Kilkenny Observer 14th April 2023

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Friday 14 April 2023

In Good Health Two new primary care centres for Kilkenny  Special Report Page 14

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Biden’s Visit What now for the US presidential election? 

Global Report Page 24

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A monumental €396k.

Six Kilkenny projects will benefit from €396,631 in funding as part of this year’s Community Monuments Fund.

Minister of State for Heritage and Electoral Reform, Malcolm Noonan TD announced the award of a total of €8 million in funding for 140 archaeological heritage projects throughout the country, an increase of 33% over last year’s allocation.

The core objective of the Community Monuments Fund is to support the conservation, maintenance, protection, and promo-

tion of local monuments and historic sites, in alignment with the aims of the Government’s new heritage plan, Heritage Ireland 2030, and the Climate Change Sectoral Adaptation Plan.

The scheme contains a range of measures that seek to enable conservation to be carried out on archaeological monuments in need of urgent support, encourage access to these monuments and improve their presentation, and build resilience to enable these monuments to withstand the effects of climate change.

• €120,000 in funding for Grangefertagh Church & Graveyard • €100,000 in funding for Butler Gallery • €64,292 in funding for Duiske Abbey • €60,679 in funding for Thomple Medieval Church • €25,830 in funding for Tubbrid Medieval Church • €25,830 in funding for Rathpatrick Medieval Church Minister of State for Heritage and Electoral Reform, Malcolm Noonan TD said: “This fund has supported over 330 projects since

The scheme offers three funding streams to support a broad range of measures aimed at protecting and promoting archaeological monuments, including emergency conservation repair works at monuments, masonry repair, the development of Conservation Management Plans, access infrastructure and installation of interpretation signage, and communication projects aimed at disseminating knowledge of Ireland’s archaeological heritage.

This year’s awards include:

its establishment in 2020, making a tangible, positive impact to the medieval forts and churches and the historic graveyards and castles into which the lives of our ancestors are woven, along with our own, connecting us to our ancient past.

“It is also, of course, an investment in our future: in the ongoing care, conservation and promotion of these remarkable sites, and in the communities and heritage professionals who expertly manage them,” Minister Noonan said.

Grace on creatures great and small ...

Milk prices dropping below the cost of production are looming for Ireland’s dairy farmers.

Such a “disastrous crossover”, where costs exceed price, comes as milk processors cut the base milk price for January and February supplies.

Farm organisations have called on processors to hold the milk price for the rest of 2023.

Full story Page 10

Home the school of the future ...

Nursing home residents ‘ripped off’

EVERY FRIDAY

their relatives are disclosed in correspondence to the watchdog Hiqa and seen by the Irish Independent.

One person said an elderly relative paid €70 a week in a supplementary charge and this “drains their pension, leaving them with no spending money”.

Residents must pay for chiropody services, toiletries and

The Kilkenny

Observer UNIT 7, FRIARY STREET, KILKENNY, R95 VHY7

Up to 1,126 Covid-19-related deaths were linked to acute hospital outbreaks, new figures reveal.

These include 1,121 confirmed Covid-19 cases and five possible cases of the virus.

In all, 12,582 confirmed cases of Covid-19 have been linked to Covid outbreaks in acute hospitals since the beginning of the pandemic in Ireland.

The figures emerged in a parliamentary response to Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín.

Full story Page 6

Farmers fear over milk prices fall

Weldoming a crab in the palm the her hand Ireland South MEP Grace O’Sullivan also welcomed the recommendations of the Citizens Assembly on Biodiversity Loss, launched by Chair of the Assembly Dr Aoibhinn Ní Shuillibheáin. The report, crafted over several meetings of 99 participants from May 2022 to January 2023, contains over 150 recommendations that will improve the quality of biodiversity and allow nature to regenerate on the island.

Ms O’Sullivan noted the importance, abundance and variety of biodiversity that Ireland has to offer. A trained ecologist, she said she recognised the significance of this report in a country that had a poor track record of protecting wildlife and the unique biosphere of the island of Ireland.

The report recommends that the State must take prompt, decisive and urgent action to address biodiversity loss and restoration and must provide leadership in protecting Ireland’s biodiversity for future generations.

Residents in nursing home are being “drained” of what is left of their pension by having to pay top-up charges of over €3,600 a year, according to unpublished complaints.

The additional charges are being levied on top of Fair Deal contributions.

The grievances by private nursing home residents and

Hospital’s role in Covid deaths

clothes out of what’s left.

It was originally called an ‘activities charge’ but was changed to ‘supplementary charge’ because residents who had to stay in bed all day could not avail of them, the complaint released under Freedom of Information claimed.

Another said a resident with a medical card, entitled to free GP

care, was paying €160 a month for the nursing home’s contracted doctor.

And one complainant cited a €60-a-week service charge to include physiotherapy assessment, falls prevention systems and occupational therapy.

A major concern is that the charges are imposed on residents whether they use the ser-

vices or not. One resident paid an extra €100 a month while “bingo and quizzes are done by staff members and there is no activities co-ordinator”.

One relative said they felt they were being “ripped off”.

Nursing homes have insisted they have no choice but to levy the charges because Fair Deal covers only the basics.

On the face of it home schooling seems to have advantages which would have appeal. One on one teaching with time for discussion, rather than being silent in a big class, freedom to follow subjects that interested me, (parents aren’t required to follow the curriculum) and no dreaded sport.

Normally a low-key topic, home schooling has become more popular since the pandemic, showing a 25% increase.

Marianne Heron Page 12

Your credit, and your loans Do you know what your credit score is and how it applies to you? Have you been refused a loan recently and as far as you are concerned you are a good bet? The refusal is probably due to your ‘credit score’.

Credit scores are used by lenders to assess the creditworthiness of individuals and to determine whether to approve a loan.

John Ellis Page 16

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GETTING IN TOUCH WITH THE TEAM

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News Dr Eoin Everard from Kilkenny City, a lecturer at South East Technological University (SETU), is a new World Champion after running an amazing race in Poland to win gold for Ireland.

A lecturer in the Department of Sport and Exercise Science on SETU’s Waterford Campus, Eoin has recently returned from the World Masters Athletics Indoors Championships in Torun, Poland after winning the 3000m in the M35 category.

Speaking to The Kilkenny Observer about the race, Eoin said: “I was absolutely delighted to win the World Championships. The American runner Mark Husted has run 1.47 for 800m in the past so I knew it would be a very close finish. I was thrilled to be able to run 26 seconds for the last 200m and get the victory.”

Eoin believes that being active in your sport is so important when it comes to teaching students. “The staff in SETU have a lot of practical experience coaching or competing and I think that helps us when teaching our students.

“The students and staff have been so supportive since winning which makes the victory even sweeter.”

A member of Kilkenny City Harriers, Eoin was a distinguished athlete at national senior level before commencing his career in the

Kilkenny athlete’s Gold at World Champs

Masters category. In 2022, he won the same event in the European Masters Athletics Championships in Braga, Portugal.

Eoin is a Chartered Physiotherapist and lectures on modules including Sports Medicine, Athletic Monitoring, Performance Planning, Strength and Conditioning and Sport and Exercise Biomechanics on SETU programmes.

Dr Michael Harrison, Head of the Department of Sport and Exercise Science said: “It was great to add Eoin to our staff team. The Sport & Exercise Science and Sports Coaching & Performance programmes really benefit from his academic background combined with his experience as an elite athlete.

“Eoin also found time during first semester to offer a sports science experience for schools in the region who are offering Physical Education as a leaving certificate subject. Elite athletes tend to be highly organised and disciplined which allows them to balance multiple commitments.”

Eoin Everard leading in the final stages of the M35 3000m at the World Masters Athletics Indoors Championships Out front: Eoin Everard leading in the final stages of the M35 3000m at the World Masters Athletics Indoors Championships

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Hotel to pay chef €20k. over sexual harassment The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) has ordered a hotel to pay a chef a sum of €20,000 over its failure to adequately address complaints that she was being sexually harassed by a male colleague.

The WRC directed the Greenway Manor Hotel in Kilotteran, Co Waterford, to pay the compensation award to the chef, Nadine Harty, who had resigned from her job over the matter.

The commission ruled that Ms Harty had been harassed and sexually harassed and subjected to discrimination by the hotel on grounds of gender in relation to her conditions of employment under the Employment Equality Act. Counsel for Ms Harty, Alan Crann BL, claimed that the conduct by the co-worker constituted persistent sexual harassment which significantly impacted on his client’s employment conditions and

on nher mental health state.

In evidence, Ms Harty stated numerous complaints that she had made about her male colleague which began shortly after she had started working at the hotel in June 2021 were not addressed.

The WRC heard the behaviour began with inappropriate, lewd comments and went on to physical unwanted conduct, including blowing in her ear and grabbing her around the waist and wrists.

Ms Harty said she just froze and was in shock when it happened. She said the chef also whispered in her ear, blew on her neck and made totally inappropriate comments about underage girls.

On one occasion, Ms Harty said she was bitten on her shoulder.

She said she had initially raised the matter informally with the hotel’s head chef and had asked in writing for the issue to be sorted quietly.

However, Ms Harty said she received no response from the hotel and made further complaints in July 2021 which were also not addressed.

Eventually she said she was informed by the hotel’s head chef that the other chef “was gone”.

She subsequently met a senior director of the business, identified only as Mr J, whom she claimed was apologetic and said that he had known nothing about the

Second Carey ‘default’ home is sold off for €550,000 Catriona Carey’s family home in Kilkenny has been sold for €550,000. The former Irish hockey star and convicted fraudster lost her house at the end of last year after defaulting on her mortgage for over a decade.

The sale of Carey’s former home went through in the last week of March. The loss of her family home has been described as “a bitter blow” for the Kilkenny woman.

One source said: “It feels like the walls are closing in.”

Carey, who is at the centre of an alleged mortgage scam scheme involving dozens of victims, had built up arrears of €359,000 on her family home. The 44-yearold had not made any mortgage repayments since November 27, 2012.

She was given three months to vacate last May when Start Mortgages obtained an order for possession after she racked up arrears of more than €359,000.

A stay was granted, meaning she had until August to vacate, but she left in October.

Start Mortgages took possession of the detached house at 2 Weir View Hill, Co Kilkenny, last November. The property was put on the market for €550,000 just

one month after being repossessed.

The sale of the house went through on March 24.

It is the second property Ms Carey has lost. A four-bed property that she was renting to a family, also situated in The Weir View housing estate, was sold for €365,000 via auction.

The family home sale comes as investigators step up their probe into Ms Carey’s alleged mortgage scheme where dozens of victims have made complaints.

Catriona Carey was arrested in February by officers from the Corporate Enforcement Authority.

She is suspected of scamming up to 30 people out of €400,000 by offering to buy debt from mortgage lenders at a discount.

More than €200,000 deposited by homeowners into a business account was allegedly spent by Ms Carey on personal items, including a €55,000 BMW. An investigation last year exposed how other cash was spent on designer clothes and trips.

The Corporate Enforcement Authority investigation is separate to another inquiry led by a team from the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau.

Vacant shop centre owner revealed Better Value Unlimited was confirmed as the new owner of the Ferrybank Shopping Centre, which is currently sitting unused on the boundary between Kilkenny and Waterford.

The news was disclosed at the March meeting of the Piltown Municipal District at Ferrybank Library, according to the Waterford News & Star.

The building complex has been mostly empty since its completion in 2008.

Replying to a query from Fianna Fáil Councillor Ger Frisby, meetings administrator Michael Arthurs said that there’d been “no success” from NAMA in confirming the ownership.

The disclosure follows subsequent investigation from Kilkenny County Council Chief Executive Sean McKeown and Director of Services Denis Malone.

Mr McKeown and Mr Malone studied the property register, and conrmed that Better Value Unlimited was the registered owner of the €100m centre.

Previously known as Better Value (2000-2015), Tacado (1995-2000), Dunnes Stores (1964-2000) and Dunnes Stores Limited, with a registered address at 46-50 South Great George’s Street in Dublin, the company was initially incorporated on March 9th, 1964.

alleged sexual harassment.

Counsel for the hotel, Shaun Boylan BL, claimed it had not ignored the matter.

Mr Boylan said the hotel had placed her to work at the far end of the kitchen which was a significant distance away from the chef.

The WRC heard the director met the chef again after he was the subject of further complaints in November 2021 which resulted in the chef leaving the hotel.

1,120 Covid deaths were in hospital outbreaks

Festival fare: St Lachtain’s Church of Ireland, Freshford will host the events for Féile Lachtain 2023. Inset, author Siobhán Doyle’s book .A History Of The GAA INn 100 Objects’

Freshford church opens its doors for Féile Lachtain

By Ned Kennedy --------------------Féile Lachtain 2023 will be officially launched on this Saturday, April 15, at 3pm in Ionad Lachtain Church, Arts and Heritage Centre, Freshford. The festival will be launched by Councillor Pat Fitzpatrick, Chairman of Kilkenny County Council.

The launch will be followed by the first lecture

of the year delivered by Siobhan Doyle, author of ‘A History Of The GAA In 100 Objects’. Ms Doyle’s address will highlight the objects of Kilkenny interest in her book as well as focussing on some of the items from around the country which caught her attention. The book was nominated for Sports Book of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards 2022.

Féile Lachtain was started last year in order to promote St Lachtain’s Church of Ireland as a visitor centre.

The church hosted a number of lectures, exhibitions and concerts.

This year’s programme will be announced on the launch day when Harpist Mary Kelly will provide musical entertainment.

All are welcome to attend.

Up to 1,126 Covid-19-related deaths were linked to acute hospital outbreaks, new figures reveal.

These include 1,121 confirmed Covid-19 cases and five possible cases of the virus.

In all, 12,582 confirmed cases of Covid-19 have been linked to Covid outbreaks in acute hospitals since the beginning of the pandemic in Ireland. The figures emerged in a parliamentary response to Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín.

The Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) said the number of infected people includes a mixture of patients and healthcare staff.

The number of Covid-related deaths associated with outbreaks in residential facilities up to February 19 last was 59.

Covid-related deaths associated with outbreaks in a mental health facility up to the same date was six.

Commenting on the hospital outbreaks, the HPSC said that it was “not possible to reliably identify sporadic cases that may have contracted Covid-19 in a hospital setting”.

Being associated with an outbreak in a hospital is a proxy for acquiring infection in the hospital setting. However, it is not possible to confirm that all cases linked to these outbreaks contracted Covid-19 in the hospital.

The HPSC said it did not hold data on the reason for admission for these cases.

The latest report shows there were 19 notified Covid-19 deaths in March and 52 in February. This compares with 180 in January and 194 in December.

So far in the pandemic, the number of Covid-related deaths per 100,000 is highest in Carlow, followed by Cavan, Clare, Cork, Donegal, Dublin and Galway.The lowest rates were in Wicklow, Wexford, Westmeath, Waterford, and Tipperary.

The financial drain of the pandemic showed that €34.7bn has been spent by government departments.

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Opinion

The Fact Of OfThe Matter PAUL HOPKINS

That chapter in Ireland that was book banning I was a young Catholic boy on the verge of, as was said then, manhood when I discovered the word ‘taut’ hooked to a flimsy item of underclothing in one of the James Bond thrillers the Uncle Harry had given my father. And then there was the time I got my hands on the illicit A Man With A Maid, brought back from London on the Mail Boat by a pal. Banned in Ireland in the decades of my formative years, a grey and listless landscape, church-ridden and oppressive.

I mention this because of the ongoing news that Republican presidential hopeful Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis continues on his ‘crusade’ banning books from school and county libraries. Books deemed unfit for purpose.

There is nothing new in this and such draconian moves are not the prerogative of

the Sunshine state alone.

Other Red states are busy ‘burning’ books. On the website of many US public schools, a list of books nominated for removal from libraries down the decades is a revealing artifact: a map of cultural anxieties and a portrait of books as enduring flash points. The challenges range from endearing and silly to sinister. Some preoccupations remain engrained in the American psyche: race and history, profanity and sex.

Roald Dahl (“vulgar, unethical”) is a frequent offender. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume, was challenged recently “for irreligiosity” and “introduction to pornography”. Other nominations are more idiosyncratic: not long ago, Little Red Riding Hood was side-eyed for “violence”.

Across the water, they’re on to Roald Dahl too, where

Puffin Books have toyed with updating his works, editing anything that might offend. All this might seem like something straight out of Kurt Vonnegut’s Fahrenheit 451 or Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, in all its dystopian horror. Publishers, however, have always ‘altered’ children’s books. The Grimm brothers tidied up their folktales before they wrote them down, while Victorian adapters of Grimm altered them again, eliminating blood and gore, adding picnics and happy endings.

In the 1902 first edition of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, the line “Don’t go into Mr McGregor’s garden. Your father had an accident there; he was put in a pie” was illustrated by a picture of said pie — raised, egg-glazed, nicely browned — being served to Mr McGregor’s fine fists.

In the decades following the enactment of the 1929 Censorship Act, in the newly formed Irish Free State, censorship became almost a rite of passage for Irish authors.

Writers including Joyce, Kate O’Brien, Beckett, and John McGahern — I recall furtively reading a banned copy of McGahern’s The Dark in my teenage years — were to have works censored under this, in hindsight repressive, legislation. Among other books banned during my late teen years were JD Salinger’s Catcher In The Rye, Behan’s Borstal Boy and The Country Girls by Enda O’Brien.

I recall my LATE father telling me of Eric Cross’s book The Tailor and Ansty, about the life of the Irish tailor and storyteller Timothy Buckley and his wife Anastasia (Ansty) and the subsequent “political debate and outrage” it

provoked in 1942. Just a decade ago, 2012, there were still a whopping 274 books and magazines banned in Ireland.

What got books and magazines banned in Ireland back in the days of my formative years? Sex and abortions, apparently. The word ‘pregnant’ was not allowed in print until 1960. Until then it was always published as “she is expecting a happy event”.

Today, the Irish Censorship of Publications Board can ban books for being indecent or obscene. Similarly, films, advertisements, newspapers and magazines, terrorism and pornography.

Unbelievably, the British edition of Rupert Murdoch’s News Of The World was still, theoretically, banned here when it ceased publication in July 2011.

In 2019, a year after the repeal of the 8th Amend-

ment, several publications on abortion were unbanned.

However, just recently library staff have been issued guidelines on how to deal with protesters targeting and sometimes removing LGBTQ+ books aimed at children and young people.

Conservatives are not the only censors. The right and the left want to ban books that don’t suit them. Liberals in Ireland are waging war against writers and publishers who don’t agree with their ideas.

Morals have changed. Our standards have become exponentially more lenient.

But not everyone is on the same page. There are those who would argue that, with all this transformative change, we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. That is a legitimate and ongoing debate. And one we are, thankfully, allowed deliberate on.

Climate Change

– are we all playing our part?

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‘Supporting the supporters’ free mental health programme Mental Health Ireland and Family Carers Ireland have partnered to co-produce a five-week online programme that aims to support the supporters of people with mental health challenges.

The programme has been co-produced with family carers, supporters, people with lived experience of mental health challenges and service providers.

This programme, delivered

in both online and in person formats, will support families in building skills to look after their own wellbeing while supporting or caring for a person living with a mental health challenge By the end of this programme participants will have: • Had time to reflect on and build tools and techniques to enhance their self-care • Expanded their under-

standing of the concepts of mental health, wellbeing and recovery • Had an opportunity to learn about and practice communication skills and active listening techniques • Increased awareness around boundaries, personal wellbeing and the supporting role • Learned about supports and services available for those who are caring

In 2022, Mental Health Ireland engaged RED C Research and Marketing Ltd to formally evaluate the Mental Health and Family Caring: Supporting the Supporters programme.

The result was an overwhelmingly positive programme review. The evaluation found the programme was well received by all those involved (facilitators and participants); it was well

Milk price fears face our dairy farmers Milk prices dropping below the cost of production are looming forIreland's dairy farmers.

Such a "disastrous crossover”, where costs exceed price, comes as milk processors cut the base milk price for January and February supplies.

Farm organisations have called on processors to hold the milk price for the rest of 2023.

ICMSA Dairy Chairperson Noel Murphy said that, while dairy markets are under some pressure at wholesale level, it was time for milk purchasers to "show their mettle over the next number of milk price announcements".

"It has been well known and commonly accepted that farmgate price never reaches the highs of the wholesale markets, but the opposite should also be correct: farm-gate price should never go as low as the bottom falling wholesale price," Mr Murphy. Told the Farming Independent.

"Against that principle, the base price of milk needs to be held at current levels — at a minimum — for the remainder of 2023."

Figures from the ICMSA show that direct costs of 25c/L and overhead costs of 14c/L bring the cost of production at farm level to 39c/L. Commodity spot prices spent over four months in the early to mid-60c/L in 2022 and the highest base price

returned was 58c/L in 2022.

"Our analysis shows that the cost of production for 2022 was more than 40c/L when fertiliser was purchased at the height of the market.

"Given that many dairy farmers have paid very significantly for their existing stock, it is likely that these cost levels will prevail for the early part of 2023.

"This means that February milk price was at or exceeding the cost of production — a figure which we'd stress does not include a farmer's own income. We are getting dangerously close to the disastrous 'crossover' point where costs per litre exceed co-op payment,” he said.

"There is no doubt that prices had to come back, but it is now approaching a level where costs of production are coming close and, in many cases, exceeding the base price.”

He warned that if there is a further cut to the price paid for March milk, it will mean margins are completely wiped out, and co-op boards cannot allow this to happen.

He said it was "even more unacceptable that these savage cuts are happening at a time when we, consumers, are still seeing food inflation, so someone along the line is effectively taking the farmers' margin”.

Callan in call for more first responders Callan Community is welcoming new volunteers as 999/112 calls are increasing in the Callan area. The community is currently responding to cardiac / chest pain and stroke calls and need extra volunteers. Ambulances can be delayed and response times vary.

The first responders can be with a patient within minutes, until paramedics arrive, and communicate with the paramedics on route.

Callan in call for ore first responders Training is fully certified by PHECC (Pre-Hospital Care Council) and free of charge to volunteers. Full driving liscence is essential as the community respond to calls within 5 km of Callan.

For more information you can watch a video on www. becomeacfr.ie or send an email to callanfirstresponders@ gmail.com.

structured, organised, accessible, contained valuable perspective and information and was delivered in a compassionate and respectful way.

The evaluation found positive outcomes for carers and their mental health. Crucially, the programme succeeds in its objectives; helping carers focus on better managing their own mental health, leading to favour-

able outcomes at a personal level and with those they are caring for.

The programme is starting up online on a variety of dates in April and May and running online for five consecutive Tuesdays from 10:00-12:00pm.

Participants can register at www.eventbrite.ie/e/mental-health-family-caringsupporting-the-supporterstickets-598001688147

Celebrity chefs!

Mount Juliet recently welcomed Chef Damien Grey from Liath to the Lady Helen for a special dining experience recently.

Pictured are Damien who joined John Kelly for this

rare dining event with two of Ireland’s leading chefs, recognised and awarded

by Michelin for their innovative menus and culinary approach.

Both chefs have great

respect for each other and share a culinary ethos of innovation and excellence.

Guests at Mount Juliet enjoyed a remarkable collaboration between the two chefs, who created

a distinctive six-course menu featuring signature dishes from the menus of Liath and The Lady Helen, where a taste of the city meets a taste of the country.

Stephanie tucks in to the Good Food awards Ifac, Ireland’s farming, food, and agribusiness specialist professional services firm, is delighted to announce that Food Business Consultant Stephanie Walsh has been selected to help judge the prestigious Good Food Ireland Awards 2023.

These unique cross-sector awards recognise the unwavering commitment to prioritising Irish ingredients and local food and drink products. The awards also enhance linkages between agriculture and tourism and present significant opportunities for stimulating local production, retaining local tourism earnings, and improving the distribution of economic benefits of tourism to the four corners of Ireland.

Utilising her expertise to

act as a judge, Stephanie has over 10 years of retail experience in a multinational retailer. Before joining the award-winning ifac Advisory Food and Agribusiness team, Stephanie worked with Lidl Ireland and was a Senior Dairy Buyer; she worked with various suppliers, developing products and packaging and negotiating multi-mil-

lion-euro deals. Stephanie also has a B. Applied Science in Food and Business Management from St. Angelas University in Sligo.

