda Siochana tactical training unit in Clonmore, Templemore, with foundations for a Skills Building expected to be completed during this Summer.
The Minister of State, with special responsibility for the Office of Public Works (OPW), Brian Hayes recently visited the Garda College in Templemore together with Deputy Coonan, where they discussed the facility’s future with Superintendent Pat McCabe and Inspector Ray Mulderrig.
The Minister of State, also inspected the tactical training site in Dromard, Clonmore, close to Templemore Town. Any future development of the project will involves participation between An Garda Siochana and OPW officials, and the progressing of any further works at Dromard is subject to the priority attached to it, by An Garda Síochána within the overall Garda accommodation programme.
Deputy Coonan said the skills building would allow for in-house tactical manoeuvre training. Discussions are ongoing and the OPW expect to have this new Garda training centre ‘shovel ready,’ once State funding becomes available.
The centre, when completed, will train members in the use of firearms and train specialist units in tactical manoeuvres for armed incidents.
The planning consultation phase under Part 9 of the Planning Regulations was completed recently and tender documents are expected to issue shortly.
 Artist Nuala Holloway with her painting of the 'Jeanie Johnston.' US President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle will to be showered with specially commissioned gifts, when they both arrive at the President’s ancestral home in Moneygall, on the Tipperary/Offaly border, by Marine One helicopter tomorrow.
The US President and America’s first lady, who will first arrive on the tarmac of Dublin Airport tomorrow morning on Air Force One, will travel by helicopter to Offaly, for a short 30 minute visit, before returning to Dublin, for a major public address at College Green later in the evening.
One of the gifts specially commissioned for the US President’s visit, made by calligrapher and historian Tim O’Neill, is an ancient styled calligraphic monastic vellum scroll, scribed in both Irish and English, and including the County Offaly Coat of Arms.
For First Lady Michelle Obama, there will be a gift of a flower pendant depicting an Offaly flower, the Andromeda, more commonly known as Bog Rosemary, latter designed by Rachel McKenna and made by jeweller Cathal Barber. The Obamas will also receive a traditional music CD, together with a book on the history of the thatched house in rural Ireland.
One of the more unique gifts to the US President in Dublin, however will be a painting of the famine ship ‘Jeanie Johnston,’ (Oil on Canvas) by noted Irish artist, former Miss Ireland, actress, and academic, Nuala Holloway. (Click on image above to view larger picture.) Nuala, whose third public exhibition of paintings entitled “Moments,” is due to take place in the Sol Art Gallery, Dawson St. Dublin, from December 2nd to 9th, 2011, presently resides in Dublin, while retaining strong connections with Thurles in Co Tipperary and Moate in Co. Westmeath. It is hoped that the painting will be an everyday reminder to the President, of the difficulties experienced by his early relatives who left Ireland around the time of the ‘Great Famine,’ 1845-1849 on board similar ships, the ‘Caroline Read,’ and ‘Marmion,’ eventually arriving in New York City on the 25th of April 1849 and March 20th 1850, respectively.
Interesting also to note that Falmouth Kearney (c.1830-1878) married Charlotte Holloway (c.1834-1877) – any connection between modern Irish artist and ancestor, I wonder?
The original, three masted ‘Jeanie Johnston ‘ built in Quebec, Canada in 1847, was bought by Tralee, Co. Kerry-based merchants John Donovan & Sons. It was a cargo vessel trading successfully between Tralee and North America for a number of years. The trading pattern then was to bring emigrants from Ireland to North America, and then to bring back timber into Europe. The most passengers she ever carried was 254, from Tralee to Quebec on April 17, 1852, the journey taking 49 days.
With Irish weather forecasters promising high winds and stormy conditions over Tipperary and Offaly, locals in the Moneygall village will be saying prayers to Saint Medard, Patron Saint of bad weather. Legend states that the saint was once sheltered from the rain himself, by a hovering eagle. The Bald Eagle, as we all know was chosen in June 20, 1782 as the emblem of the United States of American, because of its long life, great strength and majestic looks, and also because it was then believed to exist only on the continent of America.
In the words of an old Irish blessing Mr President “Go n-éirí an bóthar leat agus go gcoinní Dia i mbos A láimhe thú.” (Translated:- May the road rise to meet you and may God hold you in the hollow of His hand.)
 Half-copy of the Irish 1916 Proclamation Ninty Five years ago today, the Proclamation of the Irish Republic (In Irish: Forógra na Poblachta), issued by the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army, was read by Patrick Pearse, at four minutes past noon on Easter Monday, April 24th, 1916, from the steps of the General Post Office in Sackville Street, now known as O’Connell Street, in Dublin.
Pictures courtesy of National Archives of Ireland. (Please Click on image to read in full.)
1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic
IRISHMAN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.
Having organized and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organization, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organizations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and, supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory.
We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State. And we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades-in-arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.
The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irish woman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities of all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority in the past.
Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a permanent National Government, representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the Provision Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the Republic in trust for the people.
We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.
Signed on behalf of the Provisional Government,
THOMAS J. CLARKE.
SEAN MAC DIERMADA. THOMAS MACDONAGH.
P.H.PEARSE. EAMONN CEANNT.
JAMES CONNOLLY. JOSEPH PLUNKETT.
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