Speaking about the task ahead, Stephanie Walsh, Food Business Consultant at ifac, said: "The Good Food Ireland Awards are widely recognised by Irish consumers and this is a great honour to be asked to judge these awards.

From my food retail expertise, I know the ingredients needed to become a success on the supermarket shelf and I am really enjoying judging the products and restaurants against certain criteria such as the provenance of Irish ingredients, taste and packaging, etc. The awards are a great opportunity to shine a

light on a whole host of Irish food and drink businesses and I wish all the finalists the very best of luck."

You can find the full list of finalists across numerous categories and from all across the country at https:// goodfoodireland.ie/goodfood-ireland-awards-2023/.

The winners will be revealed at a business lunch celebration that will take place on Monday, April 17 in The K Club, Straffan, Co Kildare. The awards will also be attended by Guest of Honour Simon Coveney TD, Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment, and some 300 guests including Irish and international chefs, buyers, food and drink writers, media and industry leaders.

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Opinion

As I See It Marianne Heron

Should home be a classroom of the future?

Home schooling got kicked centre stage recently following critical comment from Tanaiste Micheal Martin, a former teacher “I am not a great fan of home schooling, I think kids need to socialise. I just find the whole thing disquieting,” he said.

Not surprisingly heated discussion followed on the airwaves.

Given my own experiences of schools in Belfast – dire in one where I was bullied for not being sporty and uninspiring in the next – gave me to thinking. On the face of it home schooling seems to have advantages which would have appealed to me. One on one teaching with time for discussion, rather than being silent in a big class, freedom to follow subjects that interested me, (parents aren’t required to follow the curriculum) and no dreaded sport.

Normally a low-key topic, home schooling has become more popular since the pandemic, showing a 25% increase. Parents have a constitutional right to educate their children at home.

They don’t need a teaching qualification although there are many teachers among the estimated 4000, (the official figure is lower at 1,837 due to the numbers awaiting registration with Tusla, currently 1,940). Children are required to have a suitable level of education and among the reasons parents choose to home school are belief in a child – centred approach, cultural issues, a child’s special needs or difficulties in school such as bullying.

One of the criticisms of home schooling is the lack of oversight by the State which only occurs once in Ireland.

Parents home-schooling

children aged over six years must apply to Tusla for registration, which may be granted after an inspection.

Currently, wait times are running at a year or more.

But there is no oversight by the Department of Education. In the US there has been a considerable increase in home schooling mainly due to the numbers of conservative evangelical parents who don’t want their children exposed to liberal state education. The lack of oversight and balance between parent rights and the rights of children to education where they may be exposed to belief systems isolated from societal influence has caused concern there.

There are more members of the Home Education Network (HEN) teaching their children at primary level. I wonder, though,

about the challenges when teaching at secondary level and access for pupils to third level education. To get an insight I spoke with Catherine Monaghan from Ashford, Co.Wicklow who has home-schooled her son Theo, since he was threeyears-old.

“I felt he was so happy and thriving and I wanted him to be free and not be confined by school,” she told me. Living in Australia at the time she made contact with other home schoolers there, before returning to Ireland when Theo was 12 , continuing to home school her son and joining HEN. “It is a lifestyle choice really. It has been a wonderful experience, having that time together is a gift. You find ways to do the things that the kids want to do and there are so many resources out there.” Theo is now 17

and has just finished homeschooling. He is now studying drama at Level 6.

Catherine Monaghan doesn’t agree with the idea that home schooling lacks socialisation, pointing out that her son plays in the community, has strong connections there, meeting a diverse cross-section of people rather than being with the same group of same age children daily.”There isn’t so much peer pressure when they are not together all the time,” she says.

HEN run zoom sessions every month to for their members to keep in touch.

In turn, members run local events and the organisation runs a three day annual get together.

As for teaching at second level Catherine Monaghan hasn’t experienced any difficulty.”There are so many resources out there and you

are just building on what you did the day before. Having done it I feel as if I am now better educated than when I left school!”

Results obtained through Quality and Qualifications Ireland( QQI) and Further Education and Training Awards Council (FETAC) allow home schooled students who don’t have a Leaving Cert to progress to university.

Home schooling may become more prominent in future as people exercise choice, predominantly the parents’ choice. Among the questions going forward is how children’s rights and need to become independent are affected. Some oversight seems wise to ensure that children are faring well. In school they have a variety of teachers, whereas at home there may be only one.

Natural solution for hay fever CLAIR WHITTY

Runny nose, streaming eyes, and intense sneezing, sound familiar? These are common symptoms of hay fever.

You could have itchy nose, eyes, and throat too. Hay fever is an allergic reaction associated with pollen. The summer months are worse, especially once the grass cutting starts. Unfortunately, some of you may experience symptoms the whole year. This is because as well as grass pollen you could also be allergic to the pollen found in weeds, flowers, trees, or shrubs. These flower at various times throughout the year. Some of you may have Allergic or Perennial Rhinitis.

This means that you react to allergens such as dust, animal dander and perfume, as well as pollen, and you are very likely to have symptoms all year round.

The allergic reaction that you experience affects the mucous membranes of the eyes and nose. It’s caused by an overreaction by the immune system to the pollens or allergen that it has come in contact with. This immune response triggers inflammation and the release of histamine, which causes the symptoms.

Natural remedies may help.

I recently spoke about Irish Botanica All Seasons Complex, formulated by Irish herbalist David Foley, in relation to Sinus problems that were possibly associated with airborne allergens. All Seasons may help ease the symptoms associated with

hay fever and seasonal allergies. It contains Astragulus which is a lovely herb commonly used to help support immunity. This herb may help relieve the annoying symptoms of sneezing, the itching of the nose, eyes, and throat.

If you have allergic rhinitis, you may also experience pain in the sinus area, All Seasons contains Angelica and Magnolia, this is traditionally used for anti-allergic potential. For best results start taking IB All Seasons Complex now, before seasonal symptoms take hold.

We have a wide variety of other supplements that could help you deal with these symptoms. Natural antihistamines include Quercetin, Vitamin C, Nettle, and B5, or Black Seed Oil. We can help you decide which supplement has the best potential to help you deal with the symptoms of hay fever and to help you become less sensitive to the pollens over time.

We would love to help you enjoy your summer so feel free to give us a call or pop us an email.

Shop online at www.naturalhealthstore.ie where you’ll be able to take a look at these brands.

Natural Health Store, Market Cross Shopping Centre Phone: 056 7764538 Email: info@naturalhealthstore.ie

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News

SPECIAL REPORT Two new Primary Care centres in Kilkenny, one in Thomastown and one in Newpark, were officially opened recently by Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly TD when he visited the site of the new community nursing unit.

Both Primary Care Centres were developed as part of the HSE’s €240 million national Enhanced Community Care (ECC) programme, which is making substantial progress nationally in reducing pressure on services and dependence on the acute hospital-centred model of care through enhanced and increased community services.

The Newpark Primary Care Centre in Kilkenny is a developer led (by Lou Investments Healthcare) leasehold building that has been occupied on a phased basis since summer 2021. At 4,483 square metres over three floors, this centre will provide of a range of health services from a single integrated, modern facility to help serve the healthcare needs of the people of Kilkenny City and surrounding areas in the north of Co. Kilkenny. The Lakeside GP practice is based in the building.

The Thomastown Primary Care Centre is also a developer led by Westcourt Healthcare Developments project. At 16,344 square metres over two floors and operational since December 2022, the centre will similarly accommodate and facilitate co-location for a multidisciplinary group of health and social care professionals to deliver primary care services to communities in mid Co. Kilkenny and adjoining parts of Co. Carlow.

GP Achim Schlunke’s practice is based in the Thomastown centre.

The HSE entered a public private partnership (PPP) with EquiSisk Community Care Partnership Ltd in December 2022 for the design,

Health matters: Minister Donnelly chatting to a guest at the opening of the new care unit

Two new Primary Care centres for Kilkenny build, finance, operation and maintenance of seven Community Nursing Units (including the 95 bed unit in Thomastown, to replace the adjoining St. Columba’s Hospital). The construction period now under way will take two years and after a further 25 years the ownership and responsibility for operation and maintenance will revert to the HSE. In addition to the GP services, those to be provided in the Newpark Primary Care Centre by HSE/South East Community Healthcare (SECH) include community health network management, adult mental health day hospital and community medical doctor, counselling in primary care, dental and orthodontics, dietician, integrated care for older persons

clinics, health and wellbeing services, occupational therapy, ophthalmology, physiotherapy, psychology, public health nursing, social inclusion clinics for marginalised communities, speech and language therapy and chronic disease management team members (including dieticians, physiotherapy, podiatrists and COPD rehab nurses) with other community healthcare administrative supports.

Along with GP services, those to be provided in the Thomastown Primary Care Centre by HSE/South East Community Healthcare (SECH) include community health network management, community medical doctor, community mental health Team, counselling in primary care, dental,

dietician, health and wellbeing services, occupational therapy, ophthalmology, physiotherapy, podiatry, psychology, public health nursing, social inclusion clinics for marginalised communities including addiction services, social prescribing clinics, speech and language therapy and chronic disease management team members (including dieticians, physiotherapy, podiatrists and COPD rehab nurses) with other community healthcare administrative supports.

Speaking at the official openings of the Primary Care Centres in both Newpark and Thomastown, Minister Donnelly said: “Enhanced community care is a huge investment in community healthcare services in the HSE, aiming to provide more

services closer to people’s homes, and provide extra services for older people, or people who live with longterm health conditions.

“A total of 94 Community Healthcare networks (including ones based in the Kilkenny, Thomastown and surrounding areas), 21 Community Specialist Teams for Older Persons (including one in Kilkenny), 21 Chronic Disease Community Specialist Teams (including one based in Kilkenny) and 21 Community Intervention Teams (including one here in Co. Kilkenny with the involvement of St. Luke’s General Hospital) are now in place, with national coverage. Community diagnostic services provided over 253,000 scans to patients in 2022.

“The national Enhanced Community Care programme is, at its core, a reform programme representing an investment of €240 million to develop and enhance care in the community. It has been developed under the Sláintecare programme to ensure all HSE primary and community care services work together effectively,” the minister said.

“Primary Care centres, such as these new, state of the art ones in Co. Kilkenny, together with the Integrated Care for Older People hubs such as the one for Carlow/ Kilkenny allow us to provide integrated and high-quality services closer to people’s homes. I want to thank the HSE staff, working in partnership with GPs and Primary Care teams, who are already making a difference to the lives of people throughout Co. Kilkenny.”

Welcoming Minister Donnelly to the Sisk and Co. construction site for the new Community Nursing Unit in Thomastown, Helen McDaid (Head of Service/ Older Persons and Acting Chief Officer, HSE/South East Community Healthcare) said: “There is a long history of dedicated care for the older person at St Columba’s Hospital but we are delighted that this will be now set to continue in a state of the art new facility being constructed on an adjacent site.

“The 95 bed Thomastown Community nursing unit will comprise of three households of 25 en-suite rooms.

This model a person-centred approach which focuses on the quality of life, which supports autonomy and the opportunity to continue to direct residents’ own lives in accordance with their cognitive and physical abilities.

“There will also be two 10 en-suite bedroomed dementia specific residential households. The environment will reflect the comforts of home, with assistance provided as necessary in the performance of everyday tasks.

There is provision within the entire compliment for 10 short stay places,” he said.

Mixed tillage may well be the future of framing A return to mixed tillage farming could offset the negative impacts of climate variability on food security and farm incomes, a new UK study has suggested.

The study comes after decades of increased specialisation of agriculture on farms. According to the CSO, the number of mixed farms in Ireland fell by some 40% between 2010 and 2020.

Produced by staff from Rothamsted Research, the University of Reading and Newcastle University, the study examined cereal farms, arable farms and farms that grew a mix of crops, which in some

cases also in reared livestock.

Dr Caroline Harkness, who was a joint Rothamsted and Reading PhD student when she led the study, said: “Under current conditions, farm management decisions may provide opportunities for farmers, supported by policymakers, to tackle the instability caused by climate volatility which are outside their control.

“Our results show that greater agricultural diversity is associated with more stable farm incomes and food production.

“The relative strength of these associations, in com-

parison to the impact of other farming practices and climate conditions, indicates that maintaining or increasing agricultural diversity is very important for the future sustainability of farming systems and food security.”

The researchers linked 13 years of data on yields and incomes from 929 farms in England and Wales with local climate data to understand the relative effects of climate variability, subsidies and farming practices on the stability of food production and farm incomes. The analysis showed variability in temperature and rainfall reduced the

stability of farm income and food production.

However, farms with a greater variety of crops and/or livestock showed greater stability in both food production and incomes, whereas farms that spent more on chemical inputs had more variable incomes but less variable yields.

“More precise application of pesticides and fertilisers, to where they are specifically needed, may help reduce costs and address this apparent trade-off, as well as reducing negative impacts on the environment,” said Dr Harkness.

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The Kilkenny Observer Friday 14 April 2023

Opinion

Your Money & You John Ellis

Your credit ‘score’ will affect getting a loan Do you know what your credit score is and how it applies to you? Have you been refused a loan recently and as far as you are concerned you are a good bet?

The refusal is probably due to your ‘credit score’.

Credit scores are an essential part of financial life across the globe, including Ireland. They are used by lenders to assess the creditworthiness of individuals and to determine whether to approve a loan, credit card or mortgage application.

In the UK and US a credit score is “a numerical representation of an individual’s creditworthiness, based on their credit history”. You have probably seen ads which are targeted to these markets showing how to increase your credit score.

It is calculated based on the individual’s credit history, which includes their credit card and loan repayments, credit inquiries, and, most

importantly, any missed or late payments.

In Ireland your credit score is held by the Central Credit Register (CCR). Prior to its establishment it was the ICB, a private organisation owned mainly by financial institutions. The ICB deleted its records when it ceased operating and the CCR came into being This CCR does not grade you or apply a credit rating; the bank you are applying to will decide your loan application based on the information held by the CCR and on their own lending policy.

Every month the CCR collects and stores personal and credit information from lenders, including licensed moneylenders and local authorities, about existing loans or new loans they give to consumers. Lenders who give out loans of €500 or more will have to inform the CCR of these loans. Information on smaller loans of less

than €500 is never collected.

The CCR also holds details pertaining to credit cards, mortgages, overdrafts and personal loans, loans from local authorities, licenced moneylenders and business loans. It includes hire purchase agreements, asset finance and personal contract plans.

The record does not include information about instalment orders or attachments of earnings, Insolvency Service of Ireland records, your deposits accounts or tax you may owe.

It will also have your personal details on file including your name, date of birth, current and previous addresses, your PPS number, among other information.

Before you apply for a loan check your record on the CCR. You can request a copy of your credit report online or apply by post.

Your credit report gives a full picture of your credit

history, good and/or bad.

You can see if there are any missed payments you are not aware of or, most importantly, see and have corrected mistakes in your credit report because if you missed repayments, didn’t clear a loan or credit card, or settled a loan for less than

“Information on loans of less than €500 is not collected...

you owed, it will show up on your credit history for five years after the loan is closed and may result in you being refused another loan.

According to the CCPC website “errors in reporting information to the CCR/ ICB can happen”. If this goes unnoticed, it can negatively affect your ability to borrow in the future.

If you believe that there is inaccurate information on your report you should firstly request that this be amended by the lender. If the lender does not amend your information with the CCR, you can complete a form online on the CCR website to have this information amended.

You can explain the reason(s) for a missed payment or circumstances about your loan(s), by adding an ‘explanatory statement’ on your credit report.

For example if you have had significant expenses due to relationship breakdown, be-

reavement, illness or another cause, you may add these details to your record. This statement is added to your credit report and it can be viewed when your data is accessed. However, it may not be taken into account when your loan is assessed.

Only lenders can amend your report, so, if problems or delays occur, you can make a formal complaint to them first. If you are unhappy with the response you can refer the matter to the following: The Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman and or the Data Protection Commissioner.

You can go to the CCR website to see a sample credit report and explanation of terms. You can request your credit report free of charge at any time but don’t overdo it as you may be charged. john@ellisfinancial.ie 086 8362622

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Opinion Part two

Dame Alice and the Witch Hunters St Canices Cathedral

BY JOHN FITZGERALD

Bishop Ledrede may or may not have believed the long list of allegations against Alice. But there was something else he disliked about her. She was an independent spirit who was never afraid to express an opinion or contradict church teaching.

She questioned the Church’s doctrines and had a liberal attitude towards sex.

This was at a time when women were considered the property of men. Bishop Ledrede himself had advised Kilkenny husbands to beat their wives “for charity to their souls.”

He detested Alice and her liberated ways and swore he would “crush the life out of her”. But this would be no easy task, even with the impressive charge list drawn up by her stepchildren. Alice had the backing of the local aristocracy and the Chief Officer or Seneschal of Kilkenny happened to be related to her through marriage. The Bishop decided to have Alice tried by an Ecclesiastical Court for heresy and black magic.

Kilkenny Castle

But when he and a squad of clerical officers arrived at Kyteler Hall to arrest her, they faced a larger group of Alice’s allies, who had Le Poer’s support, and were forced to withdraw. Then Alice hit back.

While visiting the parish of Kells, the bishop was arrested on le Poer’s orders and lodged in the jail of Kilkenny Castle.

The Chief Officer believed His Lordship would cool off in his cell and forget about troubling Alice and her friends. Unfortunately, imprisonment had the opposite effect on Ledrede. When he was freed, he and his clerical entourage invaded Kilkenny’s Council Chamber and called on le Poer, who was present, to have Alice tried for her “crimes.”

Le Poer ignored him and had him thrown out of the building. Relations between Church and Btate in Kilkenny hit rock bottom as the Bishop persisted in his efforts to have Alice tried for witchcraft.

He was again thwarted when she used her influence to have him summoned before a Dublin court to face charges of defamation and injustice. He somehow “beat the rap” and resumed his pursuit of Alice. This time, he appealed to the King and found a sympathetic ear.

Orders went out for the arrest of Alice and her accomplices. She and an unknown number of Kilkenny citizens were indicted on charges of witchcraft and heresy.

Alice was the first to be tried,

though in her absence. She had the good sense to flee the country before proceedings commenced. Her maid, Petronella, was not so lucky.

At Ledrede’s behest, she was brutally tortured and confessed to all the charges concocted by the Bishop and Alice’s vengeful stepchildren.

She was stripped and flogged for six days in succession.

On the verge of insanity, she implicated Alice and her colleagues in all the offences mentioned in the indictment.

She and at least two others were sentenced to execution “in the manner reserved for heretics and witches”. William Outlaw, Alice’s son, got off with a hefty fine. He agreed to finance repairs to the roof of St. Canice’s Cathedral.

With the Bishop looking on, Petronella was flogged through the streets of Kilkenny. At the current site of the Tholsel in High Street, she had her hands and feet bound and was tied to a wooden stake. Horrified citizens witnessed the first execution of this kind in Ireland.

Petronella, who was innocent of any offence, was burnt alive. As she screamed for mercy, Bishop Ledrede applauded and told a priest standing beside him: “The foul nest of heretics is smashed through the grace of God.” Her fate still abhors people the world over. Some historians believe it had more to do with the enforcing of male dominance and the

crushing of the female than any desire to tackle “sin” or black magic.

But it seems that Alice had the last laugh. Some years after the trial, she gave Ledrede a taste of his own medicine.

From her safe haven in England, she managed to bring trumped-up charges of heresy against him. The Crown dispossessed him of all his wealth and it took him almost three decades to clear his name. He died in 1360, the year his lands were restored to him.

The tomb of Bishop Richard Ledrede can be seen in St. Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny.

The date of Alice’s death is unknown, but her fame lives on.

The burning of Petronella

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The Kilkenny Observer Friday 14 April 2023

News Science & Wellbeing Human fathers engage in really costly forms of care, according to Lee Gettler, an anthropologist at the University of Notre Dame. In that way, humans stand out from almost all other mammals. Fathers, and parents in general, are Lee Gettler’s field of study. He and others have found that the role of dads varies widely between cultures — and that some other animal dads may give helpful glimpses of our evolutionary past.

Many mysteries remain, though, about how human fathers evolved their peculiar, highly invested role, including the hormonal changes that accompany fatherhood.

A deeper understanding of where dads came from, and why fatherhood matters for both fathers and children, could benefit families of all kinds.

“If you look at other mammalian species, fathers tend to do nothing but provide sperm,” says Rebecca Sear, an evolutionary demographer and anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Moms carry the burden in most other animals that care for their kids, too. (Fish are an exception — most don’t tend their young at all, but the caring parents are usually dads. And bird couples are famous for co-parenting.)

Even among the other apes, our closest relatives, most dads don’t do much. That means moms are stuck with all the work and need to space out their babies to make sure they can care for them. Wild chimps give birth every four to six years, for example; orangutans wait as long as six to eight years between young.

The ancestors of humans, though, committed to a different strategy. Mothers got help from their community and their kin, including fathers.

This freed them up enough to have more babies, closer together — about every three

Most people with untreated sleep apnea develop heart disease, and researchers have assumed that’s why they also have cognitive problems. But a small new study finds that obstructive sleep apnea itself is harming the brain, giving new urgency to recognising and treating the disorder.

Otherwise healthy middleage men newly diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea showed poorer mental function in areas such as judgment, impulse control and recognising other people’s feelings compared to men without the condition, according to research published in Frontiers In Sleep.

Obstructive sleep apnea, the most common form, occurs when the throat muscles relax and airways become blocked.

Another type is central sleep apnea, which occurs when the brain doesn’t send the right signals to the muscles that control breathing. In both types, people are briefly jolted awake by the need for oxygen.

evolution may have used the same mechanisms to encourage fatherly behaviour in both animals. Understanding those mechanisms better might help us learn how fatherhood evolved.

“If we understand the physiological pathways that underpin care in those other species, we can look to see if the same signatures occur in human fathers,” Lee Gettler says.

Some clues about the origin of doting fatherhood come from our close primate relatives. Stacy Rosenbaum, a biological anthropologist at the University of Michigan, studies wild mountain gorillas in Rwanda. These gorillas provide intriguing hints about the origins of ape dads, as Lee Gettler and coauthors Rosenbaum and Adam Boyette argue in the

2020 Annual Review of Anthropology.

Mountain gorillas are a type of eastern gorilla. They differ from western gorillas — a separate species, more often seen in zoos — in their habitat and diet. Rosenbaum is more interested in another thing that sets mountain gorillas apart: “Kids spend a ton of time around males,” she says.

Those males may or may not be their dads. Male mountain gorillas don’t seem to know or care which young are theirs.

But nearly all males tolerate the company of kids. Unlike any other great ape that’s been studied in the wild, these males — bruisers twice the size of females, with huge muscles and teeth — are essentially babysitters. Some pick up the kids, play with

them and even sleep cuddled together.

This male company can protect very young gorillas against predators, and it keeps the young from being killed by intruding males. Another important benefit might be social, Rosenbaum speculates.

The young gorillas mingling around an adult male might pick up social skills like human toddlers do from their peers at daycare. Additionally, research has shown that the relationships between young gorillas and adult males persist as those kids grow up.

Another tantalising hint about how male gorillas benefit the young in their group comes from a recent paper on young mountain gorillas whose mothers died. Losing their mothers didn’t make these orphans more likely to die themselves, the researchers found. Nor did they experience other costs, such as a longer wait before having their own young. The orphans’ relationships with others in their group, especially dominant males, seemed to protect them from ill effects.

“Possibly the key defining feature of our species is our behavioural flexibility,” Rebecca Sear says. Assuming that certain roles are “natural” for fathers or mothers can make parents feel isolated and stressed, Sear writes. She hopes research can broaden our understanding of what fathers are for, and what a human family is. That might help societies to better support families of all kinds — whether they have dads like Gettler who are busy chasing the children around, or dads who are away fishing, or no dads at all.

“I think we need to take a much more nonjudgmental view of the human family, and the kinds of family structures in which children can thrive,” she says, “to improve the health of mothers, fathers and children.”

apnea showed cognitive deficits that rose with increasing severity.

It’s estimated that as many as 26% of adults aged 30 to 70 have sleep apnea, according

to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. That may be an underestimate, because the condition is widely under-diagnosed, experts say.

It’s typically thought to affect men more than women.

Sleep apnea has been linked with memory and thinking problems, but the new study finds that cognition is affected even when men have no underlying health conditions, emphasising how important it is to treat it early, a senior co-author, Dr. Ivana Rosenzweig, a neuropsychiatrist who heads the Sleep and Brain Plasticity Centre at Kings College London, said.

“Our patients were mostly unaware of their cognitive deficits,” Rosenzweig said, adding that the participants wouldn’t have sought help “were it not for snoring and bothering their partners.”

The new study is small, and Rosenzweig would like researchers to conduct bigger studies that include women.

Until menopause, women

are much less likely to develop the sleep disorder; however, its prevalence in women increases drastically with age and weight, Rosenzweig said.

“It almost levels out between the sexes after the menopause,” she said.

Why obstructive sleep apnea causes cognitive deficits isn’t clear, although scientists suspect that the frequent, albeit short, awakenings lead to fragmented sleep and that the periods when breathing briefly stops lead to temporary drops in blood oxygen levels.

Among the risk factors for obstructive sleep apnea include: • Being overweight.

• High blood pressure.

• Chronic nasal congestion.

• A narrowed airway.

• Diabetes.

• Asthma.

People often don’t know they have sleep apnea, Rosenzweig said. They typically seek help only when their partners tell them there’s a problem, such as snoring.

Being a dad: when fatherhood is in the blood years, on average, in today’s nonindustrial societies. That strategy “is part of the evolutionary success story of humans,” Lee Gettler says.

Some clues to the evolutionary history of fatherhood are written in the molecules of men’s bodies.

Anthropologist Gettler worked on a long-term study of men in the Philippines, gathering biological data from them in their early 20s and following up five years later.

He and his colleagues found that men with higher testosterone in their early 20s were more likely to have partners and children later on, when researchers followed up. But those new dads no longer had high testosterone — it had dropped dramatically, especially if they had a newborn at

home. Once a man’s youngest child was a toddler, his testosterone began to creep back upward.

Testosterone is linked to mating and competitive behaviour in male animals. Suppressing it might be nature’s way of preparing fathers to co-operate with their partners and care for children, the researchers say. Although caring fathers are rare among mammals and most other animals, many can be found among birds — and those bird fathers also experience testosterone dips.

Prolactin is another hormone linked to paternal behaviour in birds — this time, doting bird dads have more of it — and some studies have hinted at a similar effect in humans. Although we’re only distantly related to birds,

Waking up to dangers of sleep apnea For the new study, the researchers recruited 27 men ages 35 to 70 who weren’t overweight and who had new diagnoses of mild to severe obstructive sleep apnea. Sev-

en men of similar age, body weight and education who didn’t have sleep apnea were also included. Both groups took a series of tests. Men who had obstructive sleep

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Travel & Leisure It is in England’s small towns that you’ll often find the real heart and soul of this eccentric country. Discover market towns with crumbling castles, seaside communities brimming with contemporary art, and more as you travel around England’s best small towns.

1. Woodstock, Oxfordshire This attractive Cotswolds town has been home to the seat of the Duke of Marlborough for over 300 years, and quite the seat it is. Blenheim Palace and its wide-reaching, leafy estate dominates the landscape around Woodstock, with its opulent baroque architecture and large boating lakes. But the town itself — awash with the golden sandstone this region is most famous for —is well worth exploring, too.

The fascinating Oxfordshire Museum is home to ancient dinosaur footprints and a millennia-old hoard of coins that were found locally, while the high street is all independent boutiques and craft coffee shops.

Where to stay Stay in one of the creaking suites at the Feathers, a collection of four townhouses stitched together to create a beautiful, old-timey hotel.

2. Whitby, North Yorkshire There’s no missing the 13th-century Whitby Abbey on a visit to this Yorkshire seaside town. Whether you take a boat trip from Whitby Harbour [pictured] along the precipitous cliffs, where the abbey perches high above the town, or you wander through its tangle of cobbled streets, which connect to the stone staircase that leads up to it, you’ll find yourself drawn to the vast ruin that inspired parts of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. If spooky is your thing, come in late April for the Whitby Goth Weekend, when hundreds of eyelineradorned alternatives swarm the town in their black lace and big, heavy boots.

Keep it quirky and stay in La Rosa Hotel, right in the centre

Thailand’s unspoiled Koh Kradan island off the coast of Trang province was ranked the best of the ‘Top 100 Beaches on Earth 2023‘ by the UK website World Beach Guide.

Four other Thai beaches made the Top 100 including Railay Beach in Krabi province (9), Freedom Beach in Phuket (18), Laem Beach on Koh Yao Yai island in Phang Nga province (21) and Tanot Bay Beach on Koh Tao island in Surat Thani province (44).

Koh Kradan is arguably the most picturesque of the 40 Trang Islands lying off Thailand’s Andaman Coast and comes without the hustle and bustle of popular tourist destinations like Koh Phi Phi or Phuket.

Unlike the nearby Koh Muk island, Koh Kradang has no village or local life. There

Stay nearby at the Victoria in Holkham village, where local venison curry is the dinner menu highlight.

Seven small towns in England worth a visit of town, which has esoteric decor and a Victorian tearoom.

3. Ludlow, Shropshire Sitting near the Welsh/ English border on the edge of the undulating Shropshire Hills in the west of the country, Ludlow is a truly charming 11th-century market town with creaking timber-framed buildings leaning against handsome Georgian townhouses. Come on a Saturday to shop for unusual flavored cheese by the Weird and Wonderful Cheese Co. and locally cured salami and honey at the farmers’ market, right outside the magnificent ruined

medieval Ludlow Castle; hike up the towers for far-reaching views over the surrounding countryside.

Pay a visit to Ludlow Brewing Co. to try a traditional English ale, and stay overnight at the Feathers, a 17th-century, 42-room hotel with the most ornate timber frontage in town and original features inside, including intricate plasterwork and dramatic timber-vaulted ceilings.

4. Falmouth, Cornwall Tucked away on Cornwall’s south coast at the mouth of the River Fal, this pretty seaside town has a lively history of piracy, smuggling,

Thailand’s beaches come out on top

and oyster farming. Spend time in the National Maritime Museum to find out exactly how Falmouth came to be such an important place for nautical business before sampling some of those local oysters, which are still dredged by hand on unmotorised boats.

There are a pair of soft, white-sand beaches on the town’s southern coastline, while the Tudor-era Pendennis Castle overlooks the entrance to the Carrick Roads estuary on a small peninsula.

Bed down at St Michael’s Resort, which has bright, breezy rooms with a nod to the nautical in its decor.

6. Keswick, Cumbria The Lake District is famous for its towering fells, but its little towns should also garner some attention —especially the small but spirited town of Keswick, which sits on the shores of Derwentwater and is home to the world’s only pencil museum. While the history of writing apparatus might not sound enthralling, give it a chance and you’ll find fascinating military and spy connections, a world record– breaking pencil, and some intriguing royal memorabilia — and an opportunity to dry out from those all- toocommon rainy Lake District days.

Stay at the colourful, 34-bedroom Inn on the Square, where its enormous beds are overlooked by photographs of rare-breed Herdwick sheep and the inhouse steak restaurant serves local cuts.

5. Wells-next-the-Sea, Norfolk It’s the simple things that make Wells-next-the-Sea such a delightful vacation destination: A vast goldensand beach stretches out for miles east of the town’s seafront, backed by pine forest and big dunes, plus a row of multi-coloured traditional beach huts, many of which are for day hire.

Crabbing from the quay is a popular pastime in the town itself, with both kids and adults competing to catch a 10-legged friend or two, and classic British, locally caught fish and chips should be eaten from a paper bag for lunch—French’s has the best.

7. Buxton, Derbyshire The Romans were the first to popularise breaks in Buxton, a town that could easily be mistaken for Bath thanks to its fabulous Georgian and Victorian architecture.

Visitors first came here for its natural thermal springs, which like many other mineral waters were believed to have healing properties.

Today, those springs are back up and running at the Buxton Crescent Hotel. Spend your days exploring the natural wonders on the town’s doorstep, including hiking in the Peak District and delving into the vast limestone Poole’s Cavern. You can enjoy a performance at the elegant Buxton Opera House, and don’t miss a chance to ‘take the waters’ just as the Romans would have done over 2,000 years ago.

Stay at the magnificent Buxton Crescent Hotel, an elegant 18th-century building constructed as a perfect crescent in the centre of town.

are only small resorts and a minimart, and the rest of the island is part of Hat Chao Mai National Park.

The World Beach Guide named Koh Kradan the best beach on earth by nature of its largely untouched natural beauty, clear waters, powder-like sand, and noiseless atmosphere.

The island’s main beach is Paradise Beach, home to 1.5 kilometres of white sand and turquoise waters. On the west side of the island, there is a small rocky beach called Sunset Beach accessible by a path in the forest.

World Beach Guide said: “The waters of the Andaman Sea which surround the island are relatively sheltered and shallow, which means they are always warm ie., ideal for swimming. On top of that they

are crystal clear making for some excellent snorkelling in the protected waters.

“One thing to note though is the water is very shallow here at low tide and you’ll have to paddle quite a way before it’s deep enough to swim properly.

“For those feeling particularly energetic there is a popular kayak route around the island which can be completed in less than three hours, even at a leisurely pace.”

Government spokesperson Anucha Burapachaisri publicly announced that five of Thailand’s beaches made World Beach Guide’s Top 100 list, thanking the private and government sectors involved in the tourism industry and the Thai people for their efforts in protecting these natural environments.

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Opinion

Furthermore Gerry Moran

Charles Bronson, The Junkman, and The Ragman I watched a documentary about the actor Charles Bronson (1921-2003) on television recently.

Bronson, known for his granite features and brawny physique, was the archetypical screen tough guy. And I loved him. Loved him in The Mechanic (1972) and Death Wish (1974) remakes of which featured Jason Statham, another archetypical screen tough guy, in The Mechanic (2011) and Bruce Willis in Death Wish (2018).

Charley Buchinsky was born in 1921 in Ehrenfeld, a small mining town in Pennsylvania. Charley was one of 13 children. His parents were Lithuanian and his father, like most men in the town, worked in the mines.

Times were tough back then in the US of the 1920s and ‘30s. Charles Bronson, who took his surname from a street in Hollywood, talked

about collecting old rusty nuts and nails and carrying them on a sack on his back to a man they called: ‘The Junkman’ who gave Charley a few cents for his bag of rusty nuts and bolts.

All of which reminded me of ‘The Junkman’ of my childhood whom we knew as ‘The Ragman’. ‘The Ragman’ brought a bit of excitement, a bit of colour, a bit of magic into our lives back in the black and white Ireland of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. A small van, dark blue or maybe a dirty green, festooned with balloons, would pull into the street. Soon, “Toys for rags, toys for rags” would echo around the street as the back door of the van was flung open revealing an Aladdin’s cave of trinkets and toys. “Toys for rags,” the voice would continue, loud and clear. “Any old rags now, toys for rags, get your rags.”

Games of hurling or football were swiftly abandoned and skipping ropes were dropped as we scurried home to torment our mothers for any unwanted clothes or rags. Unwanted clothes, though, were scarce in those days, those lean times when your good suit was more than likely a hand-me-down from your brother while your sister’s best dress was something your mother, more than likely, stitched together on the Singer sewing machine.

After rummaging high up and low down, our mothers found us some garments or other that could no longer be altered or reused or recycled as we say today.

They were ahead of their times, our mothers, all of whom reused and recycled and had to, to make ends meet. Then with our arms full of clothes we’d dash out the door and make a bee-line for ‘The Ragman’.

Not all our rags, however, met ‘The Ragman’s’ requirements. Indeed, if my memory serves me well, he was quite selective about what rags he would or wouldn’t accept as we stood at his van awaiting, with mounting anticipation, his verdict on our little mongrel bundle of

A bit of excitement, a bit of colour, a bit of magic..

clothes and old rags.

Charles Bronson got a few cents for his sack of rusty nuts and bolts, we got a few trinkets for our armfuls of shabby rags.

Those trinkets, however, were like treasure. I can still see the inside of ‘The Ragman’s’ van, a small mountain of clothes to the back, an array of bright, shiny toys to the front: cap guns, silver whistles, bags of multicoloured marbles, balsa wood glider airplanes, pretty bangles and brooches for the girls and always those colourful, plastic wind-vanes that twirled madly in the wind. Crayons and colouring books he had in abundance and even if your rags didn’t quite measure up he would toss you a few consolation balloons. I cannot put a face on ‘The Ragman’ except to say that he seemed old and raggedy-looking himself. Old

and raggedy or not, he was a beacon of light in those dull, grey afternoons of our childhood.

‘The Ragman’ was, no doubt, a version of ‘The Rag-and-Bone-Man’ from much earlier times who went from street to street collecting rags and bones from leftover meals which were broken down into glue. Our ‘Ragman’ didn’t trade in bones but he gladly accepted buttons, for which, if you had enough of them, you were richly rewarded.

And, so, thanks to Charley Buchinsky, I remember ‘The Ragman’ whose weather-beaten face was not at all unlike that of Charley’s and whose grubby van with the coloured balloons brightened up our lives and who always brought with him something, as my mother used say, “to gladden a small child’s heart”.

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Templetuohy Farm Machinery

Templetuohy Farm Machinery

s n o i t a r b e l e C r a e Y 40

On Friday 31st March Templetuohy Farm Machinery welcomed their customers and well-wishers to the original Depot in Templetuohy near Thurles to Celebrate 40 Years as proud partners with John Deere.

Alongside our wide range of John Deere products was all the Lemken, Kramer, Mazzotti, Agri-Care and SIP products as well as Specialists in each piece of machinery from both TFM and their suppliers. Also there was our Agri-Care who were happy to speak to all our customers about the massive benefits of the suite of features offered by Agri-Care and John Deere’s Precision Ag Packages.

TFM’s Refurbishment Department had several restored tractors on display, the crown jewel of which was the first John Deere sold by Jimmy Butler after TFM became a John Deere dealer. A 1983 John Deere 2040 which had been sitting idle for decades until TFM’s Refurbishment team restored it to factory condition.

There was a record attendance for a TFM event and everyone at TFM was touched by the warmth and enthusiasm we met at the Celebration.

We would like to thank our suppliers, vendors and most importantly our customers for helping us mark the occasion and more importantly helping us reach this milestone over the last four decades and were heartened as we face into our fifth.

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Global Report

BY PAUL HOPKINS

Were it all to come home to roost for Donald Trump – last week’s impeachment, the January 6 Inquiry, the Georgia state alleged rigged voting, and the classified documents saga – it still does not prevent him running for president in 2024.

The qualification to run for president is you have to be 35, to have been born in America, and resident for 14 years..

There are no other qualifications, even if you are a convicted criminal. Also, any outcomes in all three investigations are a long, long way off.

Republicans with Trump onboard did badly in the 2022 primaries and increasingly the majority centrist are distancing themselves from him, realising that, if they have any chance of winning in 2024, they don’t need his inciteful rhetoric out front.

His core base is shrinking. His indictment ultimately won’t help his campaign, the ‘martyr’ scenario notwithstanding. And, be assured, there is politics at play here.

Despite everything, Trump will continue to run and, indeed, could run for president from prison. It’s been done before. He could follow the journey of the one-time socialist troublemaker Eugene V. Debs who in 1920 received nearly a million votes while behind bars.

Also, if he were convicted of a federal crime, Trump could try to pardon himself immediately upon taking office.

The indictment and the other ongoing criminal investigations of Trump raise the real — if still remote — prospect that a leading contender for the 2024 presidential nomination could face prison time.

There are no legal obstacles to running for president as a convicted felon or even from behind bars. And if Trump finds himself in that predicament, he’ll be

What now for US 2024?

A look at what Donald Trump’s next moves might be , and at the Democrats who think Joe Biden should not run for a second term in the White House merely following in the footsteps of Debs.

Debs is far from the only person who has sought the highest office in the land while in prison, but he was the most successful.

In 1920, he became the Socialist Party nominee while serving a 10-year federal sentence for urging people to resist the World War I draft.

He received 3% of the popular vote, a respectable return foror

an incarcerated socialist, but nowhere near enough to force the American people to seriously consider an improbable constitutional question: What happens if an imprisoned candidate actually wins?

Trump’s escalating legal troubles raise that question. He has been indicted in New York for falsifying business records, a state crime that carries a maximum four years in prison when

charged as a felony, though some observers say a judge is unlikely to issue a jail sentence for a first offence.

Three other ongoing criminal investigations of Trump — the one in Georgia for election interference and two from special counsel Jack Smith in Washington — could trigger more serious felony charges and carry a higher risk of prison.

A Trump electoral victory from

behind bars would open a constitutional can of worms, but the general view among legal scholars is that the need for a duly elected president to carry out the duties of office would override a criminal conviction and require the sentence to at least be put on hold. And if Trump were convicted of a federal crime, he could even try to pardon himself immediately upon taking office — a manoeuvre that Debs him-

self promised to undertake if he won.

Indeed, some of the memes of Trump circulating on social media — including a mock-up of a Trump booking mugshot that was never taken — look much like lapel buttons that circulated during Debs’ 1920 campaign showing photos of him along with his federal prisoner number. ‘For President: Convict No. 9653,’ the buttons said.

Trump — who famously said he could shoot someone on New York City’s Fifth Avenue and not lose a single vote — is already trying to convince his supporters that they’re the ones under attack. “In reality, they’re not after me, they’re after you. And I just happen to be the person that’s in the way,” he said at a recent rally in Texas.

Conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche ran for the White House eight times, with one of those bids — in 1992 — coming as he served a 15-year sentence for mail fraud, conspiracy and tax evasion. He was released in 1994 and died in 2019.

There’s already one candidate running from prison in the 2024 contest: Joseph MaldonadoPassage, known as Joe Exotic.

The star of the Netflix Tiger King series is running as a Libertarian after filing candidacy papers last February.

Maldonado-Passage is mounting his presidential bid from a medical centre for federal inmates in Fort Worth, Texas, where he’s serving a 21-year sentence for a slew of animal trafficking and abuse offences as well as attempting to arrange the murder-for-hire of a rival private zoo owner, Carole Baskin.

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors have indicated in court filings that they’re investigating the presence of classified documents at Trump’s Mar- a-Lago estate in Florida as a potential violation of another Espionage Act provision barring “willful retention” of national defence information after a request to return it.

As I write, no charges have been filed, and Donald Trump has denied he did any wrong.

Biden and the nightmare of the American dream

By Paul Hopkins ----------------------A majority of Democrats now think one term is enough for President Joe Biden, despite his insistence that he plans to seek re-election in 2024. Although there has been no formal declaration yet.

According to a new poll from the Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research just 37% of Democrats say they want Biden – who, as I write, is leaving Ireland after a short visit to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement – to seek a second term, down from 52% during last year’s midterm elections.

While the president has had considerable success with legislative victories, the poll surprisingly suggests relatively few Americans give him credit for such. Many believe the

80-year-old’s age is a liability, with people talking about his gait and his gaffes, and that the world’s most stressful job would be better suited to someone younger.

Democrats performed better than expected in the midterms, no small thanks to President Biden.

They expanded control of the Senate by one seat and narrowly lost their House of Representatives majority even though history indicated there

would be a Republican runaway success.

Most Democrats still approve of the job Biden is doing as president, yet appetite for his re-election has slipped, with the decline mainly among young people.

Already the oldest president in US history, Joe Biden is being dogged by questions about his age as he will be 86 if he serves eight years as president. He is said to often work long days, standing for hours; to remember the names of strangers he meets who want to share their stories with him.

Sadly, those moments when he appears lost on stage or stumbles somewhat through speeches can attract more attention than do his policies.

He has been an American political figure for 50 years, having first been elected to the Senate in 1972. Today, his

administration, in two years, has four big legislative victories under its belt – despite the Republican-led House – among them the coronavirus relief packages, and tax and spending measures that address climate change and improve Revenue’s enforcing of tax compliancy and, in turn, help taxpayers.

Biden’s advisers have spent months preparing for him to formally announce his reelection campaign. Now, with the president still silent, a sense of doubt is cutting into conversations about 2024.

What if he decides not to run?

While the belief in Biden’s circle is that he will soon give the go-ahead, his indecision has resulted in a ‘stalled moment’ across the party — in which some potential presidential aspirants and scores of major donors are considering

that optional strategies may be needed going forward, even developing a Plan B while supportive of the president.

A kind of political inertia has crept in. After Donald Trump’s 2024 launch in November last, Biden advisers wanted got get cracking in earnest on their own 2024 plans. That urgency seems to me no longer evident. That said, they likely feel no threat of a credible primary challenge later this year, a dynamic owed to those Democrats’ better-than-expected midterms in 2022.

A no-show Joe would see an avalanche of attention on Vice-President Kamala Harris whose so-so performances have raised doubts among Democrats about her ability to win. And there is no apparent ‘other’ waiting in the wings.

As mentioned above, Republicans with Trump onboard

did badly in the 2022 primaries and increasingly the majority centrist are distancing themselves from him, realising that, if they have any chance of winning in 2024, they don’t need his inciteful rhetoric out front.

His core base is shrinking. His indictment ultimately won’t help his campaign, the ‘martyr’ scenario notwithstanding.

And, be assured, there is politics at play here.

With no clear potential ‘winning’ president on either side, the fate of America seems to be one of increasing divisiveness.

Abortion, gun law, immigration and the economy are still the divisive issues. However, in some ways it is no longer Republican against Democrat or liberal v. conservative. It is rural against urban, the haves v. the have-nots.

The nightmare, seemingly, of the American dream…

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News

EU beef prices to remain high This year will see EU beef prices remaining high, with supplies set to contract further, the bloc has forecast.

It also warned the high prices could potentially have a negative impact on EU consumption and competitiveness of EU exports.

It also said the high prices could see imports of beef into the bloc increase a

further 5% this year, having seen a 25% increase last year.

Factory prices here remain strong and prices at marts continue to rise, with lighter stock up 8-10c/kg and cull cows making over €3/kg, with reduced supply of meaningful numbers of heavy steers and heifers.

EU beef production decreased in 2022 by 2.6%.

Out of the largest producing countries, Germany declined the most (-8%), followed by France (-4.4%) and Poland (-2.6%).

On the other hand, Spain continued increasing its production (+2%) and increases were also recorded in Ireland (+4.5%).

In a December 2022 livestock survey, the number of

suckler cows in the EU declined for the third year in a row, by 240,000 (-2.3%). At the same time, the decline of dairy cows was lower than expected (-0.6%).

The number of male bovine cattle for slaughtering between one and two years also decreased (-2.2%) and this will have implications for beef availability this year,

a spokesperson for EU said.

On the other hand, it expects that the slaughtering of dairy cows might accelerate this year and be stronger, as some dairy farmers will react to declining raw milk prices, while beef prices could stay high.

As a result, EU beef production in 2023 is expected to decrease further by 1.6%.

Big Active: from left, Paul O’Connell, Conor O’Donnell, (18), Barnardos CEO Suzanne Connolly, Rachel Nugent, Corporate Responsibility Manager, Aldi Ireland and Sophia Whoriskey (14) PHOTO: Patrick Bolger

Paul O’Connell calls for Kilkenny schools to get moving!

The Barnardos Big Active supported by Aldi is officially launched by Paul O’Connell. For a second year, the Barnardos nationwide school initiative supported by Aldi will help students across the country of all ages and abilities to focus on their own health and wellbeing, all while helping others. Barnardos is inviting both primary and secondary schools from Kilkenny to register at www.barnardos. ie/bigactive and get active to raise funds for vulnerable children and families across Ireland.

Participating schools can choose from a range of activities based on the body, mind and heart.

• Body: Physical challenges that take care of your body • Mind: Mindfulness exercises to support positive mental health and wellbeing • Heart: Promoting the importance of charity by helping others around you Barnardos Big Active and Aldi Ambassador Paul O’Connell said: “In my experience as a parent, encouraging regular exer-

cise has huge benefits, like increasing fitness, lowering stress and creating a healthier routine.

“The Big Active will help both primary and secondary students across Ireland become more physically active, encourage positive mental health practices and mindfulness techniques, while, raising money for vulnerable children and families that Barnardos support.”

Barnardos CEO Suzanne Connolly said: “We know that childhood lasts a lifetime. The Barnardos Big Active creates a real focus

on student’s own wellbeing.

The practices and exercises within this initiative will not only help students now but can be carried with them into adulthood.

“Students across the country can give back to children and families who need our support more than ever, particularly during the cost-of-living crisis. All funds raised will go towards improving the lives of the children and families we work with,” she said.

Rachel Nugent, Corporate Responsibility Manager at Aldi Ireland, said: “We are

passionate about providing primary and secondary schools with the tools needed to care for both their physical and mental health.

That’s why we are encouraging schools to register their interest and take part.”

As part of the Big Active, school teachers will receive all materials to support activities including personal journals for each student to track their progress. * Discover the benefits of the campaign by signing up www.barnardos.ie/ bigactive

Smishing: a new bank scam warning Bank of Ireland is warning about an escalating wave of fraudulent text messages, with fraudsters pretending to be a motorway operator and sending messages urging customers to pay outstanding toll charges or update account details. The website links in these messages are not genuine and are an attempt to collect personal card and online banking details.

The Bank is currently seeing a large spike in motorway-themed smishing, and is warning customers to be particularly wary.

Nicola Sadlier, Head of Fraud, Bank of Ireland, said: “Smishing attacks tend to come in waves, and the latest theme is motorway fraud, where fraudsters are sending fake text purportedly from operators such as eFlow.

When you click on the text it

leads to a fake website where some will end up providing their confidential card and bank account details.

“In the past we have seen similar waves of fraudulent messages appearing to be from delivery services, Government agencies or banks and now it seems that motorway smishing is trending. Text messages should be treated with extreme

caution – the general rule is never trust, always verify.”

Bank of Ireland’s advice to customers in response to the current smishing scam: Do not click on links or respond to SMS text messages which appear as if sent by a motorway toll operator looking for payment for an unpaid toll; Remember that companies such as these, or banks, delivery

companies, utility providers and Government agencies will never send a text linking to a website that requests online banking details; eFlow has advised anyone who receives a text message regarding unpaid tolls to ignore the message and not to open any links. eFlow does not ask customers to open any links to confirm payment details.

According to the forecast, as the beef supply in the EU is lower, prices may stay high, and this could potentially have a negative impact on the EU consumption and competitiveness of the EU exports.

The current price environment could also see imports into the EU grow by 5%, according to the forecast.

Farmers should ‘engage early’ on CAP Agricultural consultants as well as Teagasc are advising farmers not to leave applications for new CAP schemes until the last minute and engage their services as soon as possible.

A number of important new schemes under the new CAP are open for applications, many of which are said to be more complex than their predecessors.

With pressure on advisors set to ramp up in the coming weeks, farmers have been encouraged to come in early to give enough time to work through the process.

President of the Agricultural Consultants Association Noel Feeney said farmers should retain any recent Department correspondence in regard to their payments and bring them to their consultation with advisors.

A Teagasc spokesperson told the Farming Independent its advisors would have some knowledge of which applications may be more complicated than others and these are prioritised for early engagement.

Teagasc recently advised all clients to familiarise themselves with the contents of the Department of Agriculture’s Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS) correspondence as soon as possible, be aware of the changes in the values of entitlements, and alert advisors to any changes in the ownership or identified farmers on your farm operation.

Clients should contact an advisor as soon as possible to make an appointment to submit the application well in advance of the May 29 deadline.

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Feature wish I never told her.”

Frances shook her head; “She’s just scared Debbie. So are we.” Before anyone could interject, Debbie pulled out a slip of paper from underneath her pillows.

A train ticket. She kept her voice steady but dared not to raise her head.

“I wanted you all to come here today because I wanted to tell you all properly. I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning. I know I can’t stay here anymore. I can’t risk putting anyone in danger. It’s my only option.”

The group watched in bewilderment as Debbie dashed outside, her inky curls disappearing behind the crack of the door.

Harriet and Marky exchanged a concerned glance before following in hot pursuit, leaving James and Frances rooted to the spot in shock. It wasn’t long before the faint sound of an argument began brewing outside as strained shouting rippled through the walls.

Frances let out a worried squeak; “I’ll check on them.”

As she turned to get up, James caught the flash of colour falling out from Frances’ skirt pocket. Without hesitation he rose from the window sill and pinched the edge with a swift swipe. She whipped around, trying to claw at in a desperate frenzy.

“Don’t James!”

He raised his head, his eyes contorted with confused anger.

“This is the car, isn’t it?

Why did you hide this?”

“No one was supposed to see it,” Frances choked out.

“Frances, you have to go to the Guards with this. They can catch that scumbag before he hurts Debbie again.”

Frances made another failed attempt to snatch it back. “Debbie’s suffering enough as it is. Anyway, it’s too big of a risk. You’ve seen what these people are like.

You don’t cross them.” The

We Can Only Run Now This week, The Kilkenny Observer welcomes Kilkenny student Keela Ayres as she presents episode five of a short story for our readers. As a newspaper, we attempt to cover as much news as possible on various topics. The inclusion of a young writer, such as Keela, with aspirations in that field, is something we are happy to promote.

BY: KEELA AYRES

"Debbie is finally free from the confines of hospital but the fear consuming her is yet to follow. With seemingly no options left, the group hatch an escape plan but the results prove to be less than ideal".

“Any colour they could’ve given me for the cast and they chose YELLOW?!”

The group were gathered

in Debbie’s room, with the afternoon sun spilling in eagerly through narrow slips of curtain.

Debbie sat upright in bed with the aid of Harriet’s ‘pillow mountain’ wearing a scowl that proved a sharp contrast to the giddy doodles tracing her arm.

Marky broke into a wide smirk at her expense, earning him a slap from Harriet.

The pair sat with barely an inch between them on the floor while James occupied the window sill and Frances perched awkwardly at the foot of the bed.

The warm glow of the room

couldn’t distract them from the harsh reality they now faced.

“So your Mam still won’t talk to you?” Harriet decided to distract Debbie from her cast dilemma.

Weeks had passed since the infamous attack at the hurling match but rumours surrounding it remained rampant.

In school everyone now travelled in their own anxious packs, fuelled with the fear of being the next victim.

Debbie directed her gaze on her blanket; “Not even a word since we left the hospital. Honestly I

pair locked eyes, both in refusal of backing down.

Frances fought desperately against the jitters that were itching her body.

Before Frances could make her final grab, Harriet reappeared.

She cleared her throat, her shoulders heavy with defeat.

Debbie’s mind wasn’t going to be changed. “Marky and I are going with Debbie to the station tomorrow.

Are ye coming?” James gave a quick nod. “Of course.

I’m going to head off now, Mam’s probably waiting for me.” Frances followed him in horror as he slipped the Polaroid into his pocket going out the door. He had found his opportunity and taken it. “See you then!”

Harriet called after him.

Marky came back in with Debbie, armed with a scuffed suitcase on the brink of spilling.

“You’re already packed?”

Frances beady eyes blinked rapidly behind her wired frames.

“She threatened to break my arm so we’d have matching casts,” Marky snorted as he extended the handle towards Debbie.

As she tightened her grip around it, he placed a protective hand on her shoulder.

“We can still find another way to solve this Deb. You running away, is a mistake.”

She gently patted his hand with her free one.

“If keeping my friends safe is a mistake, then it’s one I’ll gladly make.”

The train station was clouded in morning mist, the faint whirring of travelling trains hung in the air.

Frances, Marky and Harriet stood in a tight little huddle on the cobbled platform, still secretly clinging onto the hope of Debbie changing her mind.

“Where’s James? He told me he’d be here first.” Marky turned to face the girls.

Frances bit back her answer, knowing the damage the truth would cause if let loose.

The sound of rolling wheels greeted them as Debbie flung herself towards the group. She squeezed them all so hard, it rocked them to their bare bones. Only silence could sit with them since no one knew what to say.

The clock rang out seven chimes as the train crept towards the platform. She left as quick as she came, hurtling down to her only chance of escape. “DON’T LET THAT GIRL ON THE TRAIN!” an authoritative voice bellowed behind the ticket office.

The group, Debbie included, spun around in a dazed panic. Their eyes meet a dishevelled Garda with a photo held in her grasp.

“Care to explain this little thing?”

Keela Ayres is from Kilkenny City and currently attends Presentation Secondary School.

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Opinion

Girl Auction

BY NED EGAN

Part 13 Silence now hung heavy between father and daughter – Mikey isn’t sure what Molly’ll do if he ‘rushes’ her.

He’s no fool, and is well aware that discretion is advisable when you’re up front - at the ‘business end’ - of a weapon.

Especially if it’s a shotgun – and at close range.

He didn’t know what to say.

Talk wasn’t on Molly’s mind, either. Quietly, then, without a change in her expression – and as if reading his thoughts - she raised the Four Ten. Ever so slowly: calmly: deliberately. She then paced out, with measured tread, fifteen steps towards him.

The barrels were now further elevated, at snail’s pace, until they were centred on the frame of Mikey Connolly. Not a tremor or a quiver affected those dark muzzles. He watched, stunned. Connolly wasn’t by any means a cowardly fellow. But, even in the pale ghostly light cast by the Milky Way, he noticed how huge those twin barrels had suddenly become…

We’re all {almost} sure Molly wouldn’t dream of a ‘goodbye’ shot. But - Mikey Connolly wasn’t. He’d heard the flat crack of the Four Ten earlier {the one that smashed Paudhaun’s scian out of his paw} - then a few howls. He {rightly} assumed that ‘dowry boy’ had got on the wrong end of some hot lead. For all he knew, the P was dead meat. But what he was very sure of was that a cartridge was ‘up the spout’ of the choke barrel. At this range, she couldn’t miss. He’d realised when he saw how Molly handled the gun – that she’d done it before tonight.

‘How the hell had she learned to use it? What bowsie gave her that bloody know-how?

Guns are for men! Women’s place is in the kitchen! Lotsa things wrong here…’

He’d also suddenly remembered the hatred on this girls face in the kitchen, when the Dacent had lifted his jamjar and candle lantern up along her body, ogling her flowering beauty. It was the first time he’d seen cold rage on her features – and it shook him. He thought he’d known her – like he knew her mother. But this young one was a tougher nut altogether.

She was now like a stranger.

A dangerous stranger. He realised how little he’d

learned about her, in the fifteen years of their lives together: what meagre store of credit he’d built up: how sparse a barren field of happy memories he could call on - or talk about: how very frighteningly few bargaining chips he held…

One other thing he now also knew: the reason why she’d always side-lined confrontation with him. It wasn’t fear that had caused her to avoid rows: it’d been her intention to hide the iron that was at her inner core. Like all clever people - daughter wasn’t going to let him know her strength.

Cute. Smart. She had him.

Only what she ever wanted known – was let known. Like right now...

No, he wasn’t at all sure that she wouldn’t ‘pull’ on him. Although Molly couldn’t properly see it in the gloom, his features had turned shade a pasty, waxy - and his body gave a few tiny trembles.

This had never happened to him before. And still she held the gun on him, staying completely and frighteningly still. Silent...

Now he’s getting a bit desperate: ‘Would a prayer to his long-departed wife work?’

Naw – even Mikey Connolly hadn’t neck enough to try that one.

‘Then, what about a shout to Little Miss Snobby – who’s still patting and muttering, codding-on with that invisible dog?’

Hah: that’d be the only joke of the night…

‘Bloomin’ hell! What to do?’

The Mollers wasn’t saying a word. He watched her.

She watched him watching her. Her gaze was hardly warm or loving. Maybe it was time for some kind of change? He knew things couldn’t continue as is – danger always increases with tension. For the first time since his wedding, Mikey Connolly felt the ground had shifted violently under him: his bully-boy role was gone.

No matter what happened now, he was a loser. Could it be that ‘humiliation – or elimination’ - was now his lot? Yep – that’s about the size of it, Mikey.

So, he tried one last trick: “Daughter{?!} - do you know that what you’re doing is against every known law in the land? Don’t you know that if you dounce me with that Four Ten – you’ll be in all the trouble in the world?

Apart from the Mortal Sin of it!!” The gun was silently elevated a few degrees.

Expertly. Steadily. Then, for the first time this hard night – in the agelessly long few minutes they’ve been staring each other out - she addresses him: “Oh – we’re into ‘sins’ now, are we – good father?” ‘Oh, cutting! The way she speaks to me!’ “Would you like then, perchance, to meet a priest – very shortly?”

‘Cripes – gulp - why didn’t I keep me big mouth shut?’

You ask me ‘if I know the law,’ etc. Well, let me tell you one little thing of interest about the word ‘know,’ Mikey boy: if this gun goes off – you’ll be the only one who won’t know about it…”

Then that chilly voice, again.

“Reflect on your position.

I’ve reflected on mine: quite seriously. You’re not running the show anymore. If you bring doom on yourself, it’ll be for nothing. And Babsie and I will swear blind we heard a shot, and came running up here to find the Dacent Boy had dounced you. So, I’d get clean away with it - the Dacent’d be locked up forever – probably stretched. Which would be sad - for him. And you’d be up in the graveyard. No more drinking and gambling for you then, Mr Connolly. I’d get the farm, I’d sell it, and Babs and myself’d be out of this area in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. And before the maggots’d even taken the first chaw at you. I’d go to Confession later on – in a far distant parish – and tell the tale. Well, part of it, anyway. And that’d be the end of the whole affair.”

Silence again. Shocked silence. ‘Worms!? Me? Janey Mack! What a way for a daughter to talk! Disgraceful!

The Dacent - stretched! And this “Mikey boy” stuff! The cheeky rip! Anyway - aren’t I her father?’ Well, thinking about it, he’d been present at her creation. But not much since...

‘Jay – she’s got it all figured!

Can I have been that bad, that she’d riddle me? The two of ‘em are tough out!

Still, the way she puts it – and she’s not wrong – a ‘rush’ would make me the biggest loser. Why didn’t I see this quare ruck coming? We’re only standing here a few minutes – swapped just a few words - and I’ve found out things I had no earthly notion of. Who’d have thought my quiet young wan would ‘up stakes and turn tables’ like this? Cripes - ‘tis only about ten minutes since I left the house – and the world’s turned upside down, inside out – completely baughways. Come to think of it, my wedding day had been mighty. ‘Herself’ was a lovely girl – I thought an odd time that I’d not treated her too well. If she’d hung on a few years more, maybe things would have improved. But she was too easy-going. If she’d reared up on me, I’d probably have took it easier with th’oul gamblin’ and the drink. But there I go again – blaming someone else!

Maybe this little pair of hard chaws have a few reasons for making a run for it…

To be continued….

Disclaimer The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the author do not reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of The Kilkenny Observer.

Minister for Health officially opens Newpark Primary Care Centre in Kilkenny

The Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly T.D., visited Kilkenny on Thursday afternoon (6th of April, 2023), where he officially opened the Newpark

Primary Care Centre.

The Newpark Primary Care Centres was developed as part of the HSE’s €240 million national Enhanced Community Care

(ECC) programme, which is making substantial progress nationally in reducing pressure on services and dependence on the acute hospital-centred model of care through enhanced and increased community services.

The Newpark Primary Care Centre in Kilkenny is a developer led (per Lou Investments Healthcare) leasehold building that has been occupied on a phased basis since summer 2021.

At 4,483 square metres over three floors, this Centre will provide of a range of health services from a single integrated, modern facility to help serve the healthcare needs of the people of Kilkenny City and surrounding areas in the north of Co. Kilkenny. The Lakeside GP practice is based in the building.

In addition to the GP services, those to be provided in the Newpark Primary Care Centre by HSE/South East Community Healthcare (SECH) include Community Health Network management, Adult Mental Health Day Hospital and Community Medical Doctor, Counselling in primary care, Dental and Othrodontics, Dietician, Integrated Care for Older Persons clinics, Occupational Therapy, Ophthalmology, Physiotherapy,

Psychology, Public Health Nursing, Social inclusion clinics for marginalised communities, Speech and Language Therapy and Chronic Disease management team members (including Dietitians, Physiotherapy, Podiatrists and COPD rehab nurses) with other community healthcare administrative supports.

Speaking at the official opening of the Newpark Primary Care Centre, Minister Donnelly said: “Enhanced Community Care is a huge investment in community healthcare services in the HSE, aiming to provide more services closer to people’s homes, and provide extra services for older people, or people who live with long-term health

conditions.”

“94 Community Healthcare Networks (including ones based in the Kilkenny and surrounding areas), 21 Community Specialist Teams for Older Persons (including one in Kilkenny), 21 Chronic Disease Community Specialist Teams (including one based in Kilkenny) and 21 Community Intervention Teams (including one here in Co. Kilkenny with the involvement of St. Luke’s General Hospital) are now in place, with national coverage.

Community diagnostic services provided over 253,000 scans to patients in 2022.

“The national Enhanced Community Care programme is, at its core, a reform programme repre-

senting an investment of €240 million to develop and enhance care in the community. It has been developed under the Sláintecare Programme to ensure all HSE primary and community care services work together effectively.”

“Primary Care Centres, such as this new, state of the art ones in Kilkenny, together with the Integrated Care for Older People hubs such as the one for Carlow/Kilkenny, allow us to provide integrated and high-quality services closer to people’s homes. I want to thank the HSE staff, working in partnership with GPs and Primary Care Teams, who are already making a difference to the lives of people throughout Co. Kilkenny.”

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Kilkenny Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan Public Consultation: Phase 2 Kilkenny County Council is launching the second phase of community consultation on the development of the Kilkenny Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP).

In collaboration with key stakeholders and the public Kilkenny County Council has drafted the SUMP Vision, Objectives and Measures.

Phase One of the consultation and engagement process took the form of Key Stakeholder Focus Groups, a Public Consultation Exhibition and a Youth Workshop. A few of the key themes identified thus far include the need to improve accessibility for walking, wheeling and cycling, prioritise school travel and upgrade public transport options.

The Vision, Objectives and Measures are now being presented back to the public to further gather insights and ideas from those who live and work in the City. These objectives seek to: • Support Ireland on our path to becoming a net zero society by 2050 and in reducing emissions by 51% by 2030, as set out in the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment)

Act 2021.

• Reallocate urban space towards the sustainable movement of people (public transport, walking, wheeling & cycling) • Enhance placemaking (enhancing public spaces) • Manage parking and consider Park & Ride/Stride • Enhance access to public transport • Create safe routes to school As part of this phase of consultation we would like to find out your thoughts on the Kilkenny SUMP draft measures. It is very important that we hear from people usually left out of the consultation process as it is likely that these people will be affected by changes suggested in the plan. We have changed our engagement process to give a voice to those who we didn’t hear from in the first round of consultation with a series of chances for voices to be heard in the coming weeks.

An Cathaoirleach, Cllr.

Pat Fitzpatrick continues to support the broad community engagement through the SUMP process.

“We would now like to hear

more from the public, so we can ensure that the plan deals with the issues of city transport and travel that are most important to the people of Kilkenny.”

Opportunities to have your say: • Visit shorturl.at/bcxBK to

Mayor of Kilkenny calls for National Arts and Cultural Centre to be developed in the Abbey Quarter Cllr David FitzGerald has called on the people of Kilkenny to back him in a bid for a National Arts and Cultural Centre to be developed in the heart of Kilkenny City.

The Mayor of Kilkenny wants to see a major landmark building to be part of the next phase of the Kilkenny Abbey Quarter development.

Cllr FitzGerald said as Kilkenny Mayor he wants

to encourage the people of Kilkenny to support his campaign for a landmark Arts and Cultural Centre by the banks of the Nore.‘’This is an opportunity of a generation for Kilkenny to deliver and to develop a major National Arts and Cultural Centre here on the banks of the River Nore. Over ten years ago in my previous term as Mayor we bought site the

old Brewery, the people of Kilkenny came to me and said they want a landmark building in the Abbey Quarter. This is our opportunity and we should lobby, work and support the delivery of a new theatre, a new arts centre, a new performance base, a new gallery.

This is an opportunity to lead a legacy for generations to come.’’

fill out the online community survey running until the 5th May. This provides the public a chance to give their opinion on the current vision, and objectives related to the SUMP as well as an opportunity to share further ideas.

• Connect the Dots and

Kilkenny County Council will be available to meet with the public and receive their feedback on the SUMP and gather additional insights on Friday April 21st: • 9:00AM - 11:00AM : MacDonagh Junction Shopping Centre (drop-in)

• 12.30pm -1.30pm : St. Canices Community Hall (Register: shorturl.at/sCFG1) • 3:30PM - 5:00PM : Market Cross Shopping Centre (dropin) All information relating to the SUMP can be accessed via sump.kilkenny.ie

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COMPETITION TIME

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The Kilkenny Observer has linked up with Goods of Kilkenny and we are holding a competition to win a €100 voucher.

With 4 Floors of Fashion to choose from, get your entries into The Kilkenny Observer and be in with a chance of winning this great prize.

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Competition Rules 1.

This competition is sponsored by The Kilkenny Observer 2. The prize will be a €100 voucher for Goods of Kilkenny 3. The closing date for entries is Friday, April 21st 2023 at 5.00pm 4. The winner will be chosen by an open draw held at the office of The Kilkenny Observer on Monday, April 24th 2023 5. The prize is non-transferable; no cash equivalents may be claimed. .

6. All competition entries must be completed on the above form only.

7. The winner will be advised by phone / e-mail 8. After being notified, the name of the winner will be posted in the next edition of the Kilkenny Observer.

9. Entrants will be deemed to have accepted these rules and to have agreed to be bound by them when entering the competition.

10. The competition is not open to The Kilkenny Observer employees or their families.

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News

Kilkenny Community Composting Training Programme spring & summer 2023 (5 communities per training session). See details of dates and times: Thomastown Thursday May 18th & 25th, June 1st & 8th - 7pm to 9:30pm Saturday June 3rd -1pm to 5pm

Kilkenny LEADER Partnership in conjunction with Southeast Energy Agency invite interested community groups to join an action packed training programme to teach people how to reduce food waste and compost within your community.

Training consists of 1 evening in-person, 3 evening online sessions and 1 half-day hands-on workshop (weekend) to learn how to prevent food waste and compost both garden and food waste using a variety of composting systems.

The training is offered free of charge. Volunteers are expected to attend all training sessions to avail of the funding and technical assistance being

Freshford Wednesday May 31st, June 7th, 14th & 21st - 7pm to 9:30pm Saturday June 17th - 1pm to 5pm

offered by Kilkenny County Council to develop Tidy Town and community composting projects once the training has been completed. This is a unique opportunity for any community group within County Kilkenny to:

Piltown Tuesday June 6th, 13th, 20th, 27th - 7pm to 9:30pm Saturday June 24th - 1pm to 5pm Please register your community before May 12, 2023 at https:// www.surveymonkey.com/r/WCRHH2J or scan this QR code For further information see please contact: craig@ bentonecosolutions.com or phone Fergus on 0868528884

• Make a difference in your community • Protect our environment • Meet like-minded people • Save money and have fun Booking is essential! Spaces are limited to 3-6 volunteers per community for 15 communities in total within County Kilkenny only. Acceptance to the programme is based on a first-come, first-served basis

MacDonagh Junction - a world of pure imagination…

Crowds gathered at MacDonagh Junction Shopping Centre to celebrate Easter last weekend and boy did they have fun! The Little Blue Heroes visited the Centre on Saturday with Garda Lisa Mullins and the Easter Bunny who presented them with presents, balloons and Easter eggs; while The Pantry Kilkenny and Jump Juice kindly donated some tasty treats!

Little Oisin was presented with his Little Blue Heroes uniform while others were issued with their graduation papers! After some facepainting, they finished off the day visiting the Nore valley Petting Zoo on the Mall joined by lots of doting animal lovers.

The Little Blue Heroes are local children undergoing long-term medical treatment for serious illness who have become Honorary Gardai and part of the Garda family. As heroes [to us] with the battles they face, these children have become Little Blue Heroes.

On Easter Monday, families enjoyed a whole host of entertainment including amazing fun shows and Easter Hunts with the Mad Hatter and Alice in Wonderland along with an

the Easter weekend: “It was an amazing weekend and feedback from parents and children was brilliant.

It’s so rewarding to see so many smiling faces captivated by all the performances throughout the Centre over the whole weekend.”

Little Blue Heroes Foundation is a not-for-profit charity operated entirely by volunteers (no paid staff ) made up of Garda members/ staff, retired Garda members, their families, friends and civic minded people from communities. It aims to help families in need from local communities in Ireland who have children undergoing long-term medical treatment for serious illness.

Arts Wizard Hub, Facepainting and the Easter Bunny! The Mad Hatter commented after the day: “It was a pleasure to entertain for such wonderful groups and supported

by Dominique’s energy and beaming presence. Thank you to the Centre, to all the children and families, and to Kilkenny for their warm welcome and fun; myself and

Alice will definitely be back.”

Dominque Dumecz, Customer Experience Coordinator for the Centre, spoke of the excitement in MacDonagh Junction over

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The Kilkenny Observer Friday 14 April 2023

Theatre

­

All Moll photographs by Aidona Photography Kilkenny The lights have been turned off at the Ballast Presbytery.

Fr Pratt is gone to greener pastures, while Moll Kettle puts Fr Brest, current PP, through his paces to become the best fundraiser in the dioceses.

Fr Loran continues with the

running of the nightly bingo while dreaming of conducting his magical choir.

Bridgie Andover and husband Ulick are expecting a child.

Great houses reported by Lake Front of house manager Dee Gibney reported very healthy sales for the first three nights of the stage production

Diversity and comm evident as Thomasto from strength to stre of Moll by J B Keane and recorded full houses for the final three performances.

The show was presented

by Lake Productions who celebrated their fifth year in business. " It was an absolute pleasure being part of the Thomastown set up for the last two weeks", and "our get in" at The Concert Hall and Production dates were enhanced by the

welcome we received from Seamus Quigley and his crew", continued Dee. Congrats to Thomastown Speaking on behalf of Lake Productions on the final night, Dee congratulated the venue for their commitment to community theatre and said she was thrilled to see the diversity of activities at the hall.

Ms Gibney thanked all involved in the Moll production both on and off stage, giving a special mention to audiences who supported the production in such large numbers..

"The writing of John B Keane is still very much alive and kicking ", said Dee. A Thomastown welcome Venue manager at

Thomastown Hall Seamus Quigley said he was delighted with the response to the show over the six nights and was happy with the relationship between the Concert Hall and Lake Productions.

Moll by JB KEANE marked the groups 22nd production since they were founded in 2018.

In a message delivered to backstage at Thomastown

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Theatre ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­

­ ­ ­ ­ ­

itment o wn goes ngth on the final night, John Keane, son of the author, congratulated Lake Productions on their fantastic run and on behalf of the Keane family said he was thrilled having his fathers work in such safe hands.

Thomastown Concert Hall leads the way in community spirit

"The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the actions of its members." So said Coretta Scott King.

If ever an example of a community spirit was needed then one need look no further that the Community Hall in Thomastown.

No shortage of groups Groups and activities include: Theatre, Music,

­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­

Concerts, Slimming World, Circuit Training, ICA, Hip Hop, Aerobics, Senior Citizens, River Trust, Pilates, Bingo, E.T.B, Active Retirement, Irish Dancing, Tidy Towns Community Network, Men's Shed, Country Market.

There is public access Wi-fi and there are 53 car parking spaces.

Speaking at the venue

recently, manager Seamus Quigley said that the venue was going from strength to strength. "This is community in action ", said Mr Quigley who went on to say that great credit is due to all volunteers.

Seamus said that they are continually upgrading the venue and that every space is being used which promotes not just the hall but also Thomastown itself. .

During a recent interview, Emily Kelly, Production manager for Moll said: "Lake productions would like to thank manager Seamus Quigley and his team for the céad míle fáilte every night.

To see the work being carried out by the volunteers night after night is nothing short of inspirational.

The team from Thomastown go above and beyond the call of duty to

make visiting groups and audiences welcome.

A smile when you arrive and the kettle always boiling.

They just couldn’t do enough for you."

Emily went on to say that the venue and facilities are both top class.

Claire Henriques who plays the role of Moll said that it was an absolute pleasure to present a theatre production at Thomastown.

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Are you struggling, languishing, just getting by, or actually flourishing?

An international mind health study published this month

by AXA Ireland indicated we have a majority of adults not doing well emotionally, with fewer numbers self-reporting in a positive way. Of 2,000 people interviewed, over 40% said they were struggling or languishing (failing to make progress), one in three said they were ‘getting by’, while

less than one in four felt they were forging ahead.

In her 2012 best-seller, psychologist Maureen Gaffney defines flourishing as achieving a deeper sense of well-being, meaning and purpose even when faced with adversity.

The AXA study involved 16 countries and a total of 30,000 adults. It uses the term mind health rather than mental

health to break down the stigma still associated with mental illness. In recent years, we realise how wellbeing affects both physical health and emotional health and contributes to happy and fulfilled lives.

However, the Irish section of the study found that more than one in two adults often feel overwhelmed by factors

beyond their control, with one in five experiencing high stress levels. Loneliness was among the challenges highlighted, with the majority of respondents saying they felt lonely in the four weeks preceding the Sep-Oct 2022 study. Some of this may be due to a natural feeling of gloom as we said goodbye to summer and braced ourselves for winter

The Kilkenny Observer Friday 14 April 2023

ahead.

Loneliness can occur at any age. People often feel lonely at times of transition in their lives – moving from primary school to second level, being home alone as a new mother, changing jobs, going through a separation or divorce, or transitioning into retirement.

It may be much more than the absence of people. Lonely people may be more prone to depression, have a glass halfempty approach to life, suffer from a number of fears and generally find it more difficult to be peaceful and optimistic. Loneliness can also be attributed to low self-esteem.

People who lack confidence in themselves often believe that they are unworthy of the attention or regard of other people.

This can lead to isolation and chronic loneliness.

So loneliness, according to experts, is not necessarily about being alone, but feeling alone. In many calls to SeniorLine, Ireland’s national confidential service for older people, loneliness is either expressed or implied. Callers are lonely for a number of reasons. They are geographically isolated, physically distant from friends or family, with no visible neighbours. Add illness or poor mobility, and it is obvious that opportunities to engage with others are lessened. Bereaved people are often extremely lonely, missing the person who had died, and generally feeling that life has lost much of its happiness and meaning.

So how should we defeat or manage loneliness? A HSE slogan in the past declared ‘Contact Kills Loneliness’ encouraging people to reach out to each other. Modern methods to connect may include Facebook, FaceTime, Instagram, chatrooms and online clubs. Thousands every day derive company and comfort from this virtual contact, and if you are both housebound and technically competent, it can be a wonderful way to stay in touch with other people SeniorLine’s 100+ volunteers are trained to help callers overcome possible empty feelings. For some callers the more old fashioned methods of staying connected may work best. The informal daily actions such as smiling and greeting neighbours, interacting with people in shops and restaurants helps to oil the wheels of modern life. Then there are the thousands of ways of being with others that are open to all. These include attending local events, joining a group such as a book club, an active retirement association, a choir, or meeting with like minded others in a shared activity like cards, crafts or chat. Finally, volunteering reaching out to help others - can cure our own loneliness, and move us from languishing to flourishing in one smooth leap.

Flourishing by Maureen Gaffney, Penguin Books SeniorLine Freefone 1800 80 45 91 open 10am - 10pm 365 days a year

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The Kilkenny Observer Friday 14 April 2023

The National Meals on Wheels Network was estab established in 2015 under the umbrella of Irish Rural Link.

Irish Rural Link (IRL), formed in 1991, is a indi national network of organisations and individuals campaigning for sustainable rural development in Ireland and Europe.

Irish Rural Link encourages its various members to form single issue networks within the umbrella of the organisation. This allows each group to focus on the issues close to their everyday experience, without the overall worry of maintaining a National Network.

The National Meals on Wheels Network website and interactive map were launched by Minister of State for Mental Health and Older People, Mary Butler, T.D in September 2021.

The interactive map is the first of its kind to map meals on wheels’ providers nationally.

Any individual can click on the map to find the nearest meals on wheels’ provider to pro them. Details are available to contact the provider and organise the delivery of the service.

Na For further information please visit National Meals on Wheels Network or contact the Development Officer – Tracey Noone at tracey@ mealsonwheelsnetwork.ie or 090 6482744.

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We are often asked by our seniors as to what we are entitled to if we are living alone.

The days can be long and winter nights colder than it is for when you have a partner.

Therefore, it is important to maximise what you are entitled to. These entitlements won’t get rid of the loneliness but it can go a long way to alleviate it and make your home warmer and cosier for you and your friends and family.

How to Qualify for a Living Alone Increase If you are 66 years or over and live alone, you will qualify if you are getting one of the following payments • State Pension (Contributory) • State Pension (Non-Contributory) • Widow's, Widower's or Surviving Civil Partner's (Contributory) Pension • Widow's, Widower's or Surviving Civil Partner's (No Contributory) Pension • Widow's/Widower's Pension under the Occupational Injuries Benefit Scheme • Incapacity Supplement under the Occupational Injuries Benefit Scheme • Deserted Wife's Benefit You will also qualify if you are under 66, live alone and are getting Disability Allowance, Invalidity Pension, Incapacity Supplement or Blind Pension.

Defining Living Alone To get the increase in your payment you must live completely alone. However, there are some exceptions.

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The Kilkenny Observer Friday 14 April 2023

person.

• Are renting for at least 28 consecutive days to a person(s) from Ukraine covered by the Temporary Protection Directive and you would be living alone, but for that person.

Living Alone Allowances for our Twilight Years Granny flats: If you are living in an extension of a family member's home, for example, in a granny flat, you can qualify for the increase if you can show that you have facilities to cook and eat alone.

You must also have your own living/dining and sleeping accommodation.

Sheltered accommodation: People who live in sheltered accommodation may qualify if they are regarded as living independently within the institution. The Department

of Social Protection provides a list of hostels/homes where Living Alone Increase is payable. You will not qualify if you share dormitory accommodation with others, or have round-the clock supervision or nursing care.

People who live in nursing homes will not qualify as they cannot be regarded as living completely or mainly alone.

People who can stay with you: You can also qualify as living alone, if you:

Telephone Support Allowance Since 4 June 2018, if you’re getting the Living Alone Increase together with the Fuel Allowance, you will automatically qualify for a Telephone Support Allowance of €2.50 per week. It is paid separately from your primary payment and is intended to help with the cost of communications and/or a home alert system. As this allowance is paid automatically to people who qualify, you do not need to apply for it.

The Department has published useful FAQs about the Telephone Support Allowance on welfare.ie.

• Are aged or infirm and have a friend or relative to stay for security reasons at night-time only. The friend or relative must not contribute to the household financially.

• Live alone during the day but stay with relatives or friends at night or if you live alone during the week but have a relative to stay at the weekend (the living alone condition is satisfied as long as the relative has a permanent home address elsewhere).

• Live alone but occasionally take in paying guests (for ex-

ample, during a local festival).

However, if you run a bed and breakfast business (even for part of the year) you will not qualify.

• Allow a person(s) who is not an employee or not an immediate family member to stay in your home rent free and you would be living alone, but for that person.

• Are renting for at least 28 consecutive days to a person(s) who is not an employee or not an immediate family member and you would be living alone, but for that

Rate of Living Alone Increase Living Alone Increase per week: €22 How to Apply for the Living Alone Increase Fill in a Living Alone Increase application form (pdf). Send the completed form to the section of the Department of Social Protection that pays your main pension or benefit. Your local Social Welfare Branch Office will be able to answer any questions about the Living Alone Increase and can help you to complete your form.

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The Kilkenny Observer Friday 14 April 2023

Book launch

BY JOHN FITZGERALD

The last Christian Brother to teach in Ireland is celebrated in a new book by a Kilkenny man.

Mark Townsend, a past pupil of Coláiste Éamann Rís in Callan (now a co-ed school) recounts the extraordinary life and work of Brother Damien Brennan, a gifted educator and the man who helped launch Kilkenny hurling on its Millennial blaze of glory.

When he wasn’t guiding pupils on the path to achievement, Damien could be found on a hurling pitch, applying the same motivational skills that notched up an impressive string of Leaving Cert success stories to take Kilkenny hurling to new and unprecedented heights.

His death in 2019 sent shock waves through Callan, the rest of the county and beyond.

Throughout his teaching career in Callan the man described by many as a “living saint” had earned the respect and gratitude of pupils and parents alike, and his loss was felt deeply in GAA circles.

In his enthralling book Brother Damien Brennanthe Silent man behind the Kilkenny success story, Mark Townsend, tells the story of this remarkable man.

Mark devoted three years of research and writing to the project, which consists mainly of interviews with people who knew Brother Damien.

Damien was born into a staunch GAA family in County Laois. While attending Carlow CBS he had something of a revelation when he became acquainted with the life and religious mission of Edmund Rice. He joined the Christian Brothers in 1978, and went on to teach at a number of schools around Ireland before taking up a teaching post at Callan CBS in 1990.

His time in Callan spanned two decades. He was promoted to Deputy Principal in recognition of his abilities and later became Principal at Coláiste Éamann Rís.

Mark Townsend had Brother Damien as a teacher from 1997 to 2001. The kindly Brother greatly facilitated Mark’s progress though second level education. At a time when religious orders generally were the focus of negative media attention Damien exemplified the true original ethos of his own Order and the high spiritual standards set by its founder, Edmund Rice He was devoted to his religious vocation, but equally to his roles as an educator and as a trainer of aspiring hurlers in a county feted as the home of hurling.

Even outside normal school hours, pupils struggling with the often unfathomable exam subjects would call to Damien at Westcourt, or wherever he could be found, for his guid-

The teacher who taught Kilkenny how to win… ance.

He never turned anyone away, offering priceless tips and insights on how to tackle the great Leaving Cert obstacle course. He went out of his way to ensure that everyone in the school got maximum help and support. He was renowned as the teacher who put pupils first, seeing education as a sacred duty and not merely as a handy or lucrative career option. He had the distinction of being the last Christian Brother to teach in Ireland.

Just as he never sought recognition for his educational work, he shunned the limelight as he guided young hurlers through their paces.

From the day he set foot in Callan he was coaching and training, energizing the local hurling scene in a balancing act with his teaching that would have left a lesser man in a state of near exhaustion or bewilderment.

His exceptional managerial and motivational skills quickly came to the attention of the GAA top brass and he was appointed as manager of the minor county hurling team.

He might not have changed water into wind like the good Lord back in his day, but Damien certainly worked a few miracles on the hurling field.

Pundits confabbed endlessly on radio and TV about the fortunes of Kilkenny hurling, marveling at the breathtaking feats of the men in black and amber, but throughout all the glory days the man who

was front and centre of those winning scores eschewed publicity or even a clap on the back.

In the book itself and at the launch at the Edmund Rice Centre in Westcourt, past and present hurlers, including household names, lined up to applaud the unique contribution to sport of a man who achieved so much within a lamentably short lifespan.

While the book deals at length with Damien’s legendary status as the hidden force behind Kilkenny hurling triumphs, there is a wealth of additional material to intrigue readers unfamiliar with the GAA scene.

One

of the most moving vignettes in the book is provided by renowned former hurler Canice Hickey who knew Damien well from his sporting days.

Canice recalls that in June 2019, when the Leaving Cert class in Callan was settling in for what could be the most pivotal exam of their lives, Damien turned up as always on this

weighty occasion to offer last minute encouragement.

Though severely unwell from a form of brain cancer (he’d been seen balancing from table to table in the assembly hall), he was there for the lads, bravely concealing his illness as he relayed his customary words of guidance and advice. The lads were under pressure, battling exam nerves and psyching up for the marathon test-or ordealnot knowing that their teacher faced a far greater challenge.

When the Final Whistle

sounded for him, Damien left the field as he had done so many times after coaching and mentoring, and leading teams to glory. He said goodbye to a world he had enriched by his presence in it.

He’ll never be forgotten in Callan, or by those he taught or trained…this man whose goal-and ultimate achievement- in life was to follow in the footsteps of Edmund Rice.

Brother Damien BrennanThe silent man behind the Kilkenny success story is available at all City bookshops

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Recruitment

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Food & Drink

Dine Me Come

with

One-pan seafood roast with smoky garlic butter

Prep: 20 mins Cook: 40 mins Serves:4

Give the Sunday roast a new look with hasselback potatoes and smoky, charred seafood, all cooked in one pan. Serve with bread for mopping up the buttery juices.

Ingredients • 400g baby new potatoes • 1 tbsp olive or rapeseed oil • 2 corn cobs • 8-12 large prawns, heads and shells on • 8-12 mussels or large clams (or a mixture) • 2 medium squids with tentacles, cleaned • 150g butter • small bunch parsley, chopped, plus a little to serve • 1 tsp smoked paprika • 3 garlic cloves, crushed • 1 lemon, zested then cut into wedges • 200g ring chorizo, peeled and sliced Method STEP 1 Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6.

Use a large knife to hasselback the potatoes; cut incisions in each potato making sure you don’t cut through to the base, and keep the cuts as close together as possible. Toss the potatoes

Beetroot hummus party platter Prep: 15 mins Serves: 8 This one-platter-serves-all beetroot hummus will be a big hit, and doesn’t require any cooking.

Ingredients • 2 x 400g can chickpeas, drained • 2 x 300g pack cooked beetroot, drained • 2 small garlic cloves • 2 tbsp tahini

in oil and some seasoning in your largest roasting tin (an oven tray is ideal – line with parchment first if it’s old). Roast for 20 mins.

Clean the mussels under cold water, pulling off any hairy or stringy bits.

Hasselback the squid in the same way you did the potatoes.

STEP 2 Butterfly the prawns by cutting a line down the back of each one, through the shell from the base of the head to the top of the tail. Pull out the black line of intestine from each one.

STEP 3 Cut each corn cob into four pieces – the easiest way to do this is by positioning your knife, covering it with a tea towel and hitting it with a rolling pin. Add the corn to the tray, toss in

the oil and return to the oven for 5 mins.

STEP 4 Mash together the butter, parsley, paprika, garlic and lemon zest. Stuff some of the butter into the back of each prawn and inside the squids.

Turn the oven up to 220C/200C fan/gas 6. Add the seafood, lemon wedges and chorizo to the pan and

toss everything together. Dot the remaining butter over the top, season well and return to the oven for 10 mins. If any of the prawns haven’t turned pink or any mussels haven’t opened, move them around the pan to the hot spots, then return to the oven for another 2-3 mins. Remove and discard any mussels which haven’t opened. Scatter some parsley over and serve.

• 100ml extra virgin olive oil, plus a drizzle to serve • good squeeze of lemon juice • 2 tbsp toasted hazelnuts, roughly chopped • 2 tbsp pumpkin seeds, roughly chopped • 2 tsp nigella seeds • 1 tsp sumac (optional) • pinch of chilli flakes (optional) • To serve (optional) • crunchy summer veg, cut into batons (we used fennel, sugar snap peas, baby heritage carrots & radishes) • bread, toasted and cut into fingers for dipping • mini mozzarella balls • olives • prosciutto-wrapped breadsticks Method

STEP 1 Set about 2 tbsp chickpeas aside. Tip the rest of the chickpeas, the beetroot, garlic, tahini, oil and lemon juice into a food processor with a good pinch of salt. Blend until smooth, then check the seasoning, adding a little more salt or lemon if it needs it. Chill the hummus until you’re ready to serve (it will keep for up to two days).

STEP 2 Transfer the hummus to a wide, shallow bowl or spread over a platter.

Drizzle with some oil, scatter with the reserved chickpeas, hazelnuts, seeds, sumac and chilli (if using).

Arrange the crunchy veg and other accompaniments around the platter and let everyone dig in.

The Kilkenny Observer Friday 14 April 2023

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5

Beef, a new and addictive series now on Netflix

Advertisement Advertisement TV & Streaming

new shows to stream right now 1. Tiny Beautiful Things

The column-to-screen adaptations continue in earnest with Tiny Beautiful Things, which is now streaming on Disney Plus. Based on a collection of essays from Cheryl Strayed’s long-running advice column Dear Sugar, this eight-episode drama series stars Kathryn Hahn as Clare, a floundering writer who becomes a revered advice columnist while her own life is falling apart (in other words, she’s a stand-in for Strayed).

Critics have described Tiny Beautiful Things as “tear-jerking,” with particular praise going towards Hahn’s “captivating” performance.

2. Transatlantic

Polish up those Emmys for the year’s best and most addictive new series. In 10 terrifically fierce and funny half-hour episodes, Beef, now on Netflix, shakes the cobwebs off TV formula and rockets us into the bliss of rule-breaking experimentation. You won’t know what hit you.

Beef starts in a burst of fury. We’re in Los Angeles, in the parking lot of a bigbox store. When Danny Cho (Steven Yeun) nearly backs his truck into the Mercedes SUV being driven by Amy Lau (Ali Wong), road rage bubbles up in both of them, inciting a tale of vengeance that won’t quit.

Standard action pulp?

No way. Series creator Lee Sung Jin (Dave) careens from the specifics about the haves and have-nots in a mostly Asian community into a universal tale about

the barely contained anger festering inside a modern world divided by poverty and privilege.

That’s a tall order. But in a cast headed by the superb Yeun, a best actor Oscar nominee for Minari and Wong, a stand-up comic whose dramatic chops are revelatory, Beef – which stands for their blood feud – takes a big swing at making art out of what lies beneath the fake smiles we paste over the mess of real feelings.

So hop on board the bandwagon for Beef, from A24, the cool-kid studio behind two Oscar-winning films, Moonlight and Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Here’s a groundbreaker that revels in finding the logic in the random, the beauty in the broken.

Beef is quick to warn us about first impressions, the

kind that make us see both Danny and Amy as hotheads, as he tries to run her down on the streets of LA for the sin of flipping him off.

As the plot swells with their mutual animosity, the series takes the revolutionary step of asking us to dig inside ourselves to find the empathy that will let us see them as people.

There’s Danny, running a failing contracting business, trying to raise money to bring his Korean parents back to the states while caring for his handsome, scarily immature kid brother Paul (Young Mazino) and catastrophically turning for help to his ex-con cousin Isaac (David Choe).

On the other hand, the Chinese Vietnamese Amy seems to have it all, a superficially caring Japanese husband in George (Joseph Lee), an adorable daughter

in Junie (Remy Holt). Yet Fumi (Patti Yasutake), Amy’s wealthy, controlling motherin-law, makes Amy eager to build her own fortune by selling her thriving plant business to uber-rich Angelino Jordan (Maria Bello).

In lesser hands, these would be stock characters.

Instead, they emerge here with startling dimension and vibrant depth. Even when Danny and Amy escalate microaggressions into careerand-life destroying acts of violence, you root for their bruised humanity.

Yeun and Wong could not be better. Watch Yeun as Danny chokes down fast food burgers or fails to nourish his soul by singing in a local church choir. He’s a consummate actor. And Wong nails every subversive impulse under Amy’s sunny exterior in an indelible performance.

The Crown ‘in chaos’ as major star pulls out Netflix bosses were banking on Gillian Anderson signing up to another series but a ‘diary clash’ has forced a big re-think with Gillian as Margaret Thatcher expecting to be absent She wowed fans in the role, but just like the fearsome former PM’s famous speech, it seems the lady is not for turning.

A diary clash means Gillian, 54, will not be returning to the UK later this year.

That has thrown plans up in the air as scriptwriters needed Maggie when covering Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip ’s golden wedding anniversary.

But they won’t re-cast – and must do without the

Emmy and Golden Globe winning American.

Now plans are being put in place to work around the issue, with Thatcher central to part of the the planned

storyline.

“Gillian’s portrayal of Thatcher was met with global critical acclaim and she was a huge asset to The Crown,” a TV source said.

“It had been hoped she would be able to make an appearance in scenes around the golden wedding but sadly that has not been the case due to scheduling issues.

“As ever with the series, clever scripting will mean viewers will be none the wiser but it’s been another blow for producers in what’s already been a fairly dogged production.”

Maybe she was spooked by what happened after the cameras were switched off.

Gillian says the voice and mannerisms she took on became second nature – even popping up in new roles.

Gillian could not stop Maggie coming through when she played Dr Jean Milburn in Sex Education, another Netflix smash.

The actress said: “She stayed a bit longer than she was welcome.

“I realised watching Sex Ed – which I went into a month after I’d finished The Crown – in a couple of places there were still remains of Thatcher in Jean’s scenes.”

Gillian said she had rehearsed so thoroughly to play the divisive ex-PM that the role had become part of her “muscle memory”.

After the success of the awesome All Quiet On The Western Front, Netflix winds back the clock once again with Transatlantic, its new wartime drama series. Adapted by Unorthodox creator Anna Winger from Julie Orringer’s true storyinspired novel The Flight Portfolio, this seven-part show recounts the heroics of a rescue committee that evacuated more than 2,000 refugees from Nazi-occupied France during WWII. Corey Stoll, Gillian Jacobs, Grégory Montel and Cory Michael Smith are among the cast.

3. On A Wing And A Prayer

Dennis Quaid returns to his familyman-turned-action-hero roots this weekend with new Amazon Prime Video movie On A Wing And A Prayer.

Based on true events, the film tells the story of Doug White (Quaid), a private plane passenger whose capacity for heroism is tested when the aircraft’s pilot mysteriously dies mid-flight. With his family on board, White must take control and land safely – which, as you’d expect, is easier said than done.

The film looks like 90 minutes of harmless fun.

4. Schmigadoon! S2

Schmigadoon!, one of the best Apple TV+ shows, returns for its second season this weekend. New episodes of the hit musical comedy shift proceedings away from Schmigadoon itself to the equally magical city of – wait for it… – Schmicago, where the likes of Keegan-Michael Key, Cecily Strong, Ariana DeBose, Kristin Chenoweth, Alan Cumming and Martin Short continue to make a big song and dance of everything. Newcomers to season 2 include Tituss Burgess and Patrick Page.

The first two episodes of Schmigadoon! S2 are available to stream now.

5. Boom! Boom! The World vs. Boris Becker

Also streaming on Apple TV + is the exceptionally-titled Boom! Boom!

The World vs. Boris Becker. Directed by acclaimed factual filmmaker Alex Gibney, this two-part documentary shines a light on tennis great (and infamous ex-con) Boris Becker, who became a sporting sensation when he won the first of his six majors at the age of just 17.

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Community & GAA Notes

LOTTO Lotto results 4/04/23 - No jackpot winner. Numbers drawn - 6, 9, 26. €30 consolation prizes to Jack Carrigan, Colin Pollock, Fergus Walsh, Robbie McPartlan, Clodagh and Conor Nolan. Thanks for the support.

COUNTY MINORS LOSE Hard luck to Clara’s David Barcoe who was on the losing Kilkenny minor team on Saturday when Galway dished out a beating to the host team in Nowlan Park. David battled gamely in a beleaguered defence but Galway eased to a 1-23 to 0-13 victory.

LEAGUE FINAL LOSS Sunday was a tough day at the office for Kilkenny senior hurlers as they went down to the Limerick juggernaut at Pairc Ui Chaoimh in Cork. Condolences to selector Conor Phelan and co trainer John Murphy for that.

HIGH SCORING AFFAIR Clara seniors played their first game of the year on Friday evening when Rathnure arrived for a pre season challenge match. Two 35 minute halves were played and it proved to be a lively affair. Four of last years minors made their adult debut for Clara and none of them looked out of place.

Rathnure were 5-21 to 3-24 winners after an entertaining 70 minutes of hurling.

Team - Kevin Nolan, Evan Whearty, Shane Staunton, Paddy Ryan. Stephen Quinlan, Jack Langton 0-1, Martin O Connell 0-2f. Jim Kehoe 1-0, Paul Cody 1-2. Dara Glynn 0-8, 0-7f, Killian Phelan 1-2, Liam Ryan 0-6. Sean Carrigan, Peter Nolan, Rory Glynn 0-1. Subs used John Murphy 0-2, Jason Barcoe, Zach Lawlor, Lester Ryan, Ben Murphy, Alan Coleman, James Dowling.

CAMOGIE Our U14s had their first game of the season on Wednesday 2nd April against St Martins in Coon. After conceding an early goal the girls worked very hard in defence and worked the ball up the field where Emily Phelan used possession to score 3 goals in the first half and Clara went in well ahead at half time. The girls scored 4 more goals in the second half and this allowed management to make some changes and give game time to less experienced members of the panel.

The final score flattered the Clara girls as the St Martins girls put up a brave fight.

Half time score 4-01 to 1-02 Final score 8-03 to 5-03. Scorers Emily Phelan 5-00 Amy Bergin 2-03 Ella Tierney 1-00.

Team: Eva Dreeling, Lucy Kealy, Ónagh Fitzgerald, Elizabeth Cooke, Orla Carrigan, Caragh Brennan, Katelyn Shortall, Caoimhe Kenny, Katie O’Connell, Aoibheann McDonald, Olivia Power, Alice Kennedy, Amy Bergin,. Emily Phelan, Claragh Roche Subs: Ella Tierney, Amy Breen, Aisling Whelan, Áine Bowden Mullen, Emily O’Keeffe, Orlaith Carroll.

CLUB LOTTO There was no winner of club lotto on April 4th. Numbers drawn were 4, 7, 12, 13 Bonus 5 Next week’s top prize will be a whopping €18,000. Play now at www.oloughlingaels.com/lotto Promotors Draw 1. Jim and Mick c/o Peter Dowling. 2.

Theresa Walsh c/ M Doran 3. Mary Deegan. 4. Clare Mahony. 5. Dan O’Driscoll. 6. Peggy and Sue c/o Brian Murphy 7. Mai Larkin c/o Ml Doran. 8. Marie O’Shea c/o online. 9.

Eugene Foley c/o online 10. Warren Gill c/o Online. Thank you for your continued support.

PILGRIMAGE TO KNOCK Eucharistic Adoration Pilgrimage to Knock Sunday 23rd April 2023. Coach leaves Woodies Carpark, Kilkenny at 7.00am.

Cost €25pp: Contact: 086 1666547 Programme 9.45 to 10.45am: Tea/Coffee courtesy of Apostolate 11 to 12.00pm: Guided Adoration led by the Franciscan Sisters 11 to 14.30pm: Confessions in the Chapel of Reconciliation 12 to 12.50pm: Lunch (Bring a pack lunch) St John’s Rest and Care 13 to 14.30pm: KEYNOTE ADDRESS for the Pilgrimage in Basilica “The Eucharist and the Foundational Truths of the Christian Faith”.

Fr Pat Collins CM International Author, Speaker and Preacher 15.00 to 16.30pm Sacrament of Mass in Basilica with Archbishop Kieran O’Reilly Cashel and Emily Diocese: Followed

by Benediction and Eucharistic Blessing 16.45: Coach departure.

TRIP TO CROKE PARK A day that will live long in the memory of St.Lachtains U11 boys as they graced the grounds of Croke Park to play in the Go Games. It was a great experience for this young team to get the opportunity to play in Croke Park and here’s hoping it could be the first of many playing trips in the future to Croke Park for some of these players. Special thanks goes out to the management for their work in making the day such a success for the young players.

SUCCESSFUL COMMEMORATION.

The Annual Easter Commemoration took place on the Square, Freshford on Sunday last. A good crowd attended.

The Proclamation was read, a Wreath was laid and the Tricolour, raised, complimented by a number of readings and a variety of songs. M. C. was John Maher. A number of people were thanked by Local Cllr Michael McCarthy including the Local Committee who organised the event, and various people for their participation including photographers and all who provided memorabilia, Flag, Wreath and everyone who helped in any way. The Commemoration concluded with a rendering of ‘Amhrán na bhFiann’ and refreshments were provided in the Hall. The previous night a successful Cabaret and raffle was held. Winners 1st Sean Campion, Easter Hamper. 2nd Michael Campion, Vodka. 3rd Michael O’Donnell, £50 euro Voucher. 4th Francis Donnelly, Wine.

5th Jason Bowden, Framed Proclamation. Door Prizes 1st Noel McMahon, wine. 2nd Tommy Norton, wine ; Seamus Bergin thanked everyone for their support and anyone who donated Prizes FOOTBALL CHAMPS Congratulations to St.Lachtins U13 boys who won the final of the football league at Pairc Lachtain recently defeating Mullinavat on a scoreline of 6-4 to 3-4. Well done to the team and their management on the great win BIRTHDAY GIRL Special birthday wishes go out to Michelle Bowden, Buncrussia Street who celebrated a very special birthday last week.

Michelle marked her 40th at a party with her family and friends in Kavanaghs Bar on Sunday night last.

SYMPATHY Sympathy is extended to Victor Hennessy and the Hennessy Family of Kilaree, Threecastles on the death of his daughter Elaine Dillon (nee Hennessy) late of Ballyreddin, Bennettsbridge. Funeral mass took place in St.Bennetts Church Bennettsbridge followed by burial in Tulla Cemetery.

Sympathy is also extended to Michael Tobin and his family of Killahy, Tullaroan on the recent death of his mother Margaret Tobin. Funeral mass took place on Wednesday of last week in St. Patrick’s Church, Graine followed by burial in the adjoining cemetery.

IONAD LACHTAIN HERITAGE CENTRE Ionad Lachtain reopened recently. It will be open every Saturday and Sunday from 11.30am to 4.30pm from now until the end of summer in order to welcome visitors to the church, craft shop and museum. The church will host the official launch of Féile Lachtain 2023 on Saturday next, April 15 at 3.00 p.m. The festival will be launched by Cllr. Pat Fitzpatrick, Chairman, Kilkenny Co. Council. This will be followed by the first lecture of the year delivered by Ms. Siobhan Doyle, author of “A History of the GAA in 100 Objects.” Harpist Mary Kelly will also attend. The usual crafts are on sale in the Craft Shop including woodwork, knitted toys and garments and artwork. A variety of souvenirs of Freshford including greeting cards and carrier bags are available. Jewellery is a new addition to the shop this year. Other staples are natural honey and the GAA county clocks which proved popular last year.

A splendid collection of old carpentry tools is new to the museum this year courtesy of Eilís and Kieran Costelloe. Also new is a loan of an interesting photograph of the Shrine of St. Lachtain’s Arm from Kilkenny Archaeological Society. See www.ionadlachtain.com or follow us at Ionad Lachtain on Facebook and Instagram.

DARTS The final of the B league of the Freshford and District League took place on Friday night last when Kavanaghs took on The Rock in Killeens. Kavanaghs took lead but the Rock pulled it back to2-2 Kavanaghs went on to a comprehensive 5-2 win.

The semi-final of the John McGrath cup took place in Farrells recently with Kavanaghs A defeating Killeens C and now through to the final to take on the winners of the other semi-final which was to take place on Thursday night last in Kavanaghs with Farrell’s A take on The Valley A. It will now be played this week and the final will take place in McGraths Pub in the coming weeks SOCCER The U12 girls took on Evergreen at home on Saturday morning last and played well despite been beaten 2-0 by a much stronger city side. Well done girls.

NEW BOOK CLUB There are plans to set up a monthly book club, based at the Loop Community Café, Freshford. An introductory meeting took place in the café on Thursday April 13th, at 10am. Dates and times for the book club were discussed. The meeting was facilitated by Kilkenny County Library staff. Sets of books and support will be provided FREE by the library service.

Everyone welcome, just drop in. This is a great opportunity to meet other readers in a relaxed social setting. Thanks to Katie and the staff of The Loop Café for their support.

FITNESS SESSIONS Fitness sessions Boxing/fitness sessions at Community Hall Freshford – Have you had a diagnoses of Parkinsons, Alzheimers or other neurological condition? If so maybe you are keen to get some level of fitness back or work on your balance or upper body strength. If so, these classes are just what you need. Classes take place each Tuesday from 11am to 12 noon - sessions cost just €10 each and are facilitated by a boxing coach. They will also give you the chance to socialise and meet other people. For more information or to sign up please contact Brenda Cooper on 0871369253

HELP FOR ALL Are you struggling with anxiety or depression or finding life difficult or feeling isolated at this time GROW is there to help you. Their Mental Health support Groups are free and confidential and open to all no referral or booking is needed. For more information on same you can contact Mary on 087 28 4342 If you can’t cope and need support text HELLO to 50808. SAMARITAN Whatever you’re going through a Samaritan will face it with you – available 24 hours a day 365 days a year – Freephone 1161Alone is available for older people who need support and you can call them on 0818 222024 (8am to 8pm) AMBER KILKENNY WOMENS REFUGE – is available for confidential support relating to domestic violence - call them on 1850 424244 (24/7) or on 056 7771404 or email into@amberwomensrefuge.ie.

EASTER IN CHURCH The Easter ceremonies were well attended in both churches.

Presiding over all ceremonies was Canon Pat Duggan.

Readers in Tullaherin for Good Friday were, Josephine O’Neill and Dermot Kelly. In Bennettsbridge on Holy Thursday, the reader was Lisa Meighan. For the Easter Vigil, Pat O’Neill and Lorraine Hennessy were the readers. Prayers of the Faithful were recited by Mary Walpole. The Parish choirs made a welcome return for Easter and sang throughout. Fr Duggan thanked all who helped with the various preparations, including sacristans, ministers of the Eucharist, choir and those responsible for the beautiful floral decorations on the altars in both churches.

GRAND NATIONAL DRAW It’s that time of year when every man, woman and child puts a bet on the horses. This draw has been taking place in Bennettsbridge for many years and is a great fund raiser for the under-age players.

Entries can be purchased from any underage player or any Bórd na N-óg committee member before Friday evening this week for the annual Bórd Na Nóg Grand National draw.

WORLD DANCING Two young Bennettsbridge Dancing sisters continue to achieve in World Irish Dancing Competition.

Zahra and Sofia Khodabacksh, The Ring, took part in the worlds Irish dancing championships last week in Killarney.

Zahra took home a world globe placing, 3rd over-all in the championship and two world medals, one, a gold.

Sofia also took home two world medals.

Congratulations to both girls.

TERESA WEMYSS RIP Sympathy is extended to the Wemyss family on the death of Teresa Wemyss (nee Shanahan) (13 Marian Place, Bennettsbridge, Co. Kilkenny) on 3rd April 2023. Teresa, who was 92 died peacefully, at home in the presence of her family. She was pre-deceased by her husband, James and is survived by her sons and daughters, Jimmy, Michael, Rita, Anne, John

and Joyce.

Teresa will be sadly missed by her loving family, daughtersin-law, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, extended family, neighbours and friends.

As her body lay in repose in St Bennett’s Church, family, friends and neighbours came to pay their final respects.

Rosary and Vigil prayers were recited by Fr Duggan, Requiem Mass was celebrated by Fr Duggan. Interment took place in the adjoining cemetery.

Rest in peace Teresa!

MICHAEL DOLLARD RIP Michael Dollard of 31, Lacken Drive, Kilkenny and formerly Bawnrickeen, Johnstown, Co. Kilkenny, died on 11th April 2023, at St. Luke’s Hospital, Kilkenny.

He was predeceased by his parents Patrick and Kathleen, brothers Gerard, Paddy and John and sister Celia. Deeply missed by his loving children Sarah and Joe, daughter-inlaw Lindsey, grandchild Miles, brothers and sisters Judy (Maher), Mary (Morrow), Jane (Long), Kate (Kavanagh), Larry and Martin, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, nieces, nephews, relatives and a wide circle of friends.

Michael was a great friend of the Murphy family, Gaffers Barn and the following tribute was penned by Michael, “It was with heavy hearts and great sadness we learned of the rather sudden death of Michael Dollard. He passed away peacefully surrounded by his immediate family after a short illness in St. Luke’s Hospital, Kilkenny a few weeks ago.

Since returning to Ireland from Australia 12 years ago Michael spent a lot of time in the Bennettsbridge area visiting family and friends and regularly supporting many of the local teams. He was an ardent fan of Kilkenny, Urlingford and Bennettsbridge hurling. Michael was a close friend of the Murphy Family, Gaffer’s Barn. Although he spent 50 years in Australia he never lost his passion and love for all things Gaelic especially the Irish Language and the game of hurling. He is survived by his daughter Sarah (London) and son Joe (Boston), daughter-In-law Lindsey and grandson Miles, sisters and brothers and large extended family and countless friends”.

LOTTO No winner of Jackpot on Monday night. Numbers, 4, 5, 19, 22. Jackpot now €6,400.00. Consolation Prizes, Rory Tyrell, Stroan, Ursula Walsh, Thomastown, Liam O’Neill, Ballinamona, Sheila Kinsella, Bennettsbridge, Marie(S)Treacy, Station Road, The Lotto is an important fundraiser for the Parish, GAA and East End Soccer Club. Thank you for your support.

ART GROUP No meeting this week, meetings will resume on Monday next as preparations continue for Arts Week in August.

Good wishes go to a number of the group who are ill at the moment.

GATHERING GROUP

Sofia Khodabacksh took home two world medals from the World Irish Dancing Championships in Killarney

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News Community & GAA Notes No meeting this week. Next week a visit to neighbouring Danesfort Group is being planned.

DATE FOR YOUR DIARY - DOG NIGHT CAMOGIE Bennettsbridge Camogie Club will run a Family Night at the dogs on Friday 12th May. Fundraiser for Camogie Club.

First Race at 7.30pm. Tickets available from any committee member.

GAA Intercounty Games. There was no luck for our players in action for Kilkenny during the past week. David Blanchfield was part of the Kilkenny senior team that lost out to Limerick while Bill Hughes was part of the Kilkenny panel that lost to Wexford in the opening round of the under 20 championship.

Club Games The under 15s defeated Cloneen in round two of the league, the minors played Carrickshock in the league last Monday evening. The under 15s play in the Feile in Glenmore next Saturday while the minors are away to Tullogher next Monday. The junior E team also play Tullogher away next Saturday while the junior B team play Glenmore at home next Sunday. Best of luck to all the teams.

Membership 2023 Membership for 2023 is now being collected by registrar Samantha McGarry or any committee member. Membership remains the same as last year. 120 for adult players, 80 for student players and 40 euro for non-playing members. Early payment would be most appreciated as the bills for 2023 are now due.

Buy A Brick Campaign.

We are in our fourth year of our “buy a brick” campaign.

Thanks to everyone who has supported so far. Anyone new who wishes to contribute please see BBGAADEV@ gmail.com. All contributions go towards club development and repayment of the loan on the club house as quickly as possible.

ON LINE DRAW The first on-line draw of 2023 is now live. 100 tickets only will be sold with 700 euro going to the winner. Tickets cost 10 euro. Please see the clubs Facebook and twitter pages for details of the link to play. The draw will take place as soon as the tickets are sold. Thanks for the continued support.

SCRAP COLLECTION The club is planning to do a scrap Collection fundraiser in April so if you have any scrap to get rid of we will gladly take it. Further details to follow.

SPLIT THE POT Well done to, Ann Marie Lawson who won 162 euro, T Cunningham who won 30 euro and to the Dobbyn brothers who won 20 euro. Seamus Moran won the Easter hamper. Entry envelopes are available around the village. If you want to play online with club-force please see the clubs Facebook page for details. Thanks again for the continued support.

PITCH CLEAN UP Many thanks to the big crowd of volunteers that helped out at the GAA grounds last Saturday. A lot of great work was done to get ready for the new season.

CAMOGIE The senior camogie girls continued their season with the visit of St. Martin’s to Jenkinstown on Friday evening last in the Michael Lyng Motors Senior League. Without their county players, Conahy were always up against it and the St. Martin’s girls were well on top throughout, eventually winning 3-10 to 0-4. The minor camogie girls were also in action against St. Martin’s in their respective Gaeltec Minor A League on Wednesday last in Jenkinstown, and they enjoyed better fortune with a 2-9 to 3-4 victory.

Conahy Camogie Club are currently running a Sports Prediction Competition, with a first prize of €250. Cards are €10 and can be got from any committee member and must be returned by today (Wednesday, April 12th).

The club is also holding a fundraising table quiz in the GAA Clubhouse on Sunday, April 23rd at 5.00 p.m. Tables of 4 cost €20 and all support would be most welcome.

HURLING The under-15 hurlers claimed their first win in the Duggan Steel Roinn B League when they got the better of Kilmacow in Castlecomer C.S. on Wednesday last. It was a very even first half, with the Southerners leading by a single point at the break. But Conahy had the scoring edge in the second half, with three quick fire goals from Jack Rhatigan, Brian Phelan and Michael Lawler to see them to a 4-11 to 1-10 victory. They now look forward to a busy day next Saturday morning when they take part in the county Féile competition in Glenmore.

TEAM: Neil Webster, Bobby Dooley, Tadhg Hennessy, Camryn Kenehan, Darragh Horgan, Finn Sherman, Rory Rhatigan, Ceirin Murphy, Billy Rowe, Joe Boland, Jack Rhatigan, Rory Sherman, Brian Phelan, Michael Lawler, Adam Morrissey, Padraig Quinn, M.J. Buggy, James Byrne.

The minor hurlers were less fortunate, as they came up against a far stronger St. Lachtain’s side on Monday night in Freshford in the Kilkenny Vehicle Centre Roinn C League. Conahy were short a number of key players, but St. Lachtain’s were still too dominant in the end.

TEAM: Tommy Mulhall, Tadhg Hennessy, Conor Hennessy, Killian Lacey, Rory Rhatigan, Jack Rhatigan, Finn Sherman, Jake Dooley, Darragh Horgan, Joe Boland, Daniel Mooney, Ben Duggan, Adam Morrissey, Evan Staunton, David Ring, Brian Phelan, Camryn Kenehan, Billy Rowe, Neil Webster.

CLUB LOTTO The numbers drawn in the Conahy Shamrocks GAA Club

Lotto were 15, 33 and 38. There was no jackpot winner so the consolation prize winners were Kevin Healy, Liam Downey, Aisling Fitzpatrick, Shay Healy and Padraic Hally.

The promoters’ prize winners were Shay Og Brennan, David Maher and Mona Dooley. This week’s jackpot now increases to €2,800.

CLOTHES/TEXTILES COLLECTION Castlecomer Golf Club is holding a textile recycling collection on Tuesday, April 18th. Bags can be dropped into the Golf Clubhouse any day between 10.00 a.m. and 5.00 p.m. from Monday April 3rd, to Monday, April 17th inclusive. The bags will be collected from the Golf Club early on the morning of Tuesday, April 18th. This is a great opportunity to do a bit of a clear out of all your unwanted clothes, duvet covers, sheets, blankets, towels, jeans, curtains, shoes, boots, and golf shoes (no duvets or pillows accepted).

CHURCH NEWS The Easter ceremonies in the Churches of the three parishes, Urlingford, Johnstown and Galmoy were very well attended.

It was great to see families out and gathering together again after a few strange Easters.

Trocaire boxes and Easter offerings are now due.

DISCO Johnstown Town Team are hosting an U13 Easter Disco in St. Kieran’s Hall on Sunday next April 16th from 5pm to 6.30pm.

Donations of €2 per child to fund the Christmas lights.

TEXAS MUSIC SHOW....

A Texas Music night will be held in The Crosspatrick on Friday April 28th featuring Dusty Moats, Brad Russell, Jesse Jennings and Jake Williams. No cover charge. So dust off those cowboy boots and Stetsons and head to Crosspatrick.

All are welcome.

HANDBALL WINNERS Congratulations to Una and Emer from Galmoy who won the All Ireland Ladies Minor Handball Doubles. They were presented with their medals by Uachtaran Liathroid Laimhe Conor McDonald. Well done girls.

SPA UNITED AFC U14 boys league division 2 Spa 4 Freebooters 1 Evergreen 1 Spa 2. U14 girls league division 1 Freebooters 1 Spa 0, U14 girls league division 2 Dean Celtic 5 Spa 0, U13 boys league division 1 Spa 1 Dean Celtic 2, U13 boys league division 2 Spa 1 Highview 0, U12 boys division 1 Evergreen 5 Spa 0, U11 boys David Doran Shield Final Spa 0 Freebooters1.A great day of football in Derdimus for the David Doran Plate, Shield and Cup finals. Spa U11 boys were in the shield final and in spite of a brilliant performance it wasn’t to be their day. However very well done boys, you are a credit to the club.

SPA DEVELOPMENT/FENIANS LOTTO Winning numbers 1,24,25,30, four lucky dips Michelle Garrett, Orla Hughes, Jenny Shortall and Ann Ryan. Thanks for your support.

EASTER CEREMONIES It was great to see such a large attendance from our parish at our Easter ceremonies in both Churches. A sincere thanks to Father Pat Murphy and Father Christy O’Dwyer for assisting at the ceremonies. Thanks also to the Sacristans, Readers, Musicians, Ministers of the Eucharist, Collectors and anyone else who helped over the Easter period.

Church Collections The Parish council would like to thank parishioners who supported the priest collection last weekend and also the weekly envelope collection for the upkeep of both churches.

Trocaire Boxes Contributions can be returned this weekend. Please support trocaire because it is only when we work together that we can build a truly just world.

CASHEL AND EMLY DIOCESAN PILGRIMAGE TO LOURDES The annual pilgrimage will take place from the 17th - 22nd June 2023, anyone interested in the Parish please contact the Parish council for further information.

CONGRATULATIONS Congratulations to Neasa Rae, Graigue who placed 12th out of 104 participants in World Irish Dancing competition in Montreal last weekend. The top 16 competitors in the competition got medals so it was a great achievement for her.

Best wishes for her future.

TUESDAY BRIDGE Bridge is being played each Tuesday night in Gortnahoe Hall at 7.30pm. If you would like to join or find out more information please contact this number 089 4349106 GORTNAHOE BINGO Bingo continues this Saturday night at 7.00pm with doors opening from 6.00pm and will continue each Saturday night at the same time. Over €2,660 in prize money on offer including a special €500 game. We look forward to the many visitors and family members home with their family, it will be a great nights entertainment for all.

SPLIT THE POT Congratulations to Martina O’Gorman from Coole who was the winner of €153 in the Split the Pot draw. Envelopes are available at the usual outlets. Split the Pot for the month of April will be in support of the Gortnahoe Senior Citizens. The draw takes place each Sunday at 12pm in Gortnahoe Hall.

Your support would be appreciated WILLIAM NOONAN RIP The death has taken place of William (Bill) Noonan (late of Terenure, Dublin and Newhall, Gortnahoe) on the 5th April,

peacefully at St James’s Hospital, beloved husband of the late Breda and loving Dad of Cathy, predeceased by his loving brother Dinny; sadly missed by his loving daughter, son-in-law Guillaume, nephews Liam, Donagh, Patrick and Diarmuid, niece Roisin, Mary and Cathy, extended family, neighbours and a wide circle of friends. May he Rest in Peace.

MILL FAMILY RESOURCE CENTRE DEFIBRILLATOR Please note that there is a defibrillator located in the Mill Family Resource Centre if and when it may be required.

SENIOR ALERT If you need to apply for a Personal Alarm, please contact Sue or Josephine.

COUNSELLING SERVICE Our low cost Counselling Services, includes One-to-One, Family and Teens, aged 12 plus.

General Counselling: Bereavement, Stress, Anxiety and Depression. Other Counselling Services available: Drug, Substance and Gambling Addictions. Play therapy is now also available. Please contact Sue for more information or to make an appointment.

APPEAL Appeal for Clothes Donations. Any further clothes donations would be greatly appreciated in aid of our counselling services. Donations can be left into the Centre, please call before dropping off. Contact number for the Centre 056883846

MASS TIMES Hugginstown: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at 9.30a.m.

Vigil. Saturday 15th. at 8.00p.m. Sunday 16th. at 10.00a.m.

Stoneyford. Vigil, Saturday 15th. at 6.30p.m.; Sunday 16th. Divine Mercy Sunday.

As we were unable to celebrate our Penitential Services for Easter we will celebrate the Penitential Service during all Masses next weekend, Saturday15th. April and Sunday16th.

April.

PRAY FOR Seamus Farrell, Owning, Margaret Kehoe, Glenmore..

Anniversary Masses next weekend. Tom McGrath, Norelands.

Mass in Stoneyford Church on Saturday 15th. April at 6.30p.m. Dick Power, Lismatigue, Mass in Hugginstown Church on Saturday 15th. April at 8.00p.m ROTA Week-end. 15th. and 16th. April 2023 . (Divine Mercy Sunday) Readers. Stoneyford. Saturday 6.30p.m. Catherina Roche.

Hugginstown: Saturday 8.00p.m. Pat Power. Sunday 10.00a.m. Deirdre O’Shea. Eucharistic Ministers, Stoneyford, Saturday 6.30p.m. Barbara Smolen. Hugginstown: Saturday 8.00p.m. Teresa Broderick, Sunday 10.00a.m. Lillian Carr.

OSSARY PILGRIMAGE TO LOURDES 2023 Lourdes Pilgrimage will take place from May 23rd. to 28th. this year. Accommodation in the Agena, Solitude and Padoue Hotels. Price includes return bus journey to/from Loughboy Shopping Centre Car Park to Dublin Airport.

Return flights from Dublin to Lourdes; Transfer to/from Airport to Hotel; Full board and hotel accommodation for the 5 nights. For further information and bookings contact niamh@jwttravel.ie or Phone 01 685 2244 PILGRIMAGE TO KNOCK Eucharistic Adoration Pilgrimage to Knock Sunday 23rd April.

Coach leaves Woodies Carpark, Kilkenny at 7.00am Cost €25pp: Contact: 086 1666547 Programme 9.45 to 10.45am: Tea/Coffee courtesy of Apostolate 11 to 12.00pm ;Guided Adoration led by the Franciscan Sisters 11 to 14.30pm: Confessions in the Chapel of Reconciliation 12 to 12.50pm Lunch (Bring a pack lunch) St John’s Rest and Care 13 to 14.30pm: KEYNOTE ADDRESS for the Pilgrimage in Basilica “The Eucharist and the Foundational Truths of the Christian Faith”.

Fr Pat Collins CM International Author, Speaker and Preacher.

15.00 to 16.30pm. Sacrament of Mass in Basilica with Arch-

bishop Kieran O’Reilly Cashel & Emily Diocese: Followed by Benediction and Eucharistic Blessing. 16.45: Coach departure EUCHARISTIC MINISTERS New Eucharistic Ministers needed in both Hugginstown and Stoneyford Churches for weekend Masses. Preparation Training can be done on-line in your own home with just a meeting in the local church for practical help. Please let me know if you can help. It is also recommended that Present Eucharistic Ministers be involved in this training.

COMPUTER COURSE Course during April in Gairdín an Ghorta, Newmarket.

Laptops and Smartphones. If interested please contact Willie Barron 086 839 4349 or Stephen Cassin 085 726 3393.

LOTTO Aghaviller Parish and Carrickshock G. A. A. LOTTO. Draw: Monday 3rd. April 2023. Numbers: 05; 17; 18; 26. No Winner First 3 Numbers Drawn. No Jackpot Winner: €30.00. Winners. John Kelly, Rossenarra. Edward Dwyer, Croan. Cleeve Cuddihy, Ballinteskin. Pat O’Neill, Stonecarthy.

Ger Carroll, Harristown.

3 x €15.00 (Sellers). Eamonn Irish. Teresa Fitzgerald. James Irish.

MONROE SCHOOOL A Clothes Collection will take place at Monroe School on Wednesday, April 19th. in aid of school resources. Please place any old clothes you wish to donate in a bag and leave them in the school shed between now and 19th. April.

SAFEGUARDING CONTACTS Diocesan Designated Liaison Person: Ms. Kathleen Sherry Tel: 087 100 0232.

Aghaviller Parish Representatives are: Teresa Broderick and Carmel O’Toole.

TROCAIRE Trócaire Collection. We ask that all Trócaire Contribution be returned as soon as possible please.

EASTER OFFERINGS Envelopes for the Easter Offering Collection are available at the Church Porch. Please take one and return it with your offering during the Easter Season. This offering is for the support of the priests of the Parish and Diocese.

DIARY DATES Dates to Remember for 2023. First Holy Communion. For Stoneyford School on Sunday 14th. May at 11.00a.m. in Stoneyford Church. For Monroe/Newmarket Schools on Sunday 21st. May at 11.00a.m. in Hugginstown Church.

Cemetery Masses. Calvary Cemetery on Friday 2nd. June at 8.00p.m. Stoneyford Cemetery on Friday 7th. July at 8.00p.m.

Hugginstown Cemetery on Saturday 1st. July at 8.00p.m.

A reunion of all former employees and staff of Castlecomer Mills has been planned for Friday May 19th in Shortall’s Lounge. From its opening in 1969 as Comer International Textile Mills to later Comerama the factory provided quality employment to both male and female workers. Initially the factory employed many miners following the closure of the Deerpark. Sadly, it closed its doors in November 2002, for the majority of the workforce, although production continued until May 2003 to fulfil an order for what was a specialty at the time lycra stretch yarn. Organisers of the re-union Tom Brennan (Roe) (087- 9623574), Mal Dunne (087-6198904), Michael Kealy (087-9713865) and Maurice Shortall (0877543906) stress all are welcome.

No doubt on the night there will be some stories (yarns to spin) from such characters as Matty Byrne, Sonny Browne, Seamus Walker, Danny Brennan, Patrick Murtagh (Buddy), Pat Gunner, Frank Byrne, Michael J. Brennan, John Delaney while in the female ranks we have Dora Dempsey, Mary Brennan (Campion), Sheila Dunne, Sheila Walsh (Brennan), Deirdre Renwick (Keating), Nell Byrne, Annette O’Connor, Margaret Fitzgerald (Mulcahy), to name but a few.

We welcome all GAA Club and Community notes for publication in The Kilkenny Observer email to sales@kilkennyobserver.ie

48

The Kilkenny Observer Friday 14 April 2023

kilkennyobserver.ie

Community & GAA Notes

WAR OF INDEPENDENCE Most family history researchers will encounter military / paramilitary activities among their Irish ancestors. Having a decent understanding of their activities adds context, colour and gives us a better sense of our forebears. The Irish War of Independence was a war of the people, a guerrilla war, fought on the ground with the assistance of friends, neighbours and relatives. Most had a family member who was actively involved and were more than willing to provide all possible assistance to others. The following excerpt from ‘The Flying Column – West Kilkenny 1916 – 1921’, 1987, p. 98~101 by Jim Maher, illustrates beautifully the network of support afforded the ‘Freedom Fighters’ in one little pocket of rural Ireland in 1921.

RETRACING JACKIE BRETT’S BURIALS Jim Maher was privileged to visit the places mentioned in the excerpt; to retrace the route, talk to the elders in the area and to photograph the places where the events occurred. Although, there is no longer a living memory of the incident described in the book, the people to whom I spoke, had a very clear and concise story to retell of the event as they learned it from the previous generation. They could tell of living relatives and connections to the people in the story, giving it a present day context “Early on April, 1921 the Flying Column left Cappahenry and moved to Castlejohn, which is just inside Co. Tipperary, but not far from Windgap, Co Kilkenny, and there they stayed at Philip Donovan’s dwelling house.

The active service unit was getting ready to move off from Castlejohn on April 6th, but first Ned Aylward, the column commander, ordered an inspection of arms. All members of the Flying Column went to their rooms in Donovan’s to clean up whatever weapons they had. Three of them were staying in the same room, Michael Gibbs, Paud Downey and Jackie Brett. Micky Gibbs was sitting on the stairs, cleaning his rifle, as Jackie Brett passed by him, going up to his room. Always a lad for caffling’, Jackie threw Michael Gibbs to one side with a push of his arms and they laughed heartily when Micky jocosely swore that he would ‘throttle’ him the next time that he did that. Ned Aylward and Jimmy Kelly passed by the stairs on their way out to the yard to get ready to put the Flying Column through a parade and drill session.

Jackie Brett went to his room and sat on the window-sill as he cleaned his revolver. He first took out the magazine, left his revolver on the window-sill beside him and began Funeral Of Jackie Brett In Mullinahone

to clean out the magazine. At the time he was unaware that he had left a live bullet in the breech of the revolver. As he worked on, he was in good humour and began to sing a verse of ‘Boolavogue’. Jack Donovan, a teenage member of the Donovan family, came into the room and began to converse with Jackie Brett. During the conversation he took the revolver into his hand and began to finger it. Suddenly the Colt Automatic fired because it had a weak spring and neither young Donovan nor Jackie Brett realised that a live bullet was up the breech. Jackie Brett collapsed motionless on the floor. The bullet had hit him at close range and had gone into the left hand side of his chest and out again through his right shoulder. Ned Aylward and Jimmy Kelly heard the report of the shot in the yard. Kelly paused and heard no further sound.

‘That shot has done harm,’ he said to Ned Aylward Jimmy Kelly, who had seen service in France with the British army in World War 1 and Ned Aylward rushed into the house and up the stairs. Kelly took one look at Jackie Brett and shouted for the first-aid equipment.

Michael Gibbs, always a close friend of Jackie Brett, quickly handed it to him. He grabbed the cotton wool, tore it into strips and packed it into the bleeding entrance and exit holes in Jackie Brett’s body to try to stem the big flow of blood from his wound.

Jack Donovan, though still in shock, was sent to get the priest and doctor. Jackie Brett was unconscious until Father Larkin, the curate in Windgap parish, arrived but then he opened his eyes when the priest entered the room. Flying Column members went out, while Father Larkin tended the dying man. Soon afterwards Dr Marnell of Kilmoganny arrived at Donovan’s and he went to the room upstairs to try to save Jackie Brett’s life.

The members of the Flying Column waited downstairs around the kitchen fire, hoping for the best. Father Larkin was the first to come downstairs and he sat down among the silent freedom fighters. ‘Jackie passed away a few minutes ago’ he said. ‘I was lucky to get here in time.’ Dr Marnell came down the stairs, and after sympathising with the members of the Flying Column, he left to go home. Father Larkin told them to contact him again if they needed his help and he then left. Ned Aylward thanked him on his way out for coming so quickly to their assistance, when called. This was the Flying Column’s first encounter with a death in their ranks and it took them a little while to

adjust to the shock. They then knelt down by the glowing kitchen fire and recited a full rosary for Jackie’s soul as they thought of how suddenly the young 19 year-old soldier boy had departed their ranks away from his native Mullinahone and the relations and countryside that he loved so well.

The members of the Flying Column, huddled together around the kitchen fire, discussed how they would bury the remains of their former comrade. They knew full well that they were outlaws in their own country and that they could not participate openly in any funeral. They could not risk bringing a coffin out of Carrick-on-Suir or Callan in case the R.I.C or British military got word of it.

But Jackie Brett had to be buried. It was proposed to bury him in a sheet. Sean Quinn, Jackie Brett’s friend, who had played football with him on the C.J.Kickham team in Mullinahone protested. ‘I’ll not allow him to be buried in a sheet, ‘ he retorted. ‘we’ll have to get a coffin for him, wherever it’ll be got’ Quinn would not yield. ‘Even if we’re all to be shot over it, we must get a coffin,’ he insisted. Micky Gibbs then volunteered to make a coffin, if he could get some old boards of any sound type. Accompanied

by Ned Aylward and Paud Downey, Micky went over to Frank O’Neill’s in Kiltrassy, to ask if they had any suitable boards for the purpose. They found Mrs O’Neill in the kitchen. ‘Anything in the house that is of use to you, you can have it,’ she said. ‘Go up on the loft and you’ll get some timber there.’

Michael Gibbs found to his great satisfaction that the loft contained a pile of rejected coffin boards which the O’Neills had bought some time before. Micky picked out four of the boards and started to make a coffin. He started about 9p.m. and he had a rough coffin fashioned by midnight. Mrs O’Neill brought out an 18 inch crucifix and Micky put in on the lid of the coffin.

Larry O’Neill, a son of the family arrived home and offered to transport the corpse to the graveyard. It was arranged to do this, in secret, during the night and to make the minimum noise. Larry yoked the horse to the cart which had rubber wheels, took the shoes off the horse and put sacking over the four hooves in order to dull the sound of the moving horse and vehicle. Micky Gibbs and Larry O’Neill, first brought the hand-made coffin back to Donovan’s Castlejohn, in the horse’s cart. With them came Nurse Kitty O’Neill, a sister of Larry’s, who was home on holidays and she prepared the body of Jackie Brett for burial. The Flying Column members them coffined Jackie

Drone Shot By Andy Ryan

and carried the coffin down to the kitchen.

Every member of the Flying Column then passed the coffin, Micky Gibbs drove nails into the roughly fashioned rectangular box and to secure it more soundly, Frank O’Neill of Kiltrassy got two ploughing reins and tied the head of the coffin with the strong ropes.

The Flying Column had sent word out to the local I.R.A. unit in Tullahought and they had gone to Lamoge graveyard and picked a dug grave, which already had been used and would not be needed again by the particular family who owned it. The Flying Column members followed the rubber-tyred cart, bearing the remains of Jackie Brett, drawn by the horse with the sack-covered hooves, on the silent journey to Lamoge cemetery. In the half-light Jackie Brett was secretly buried in the deserted graveyard and the Flying Column members, assisted by members of the Tullahought company of the I.R.A. filled in the grave as neatly as they could, in order to disguise the fact that any new fresh grave had been opened in the cemetery. Before leaving the graveyard at dawn, the Flying Column recited a Rosary for the repose of the soul of Jackie Brett. It was now dangerous for them to stay any longer in the district. as British forces might come looking for freshly made graves and the next day they moved on though the fields for Kilbricken, near Callan, where they stayed with Madigans, Kirwans, Condons, Holdens and Downeys Despite all the exhaustive measures taken by the Flying Column to keep the news of Jackie Brett’s death from the British military, they still got word of his accidental shooting, but they did not know where he was buried.

Still they went searching for the body in order to instigate an investigation into the whole case and they kept their eyes open for newly made graves. The Tullahought company watched the British military as the searched near their area and when it became apparent that Lamoge cemetery would come within range of the search, they decided to raise Jackie Brett’s coffin again.

Ned Maher, Cussan, Michael Davis, Jack Donovans House Castlejohn

Donovan, Frank and Larry O’Neill of Kiltrassy, Paddy Lee, John Duggan and Pat Holden, Newtown Kells, opened the grave once more and brought the remains of Jackie Brett this time to the farm of Ned Maher Cussan.

There the coffin was taken out to a field which was being tilled for sowing turnips. A grave was opened in the field and the coffin, containing the remains of Jackie Brett was again interred. Planks and boards were put over the coffin, to prevent the grave sinking and the earth was then filled in. All the loose earth that did not fit back into the grave was then taken away and the next morning the horses tilled, harrowed and opened the fresh turnip drills over the freshly made grave in the 6 acre field.” Before leaving the field, the local I.R.A. Volunteers measured accurately the position of Jackie Brett’s hidden and unmarked grave by stepping the distances from the two adjacent sides in the rectangular field. One day, when the fight was over, they would see to it that the remains of Jackie Brett would be buried in consecrated ground. But for them and the Flying Column that day was still very much in the future and more of the Column would die before it would dawn.“A ballad-maker, Paddy Cuddihy, was in business in Callan at the time and he penned a verse in memory of Jackie Brett May the sod lie lightly on you, Sean And when the fight is won, We’ll rest you in the Martyrs’ Plot, ‘Neath the shade of Sliabh na mBan. And rising proudly at your head Like a sentinel shall stand Redemption’s sign – with the noble words “He gave all for Ireland”.“ BURIED WITH DIGNITY Following the truce in July of 1921, Jackie Brett’s remains were once again exhumed from the turnip field. His funeral procession with full honours went through Callan, Co Kilkenny before reaching his final resting place in his native parish of Mullinahone, County Tipperary

The Kilkenny Observer Friday 14 April 2023

49

kilkennyobserver.ie

Sport

Kilkenny Sport Focus Michael O’Leary

Aintree Grand National

One of the biggest days on the Racing and indeed Sporting Calendar takes place tomorrow as The Aintree Grand National takes centrestage.

The history of The Grand National has thrown up special stories throughout the years and decades including Red Rum becoming the first and only horse to win the Aintree feature three times (1973, 1974 and 1977), Bob Champion overcoming cancer to win aboard Aldaniti in 1981, Tiger Roll becoming the first since Red Rum to win consecutive renewals in 2018 and 2019, while in 2021 Rachael Blackmore made history when she became the first female jockey to win the marathon feature when partnering the Henry De Bromhead Minella Times to a most famous triumph.

Indeed, the history of The National has a strong local emphasis going back through

the years, with the most famous victor of all Red Rum, bred by the McEnery family in Kells.

50 years ago in 1973, Red Rum got up in front of the line to deny Crisp in one of the most memorable finishes to the feature race before repeating the feat in 1974.

The hat-trick of Nationals was complete in 1977 when Red Rum with Tommy Stack on board strolled to a 25 length victory.

The Mullins family have had victories in the Aintree feature with Willie training Hedgehunter to win 2005, while his nephews David and Emmet also tasted success.

David aged 19 became one of the youngest riders to win The National in 2016, when he was aboard the Mouse Morris trained Rule The World to give Ireland their first Aintree National in 9 years, while he was just denied a Second National Triumph in 2018

in a photo finish as the fast finishing Pleasant Company just lost out to Tiger Roll.

Emmet had his biggest day to date last year, when Noble Yeats won to give Sam Waley Coen the perfect fairytale ending on his riding swansong.

Noble Yeats is back again this year having won The Many Clouds in Aintree in December, while he stayed on well to finish 4th in The Cheltenham Gold Cup. He comes into tomorrow's race in very good form, and while he should give a gallant account in his attempt to repeat last years victory, a hefty weight this year of about 11-10 might just see him come up short.

Willie Mullins won as a rider over The National Fences when partnering Atha Cliath for his Dad Paddy to win The Foxhunters Chase in 1983, while he has plenty of big race triumphs at the Aintree Festival.

Those big race wins included the ultra consistent Florida Pearl winning The Martell Cup in 2002, and Annie Power who came straight from landing The Champion Hurdle to win The Aintree Hurdle.

The iconic Dawn Run trained

by Paddy Mullins also won The Aintree Hurdle in 1984 with his Son Tony on board after also winning The Champion Hurdle.

The Mare would complete Racing history two years later in 1986 when memorably winning The Cheltenham Gold Cup, as she became The first and only horse to win both The Champion Hurdle and Gold Cup. Hedgehunter won The National in 2005 having won The Thyestes a year earlier in 2004, while The Martin Brassil trained Numbrsixvalverde won The National in 2006 having also won The Thyestes a year earlier in 2005.

Martin Brassil also trained

last years Thyestes winner Longhouse Poet who subseqently went on to finish 6th in The Aintree feature.

Longhouse Poet won over fences in Down Royal on St. Patricks Day, and should run well tomorrow evening - Providing he runs - after running so well last year.

Other local connections that won The Grand National include former Kilkenny College student Daryl Jacob who was aboard Neptune Colleges who prevailed in a photo finish in 2012 following an epic conclusion, 2017 winner One For Arthur who passed away recently was bred by Bennettsbridge native John Dwan, while Rachael Blackmore who made history in winning The 2021 National was mainly attached to the John "Shark" Hanlon stable earlier in her career.

At time of writing, it's unclear as to who will line-up in tomorrow's feature, but

Willie Mullins is expected to be represented by recent Cheltenham Festival winner Galaird Du Mesnil who won The Four Mile Chase and was third in last years Irish National.

Galaird Du Mesnil will be a leading fancy if he lines-up, while stable companion Mr. Incredible would be a solid contender also.

Noble Yeats will be one of the top weights as he attempts to repeat last years triumph, while stable companion The Shunter could run a big race at a big price - Currently available at 40/1 -.

The "Shark" Hanlon has Cape Gentleman entered, while Piltown Native Joseph O'Brien is represented Darasso who won The 2019 Red Mills Hurdle in Gowran Park.

Tomorrow's Grand National will be as fascinating as always with the latest Chapter about to be written in one of The Worlds most famous races.

7 Habits of highly effective sleepers EOIN EVERARD

There's nothing more frustrating than a bad night's sleep.

The next day is always spent on coffee trying to feel good again! From treating many top-class athletes one thing they can do is sleep! There are simple things you can do that I have seen top class athletes do that can help you have more energy for sport, work and life!

Here is a list of things you can do to help your sleep.

1. They're proactive How many people do you hear complaining of tiredness day-to-day? A lot. But more to the point, how many of these people are actually doing something about it? What separates highly effective sleepers from the fatigued is their approach to sleeping.

Not all of us are lucky enough to fall soundly asleep as soon as our head hits the pillow and wake up refreshed.

It takes commitment, routine and the practice of good sleep hygiene. You need to address your lifestyle choices before declaring yourself as an insomniac for life. Invest

in a supportive mattress, clear your bedroom of distraction and go to bed at a reasonable hour; be proactive.

covery. It's hard a habit to pick up, but you'll notice dramatic improvements by adopting a regular sleep pattern.

2. They maintain an effective circadian rhythm Effective sleepers master their circadian rhythm - they know what sleep they need and do all they can to get it. The optimum amount of sleep for adults aged 18-64 is 7-9 hours, says The National Sleep Foundation. But the time you choose to go to bed is up to you.

According to sleep expert Michael Breus, the average sleep cycle for any individual is around 90 minutes, and we require around 5 of these 90 minute cycles each night. When calculated, this amounts to 7.5 hours per night.

To work out what time you should go to sleep, choose your ideal wake-up time and work backwards 7.5 hours.

From this point onwards, even at the weekends, aim to stick to these specific wake-up and sleep times, as this helps establish an effective circadian rhythm (your internal clock).

Consistent sleep is key to avoiding daytime tiredness. It promotes a healthy hormone balance, increases energy levels and allows time for re-

3. They DON'T use smartphones before bedtime This is a bad habit that many poor sleepers can admit to doing - incessant scrolling.

You’re bored, it's late, you want to see what your friends are up to and 'catch up with the world' before setting your alarm. Big mistake. Like sleeping in front of the TV, the artificial blue light that emanates from your phone is damaging your sleep/wake patterns.

It tricks the brain into thinking that it's morning, and interferes with melatonin production as a result. But melatonin does more than help us fall asleep - without it, you're more vulnerable to disease and symptoms of depression. Switch off all technology well before heading to bed and keep your phone on the other side of the room as you sleep - no more Facebook at 2am!

4. They eat the right things How you fuel your day is critical to determining how well you'll sleep. By grazing on sugar-filled chocolate bars throughout the day (that spike insulin levels and leave you

sleepy when you shouldn't be) you promote inconsistency and find yourself more inclined to nap, which leads to disrupted sleep. Likewise, guzzle coffee after coffee 9-5, and you won't be able to switch off come bedtime.

Where possible, steer clear of high-fat and sugar-rich foods - they aren't sleep inducing.

Same goes for alcohol, spicy dishes and caffeine; if you're struggling to sleep, know your limits.

Instead stock your kitchen with sleep-friendly foods. The tryptophan content of wholegrain carbs and foods such as turkey and cottage cheese, help curb late-night hunger pangs by stimulating the creation of serotonin/melatonin, which regulate your sleep/ wake patterns. Try snacking on a small portion of bread or crackers an hour before you sleep. Camomile tea, honey, almonds and kiwi fruit are also said to do the trick.

5. They're avid readers Highly effective sleepers love to read. They switch off all electrical devices 1-2 hours before hopping into bed and curl up with a good book. The wind down process before trying to sleep is very important to achieving a good night's rest. It tells the body that all

activity has stopped, and you're ready to relax.

Reading does just that.

Rather than stimulating the mind, you immerse yourself in worlds far away from your own; removing any worries and enabling you to de-stress.

A recent report stated that 'it only takes 6 minutes reading time to reduce the heart rate/ tension in muscles,' which in turn, helps you to relax. Time to hit the library.

6. They appreciate the sunshine Locking yourself away for 8 hours a day in a lightless office can also impact your quality of sleep. By not getting a sufficient amount of sunlight, you confuse your body clock and disrupt your natural sleep/ wake patterns.

A study presented at the 27th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC, revealed the need for sunlight to its true extent. When comparing the sun-seeking habits of 49 different day-shift workers; 27 in windowless workplaces and 22 in workplaces with windows, they found that the employees who were exposed to natural light more often did in fact, have a better night's sleep and "slept an average of 46 minutes more per night,"

says Forbes.

What's more, workers with windows also proved to be more active in the daytime, which also contributes to good quality sleep. Don't eat your lunch at your desk and embrace a little sunshine, for the sake of your sleep.

7. They meditate when they can’t sleep.

If you're struggling to drift off, find your inner Zen and start to meditate. A study led by Havard Medical Health agrees that by focusing on “momentby-moment experiences, thoughts, and emotions” through mindful meditation, you approach day-to-day challenges more pragmatically/with a clear head. This in turn, takes the pressure off and enables you to sleep stress free for the recommended 7-9 hours.

Even simple breathing techniques can help you relax.

Health expert and best-selling author, Dr Weil advocates the '4-7-8 breathing technique;' in which you inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 7, then exhale for 8 seconds. Repeat this process 3 times to achieve sleep-worthy calmness.

For more articles or information about Eoin Everard and Sports Pilates visit www. everardpilates.com

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The Kilkenny Observer Friday 14 April 2023

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Hurling matters - Review

Sport

BY NIALL SHERRY SPORTS EDITOR SPORTSEDITORKILKENNYOBSERVER.IE

Limerick canter to league crown Allianz Hurling League Final Pairc Ui Chaoimh, Cork Kilkenny 0-15 Limerick 2-20 Limerick cantered to an 11-point win over Kilkenny to claim a 14th National Hurling League title on Easter Sunday in front of just over 17,000 supporters in Pairc Ui Chaoimh. Goals in either half from Barry Nash and Aaron Gillane rubber-stamped The Treaty’s superiority over their opponents and the result has again shown the gulf between the All-Ireland champions and the chasing pack.

Derek Lyng will have much to contemplate as he begins championship preparation with his Cats panel, including a 19-minute spell without registering a score during the second half. You simply cannot afford such a hiatus in scoring against the top sides, and Limerick are the very top.

Kilkenny lined out as selected for the game, while The Treaty made two changes to their line-up, Declan Hannon and Kyle Hayes replaced by Mike Casey & Colin Coughlan.

The Noresiders started brightly, hitting the opening three scores of the game. The returning Adrian Mullen fired over the first point in the first 30 seconds, and he also had the first wide just a minute later.

Referee Paud O’Dwyer awarded a free to Kilkenny on half-way and this gave Billy Drennan the opportunity to open his account, and the Galmoy man made no mistake.

The third Kilkenny score of the day was the pick of them. Erins Own’s Conor Fogarty played a lovely crossfield ball to captain Eoin Cody. The Shamrocks man passed to clubmate Richie Reid, who dispatched a fine point to put his side 3 points to the good.

Having already registered a few wides, The Treaty eventually got off the mark in the 9th minute, thanks to a well taken free by Patrickswell’s Aaron Gillane from out on the right sideline. Billy Ryan was then blownup for picking the sliotar straight off the ground and that man Gillane split the posts from around the ‘65 to reduce the Cats lead to the minimum.

Carlow whistler O’Dwyer was not endearing himself to the Kilkenny Gaels in attendance with some dubious calls and they made the feelings clear when he awarded another ‘soft’ free to Limerick on 13 minutes. Again, Aaron Gillane made no mistake and brought the sides level. Diarmaid Byrnes was then penalised for over-carrying and Billy Drennan punished this by slotting his second score of the game.

John Kiely’s team got their first score from play on 16 minutes when

Cats crushed in Cork Richie Reid Gets away from Shane O Brien

full-forward Seamus Flanagan fired over his left shoulder when it seemed that Kilkenny were about to turn him over. O’Loughlin’s Paddy Deegan was then bundled over by a couple of green jerseys and Billy Drennan added to his tally to edge the Cats ahead again.

Then came the first major of the day. Seamus Flanagan had roamed out the field and the big No.14 played a diagonal ball into the danger zone. Aaron Gillane nipped in front of Padraig Walsh collected the ball before batting a pass to the supporting Barry Nash. The South Liberties man out-foxed Mikey Butler before unleashing a fierce shot that crept in at Eoin Murphy’s near post.

Limerick now led for the first time, 1-4 to 0-5.

Billy Drennan fired over another

free on 21 minutes to leave just onepoint between the sides. The U20 All-Ireland winner was clearly the main source of scores for the Cats, a worrying trend. Gillane then picked the pocket of Padraig Walsh again before striking over a nice point from play. Last season’s captain Richie Reid then struck over a monstrous score from play for his second of the day and his sides first from play since the Shamrocks man’s earlier effort some six minutes into the game.

John Donnelly was then adjudged to have fouled Mike Casey and wing back Diarmaid Byrnes split the posts from the resulting free. Byrnes repeated his feat two minutes later, this time from around the ‘65 to leave The Treaty 3 ahead with 27 minutes played. The next score was a beauty. Huw Lawlor popped a pass

The Kilkenny Observer Friday 14 April 2023

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Hurling matters - Review Huw Lawlor Drives out past Darragh O Donovan

Billy Drennan leans backwards to make a fine catch from Shane Flanagan and Peter Casey

to Adrian Mullen who struck the sliotar sweetly between the posts from the half-way line. Limerick responded immediately, raiding cornerback Barry Nash finding space on the right side before rifling over a point. 1-1 for the South Liberties man in the first half of the league final.

Thomastown’s Donnelly was then blown-up for a frontal challenge on Cian Lynch, and this resulted in another placed ball being slotted by Diarmaid Byrnes. Limerick were now 4 ahead and beginning to find their groove. Gearoid Hegarty won the ball but uncharacteristically misplaced the pass. The alert Paddy Deegan took advantage and struck over a booming score from inside his own ‘65. A stunning score.

Adrian Mullen heavily challenged

by Cian Lynch

Centreback Colin Coughlin then fired over a lovely point close to the sideline in front of the dugouts. Captain Eoin Cody the evaded a couple of tackles before firing over from a tight angle out on the right side for his first score of the game. Limerick then tagged on another three scores before the short

whistle via Darragh O’Donovan, Cathal O’Neill and a sweet one from Gillane to leave the scoreline at the interval, Kilkenny 0-10, Limerick 1-13. What started out as a difficult task now looked nigh impossible.

Derek Lyng took the opportunity to make one change at the break with The Village’s Cian Kenny replacing John Donnelly.

Like the opening period, Adrian Mullen got the first score of the second half, the third of the game for the returning Shamrocks man.

Referee O’Dwyer then adjudged Richie Reid to have fouled his man and Aaron Gillane struck over the placed ball to restore the 6-point lead. The enigmatic Gillane was then stopped in his tracks illegally

by Padraig Walsh and he punished the Tullaroan man’s indiscretion by pointing the free.

A four-minute scoring lull was broken when Seamus Flanagan pointed, the gap was now eight.

Kilkenny needed scores quickly and they got a fine point from Paddy Deegan. They followed up on this with a free from Billy Drennan after Cian Kenny was fouled. The Cats then made another change with Paddy Mullen replacing Conor Fogarty in the engine room. Huw Lawlor then found himself in a shooting position, only to see his effort blocked by Cathal O’Neill.

The big O’Loughlin’s man collected the loose ball and fired his second effort between the sticks.

Adrian Mullen was then replaced

by Dicksboro’s Timmy Clifford, a solid 50-odd minutes for the talented Shamrocks man.

Not that many had noticed, but Darragh O’Donovan struck over his second point of the game in the 53rd minute, The Treaty side’s first score for some nine minutes. Then came the big moment of the second half. The second major of the league final, the second major for Limerick. Cian Lynch won the ball ahead of Cian Kenny before firing a lovely pass to Seamus Flanagan who got out in front of Tommy Walsh.

The Feoghanagh Castlemahon man collected the ball and sprinted away from his marker before hand passing to Aaron Gillane who batted the ball

beyond Eoin Murphy. Great move, great skill, stunning finish.

In keeping with the machine that they have become in recent years, Limerick tagged on two more points in quick succession, another for Flanagan and another placed ball effort from Diarmaid Byrnes. The Kilkenny management then made two more changes, Alan Murphy and Gearoid Dunne replacing Billy’s Ryan And Drennan.

After another spell of Limerick possession, the ball was worked back to Byrnes, who despite coming under pressure from Eoin Cody split the posts from just inside his own half. A couple of wides followed for the Cats, Padraig Walsh and Gearoid Dunne the latest to miss the target for the Noresiders. The Treaty County were also guilty of several wides as the game began to peter out. Eoin Murphy was then called into action and his smart save prevented a 3rd major for Limerick as he denied Conor Boylan.

The final score of a disappointing day at the office for Kilkenny came from captain Eoin Cody, who slotted over an injury time free, his side’s first score for almost 20 minutes. Paud O’Dwyer sounded the long whistle and brought proceedings to a close, Limerick Allianz League champions for a third time under manager John Kiely on a scoreline of Kilkenny 0-15, Limerick 2-20.

Scorers – Kilkenny: Billy Drennan

0-5 (5 frees), Adrian Mullen 0-3, Richie Reid and Paddy Deegan and Eoin Cody (1 free) 0-2 each, Huw Lawlor 0-1 each.

Scorers – Limerick: Aaron Gillane 1-7 (5 frees), Diarmaid Byrnes 0-5 (3 frees), Barry Nash 1-1, Seamus Flangan 0-3, Darragh O’Donovan 0-2, Colin Coughlan and Cathal O’Neill 0-1.

KILKENNY: Eoin Murphy; Mikey Butler, Tommy Walsh, Padraig Walsh; Richie Reid, Huw Lawlor, David Blanchfield; Conor Fogarty, Paddy Deegan; John Donnelly, Adrian Mullen, Billy Ryan; Billy Drennan, Martin Keoghan, Eoin Cody.

Subs: Cian Kenny for Donnelly (h-t), Paddy Mullen for Fogarty (47 mins), Timmy Clifford for Mullen (52 mins), Alan Murphy for Ryan (56 mins), Gearóid Dunne for Drennen (56 mins).

LIMERICK: Nickie Quaid; Sean Finn, Mike Casey, Barry Nash; Diarmaid Byrnes, Dan Morrissey, Colin Coughlan; Darragh O’Donovan, Barry Murphy; Gearóid Hegarty, Cian Lynch, Cathal O’Neill; Aaron Gillane, Séamus Flanagan, Peter Casey.

Subs: Tom Morrissey for Murphy (h-t), Richie English for M Casey (47 mins), Conor Boylan for Lynch (58 mins), Donnacha Ó Dálaigh for Flanagan (63 mins), Shane O’Brien for M Casey (67 mins), Mark Quinlan for Byrnes (71 mins).

REFEREE: Paud O’Dwyer (Carlow)

>> SHERRY SAYS...

And that’s a wrap for this year’s Allianz National Hurling League. Kilkenny well beaten by the Limerick juggernaut at Pairc Ui Chaoimh. The Treaty men restricted the Cats to mostly long-range shooting, some of these shots found the target, Adrian Mullen and Paddy Deegan in particular hitting lovely efforts. Again, Billy Drennan kept things ticking over, but Limerick’s defence were careful not to present to many opportunities to the Galmoy man.

Aaron Gillane was a constant thorn in the Kilkenny defence’s side. His constant movement and intelligent runs causing Padraig Walsh and Mikey Butler amongst others real bother. Seamus Flanagan was getting plenty of joy out of Tommy Walsh, and many supporters were heard asking questions in the aftermath of the Cats defeat - “why was Huw Lawlor taken out of the full-back position” A fair question indeed.

Look, there will have been plenty of positives to take from this year’s league, but Limerick are the marker of where a team is, and last Sunday shows that we are still some way off seriously challenging John Kiely’s team.

The return to county colours of Adrian Mullen was a major positive. The Shamrocks man will be key to Kilkenny challenging to get back to Croker and perhaps getting another crack at this Limerick side.

The players will probably have had a little bit of a rest in the past week, and attention will now turn to defending their provincial crown. First-up for the Cats will be the visit to UPMC Nowlan Park of Westmeath. As we say, the league’s for playing... the championship’s for winning.

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The Kilkenny Observer Friday 14 April 2023

Motors Classifieds

Classified section To advertise your business in our classified section call in or telephone: 056 777 1463, or email: accounts @kilkennyobserver.ie

NOW OPEN SATURDAY MORNINGS 9.30am to 12.00pm

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JOEPARSONSGARDEN MAINTENANCE SERVICES INCLUDE • Hedge cutting • • Grass cutting • • Power washing • • Dry rubbish removal • • Tree pruning •

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The Kilkenny Observer Friday 14 April 2023

Planning notices

Planning notices KILKENNY COUNTY COUNCIL

KILKENNY COUNTY COUNCIL

Kilkenny County Council Significant Further Information I Eamon O’Neill, Laurel House, Doninga, Goresbridge, Co Kilkenny applied to Kilkenny County Council for planning permission (Ref. No: 2328). The development applied for consisted of: permission for development of construction of a milking parlour, dairy, plant room, collecting yard, drafting facilities, cubicle/slatted shed, slatted tanks, silage base, meal bin and associated site works necessary to facilitate the proposed development at Coppanagh, Dungarvan, Kilkenny, Co Kilkenny. Significant Further Information/Revised Plans has/have been furnished to the Planning Authority in respect of this proposed development, and is/are available for inspection or purchase at a fee not exceeding the reasonable cost of making a copy, at the Offices of the Planning Authority during its public opening hours of 9:00 a.m. to 1.00 p.m. and 2.00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

A submission or observation in relation to the further information or revised plans may be made in writing to the Planning Authority within a period of 2 weeks from the date of receipt of the revised public notices. A submission or observation must be accompanied by the prescribed fee of €20, except in the case of a person or body who has already made a submission or observation and such submission or observation will be considered by the Planning Authority in making a decision on the application. The Planning Authority may grant permission subject to or without conditions or may refuse to grant permission.

Signed _____________________ Dempsey Agri

Notice of Further Information/Revised Plans I, John Murphy Ref. No. of the application: 22711

KILKENNY COUNTY COUNCIL

I Aidan Kelly Agricultural Design & Planning Services (085 7466211, www.adps.ie) intends to apply to Kilkenny County Council on behalf of my client Old Meadow farm Ltd. Permission to construct (i) Slatted tank (ii) Calf shed and all associated site works at Ballyconra, Ballyragget, Co. Kilkenny.

The planning application may be inspected, or purchased at a fee not exceeding the reasonable cost of making a copy, at the offices of the Planning Department, Kilkenny County Council, County Hall, John Street, Kilkenny, during its public opening hours 9.00 a.m. - 1.00 p.m. and 2.00 p.m. - 4.00 p.m. Monday to Friday, and a submission or observation in relation to the application may be made to the Planning Authority in writing on payment of the prescribed fee (€20.00) within the period of 5 weeks beginning on the date of receipt by the Authority of the planning application.

At: Orchard House, New Orchard, Kilkenny. R95 XRC4 The development applied for consisted of: 1. Planning permission is sought for a material change of use of 30 square meters of an existing ground floor ancillary storage area for the bar/restaurant to a new short-term holiday accommodation lobby and bedroom, and both internal and external alterations to same unit.

2. Permission is also sought to construct a new 53 square meter single-storey extension to the side of the existing ancillary storage accommodation comprising a second short-term holiday accommodation bedroomed unit with ensuites for both bedrooms plus additional new storage space and 3. all associated site development works The revised plans will consist of: 1. Planning permission is sought for a material change of use of 30 square meters of an existing ground floor ancillary storage area for the bar/restaurant to a new short-term holiday accommodation lobby and bedroom, and both internal and external alterations to same unit.

2. Permission is also sought to construct a new 53 square meter single-story extension to the side of the existing ancillary storage accommodation comprising a second short-term holiday accommodation sbedroomed unit with ensuites for both bedrooms plus additional new storage space and 3. All associated site development works 4. and retention permission is sought for 5 No. external single-story ‘open’ units, as ancillary to the pub/restaurant garden areas. (4 units at 5 square meters, internal space, and one at 11 square meters) Significant Further Information/Revised Plans have been furnished to the Planning Authority in respect of this proposed development, and are available for inspection or purchase at a fee not exceeding the reasonable cost of making a copy, at the Offices of the Planning Authority during its public opening hours of 9:00 a.m. to 1.00 p.m. and 2.00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

A submission or observation in relation to the significant further information / revised plans may be made in writing to the Planning Authority within a period of 5 weeks from the date of receipt of the revised public notices. A submission or observation must be accompanied by the prescribed fee of €20, except in the case of a person or body who has already made a submission or observation and such submission or observation will be considered by the Planning Authority in making a decision on the application. The Planning Authority may grant permission subject to, or without conditions, or may refuse to grant permission.

Signed: Gittens Murray Architects Ltd., No. 5 William Street, Kilkenny.

Tel No: 056-7753933. web:www.gmarch.net

056 777 1463

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Memoriams / Miracle Prayers

The Miracle Prayer

The Miracle Prayer

Dear heart of Jesus, in the past I have asked many favours.

This time I ask you this special one (mention favour).

Take it dear heart of Jesus and place it within your heart where your father sees it. Then in his merciful eyes it will become your own favour not mine. Amen.

Say this prayer three times for three days and your favour will be granted.

Never been known to fail.

Must promise publication of prayer.M.K.

Dear heart of Jesus, in the past I have asked many favours.

This time I ask you this special one (mention favour).

Take it dear heart of Jesus and place it within your heart where your father sees it. Then in his merciful eyes it will become your own favour not mine. Amen.

Say this prayer three times for three days and your favour will be granted.

Never been known to fail.

Must promise publication of prayer.M.M.

The Miracle Prayer

The Miracle Prayer

Dear heart of Jesus, in the past I have asked many favours.

This time I ask you this special one (mention favour).

Take it dear heart of Jesus and place it within your heart where your father sees it. Then in his merciful eyes it will become your own favour not mine. Amen.

Say this prayer three times for three days and your favour will be granted.

Never been known to fail.

Must promise publication of prayer.C.OS.

Dear heart of Jesus, in the past I have asked many favours.

This time I ask you this special one (mention favour).

Take it dear heart of Jesus and place it within your heart where your father sees it. Then in his merciful eyes it will become your own favour not mine. Amen.

Say this prayer three times for three days and your favour will be granted.

Never been known to fail.

Must promise publication of prayer.M.B.

The Miracle Prayer

Dear heart of Jesus, in the past I have asked many favours.

This time I ask you this special one (mention favour).

Take it dear heart of Jesus and place it within your heart where your father sees it. Then in his merciful eyes it will become your own favour not mine. Amen.

Say this prayer three times for three days and your favour will be granted.

Never been known to fail.

Must promise publication of prayer.K.M.

The Miracle Prayer

Dear heart of Jesus, in the past I have asked many favours.

This time I ask you this special one (mention favour).

Take it dear heart of Jesus and place it within your heart where your father sees it. Then in his merciful eyes it will become your own favour not mine. Amen.

Say this prayer three times for three days and your favour will be granted.

Never been known to fail.

Must promise publication of prayerA.B.

The Miracle Prayer

Dear heart of Jesus, in the past I have asked many favours.

This time I ask you this special one (mention favour).

Take it dear heart of Jesus and place it within your heart where your father sees it. Then in his merciful eyes it will become your own favour not mine. Amen.

Say this prayer three times for three days and your favour will be granted.

Never been known to fail.

Must promise publication of prayer.S.M.

The Miracle Prayer

Dear heart of Jesus, in the past I have asked many favours.

This time I ask you this special one (mention favour).

Take it dear heart of Jesus and place it within your heart where your father sees it. Then in his merciful eyes it will become your own favour not mine. Amen.

Say this prayer three times for three days and your favour will be granted.

Never been known to fail.

Must promise publication of prayer.A.S.

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The Kilkenny Observer Friday 14 April 2023