A man charged with the fatal stabbing of his son, who was found lying in a pool of blood, claims it was an accident, a court has heard.
The victim, Rafal Bednarczyk Jacyna (36), was pronounced dead at the scene by emergency services. The fatal stabbing took place at at Meadow Way, Castlecomer Road, just outside Kilkenny city on Monday night, February 27.
Zbigniew Bednarczyk (69)
was refused bail at Carlow District Court following objections by Gardai.
A Garda witness told the court that a witness contradicts the accused’s account of what happened. Mr Bednarczyk said it was “an accident”. Mr Bednarczyk, was brought before Judge Geraldine Carthy where he was charged with serious assault causing fatal harm to his son Rafal Bednarczyk Jacyna.
Spring has sprung as young Maya (7) and Rayan (10) Rizvi go for a brisk run with their dog Mylo, sending out the message that small changes can have a big impact on your pet’s mental health
Kilkenny’s Operation
TransPAWmation programme is highlighting the importance of the right type of exercise and play for every dog, with their expert team helping Kilkenny’s pet-parents to find the small changes that will make a big difference to their pet’s health. Recent research indicates that as many as 20% of dog owners in Ireland are unsure what breed group their dog belongs to, while 66% were unable to identify the best type of exercise and play for their dog’s breed group.
Special Report Page 14
The court heard that dad-of-one Rafal was stabbed once in his thigh and died from his injuries.
On the Monday Mr Bednarczyk was arrested nearby and was taken to Kilkenny Garda station for questioning.
The scene of the fatal stabbing remains sealed off as a forensic examination got under way, and neighbours said they were “shocked” at the news.
Neighbours told reporters
the house was rented and the man who lived there had been there for a number of years.
“They are Polish, and people come and go to the house, but they mainly keep to themselves,” said one local resident. “We acknowledge each other and say ‘hello’, and they go about their lives.”
“Many of the residents here would be elderly and we help each other out when help is needed, and nothing like this
has ever happened here before,” one woman said.
A post-mortem examination is being carried out by State Pathologist Dr Sally Anne Cullis at University Hospital Waterford.
Fianna Fáil Councillor Andrew McGuinness said: “It’s a quiet area, so it’s deeply upsetting for the local community here,” Mr McGuinness said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the family.”
A hospital consultant has been found guilty of professional misconduct over his delay in returning to hospital while on-call to attend to a young Carlow woman who died shortly after giving birth at St Luke’s hospital seven years ago. The Irish Medical Council also found consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist David McMurray guilty of “poor professional performance” over his failure to attend to the patient in a timely manner.
Full story, Page 6
Wexford General Hospital remains closed after a major fire broke out in the building’s machinery room and 200 patients had to be evacuated by up to 20 ambulances. All out-patient appointments and other services remain cancelled until further notice.
All patients have been accommodated safely.
Energy Minister Eamon Ryan has called on Electric Ireland to pass on price cuts to households “as soon as possible”. His call comes after opposition TDs said the utility provider must explain why it was reducing prices for businesses but not for households.
A spokesperson for Mr Ryan told reporters that, while he “welcomes” the 10% to 15% reduction for small busi-
nesses, “he would like to see the same happening for domestic customers as soon as possible”.
The minister met with all electricity suppliers late last year and pushed for competitive rates for customers, especially those who are vulnerable.
Electric Ireland announced in the last week that it would reduce some prices by up to
15% for its business customers, with an average cut of 10%, from next month.
The Consumers’ Association of Ireland said it was “galling and upsetting” for consumers to see price cuts for businesses but not for households.
It said it was time consumers saw a price reduction as wholesale energy costs have fallen back to 18-month lows.
In response, a spokesperson
for Electric Ireland said prices for domestic customers had not risen since October 1 and last December it announced profits would be forgone from its residential electricity business and a €50 credit would be given to each of its residential customers.
“Over one million residential customers received this €50 credit at the start of 2023,” they said.
Earlier, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told the Dáil he would meet the energy companies to urge them to reduce electricity charges for domestic customers.
He said Mr Ryan was engaging with energy companies. “I will engage with them directly as well,” he said. The next step from the Government was the windfall tax.
See John Ellis, Page 16
TDS’ salaries are now higher than ever after passing a Celtic Tiger highpoint. Their basic pay — before expenses — has reached €107,376, from a previous peak of €106,582 in 2008. Oireachtas members’ and public servants’ wages are due to rise immediately by 2% in a deal brokered amid soaring living costs.
A Sinn Féin spokesperson said its TDs agreed collectively to forgo pay increases due under the agreement.
Paul Hopkins P8
Marianne Heron P12
Clair Whitty P12
Special Report .................................P14
Science & Wellbeing P18
Travel & Leisure P19
Gerry Moran P20
Gerry Cody P29, 34 & 35
Sport P42 & 43
Why walkies is good for Mylo
It’s smiles all around as Kilkenny hurling legend TJ Reid and his wife Niamh De Brún celebrate TJ recently named GWA Hurling Personality of the Year.
And the Ballyhale Shamrocks man was central once again as the Cats got to the All-Ireland hurling final in what proved to be Brian Cody’s final year in charge.
Meanwhile, last month, he was celebrating as Shamrocks won their ninth AllIreland club title.
He was rewarded for his inter-county exploits with his sixth All-Star, and on Friday, was named as the Gaelic Writers’ Association’s Personality of the Year.
The award ceremony took place at the Iveagh Garden Hotel in Dublin, and was attended by Reid and his wife Niamh. She shared a number of photos of the happy occasion to Instagram, hailing her hubby in the process.
She said: “Lovely evening at the Gaelic Writers’ Association (GWA) Awards. Congratulations @tjreid12 on collecting Hurling Personality of the yea r ”
Meanwhile, Reid said: “Humbled to accept the Hurling Personality of the Year Award for 2022 at tonight’s Gaelic Writers’ Association (GWA) Awards.”
A whole host of top GAA personalities received gongs on the night. Chrissy McKaigue was named Men’s Football Personality of the Year, while Emma Duggan was
crowned the female equivalent.
TJ’s fellow Kilkenny star Grace Walsh was named Camogie Personality of the Year, and Willie Bryan and Mary Jo Curran were inducted Men’s and Women’s Foo Cyril Farrell was entered into the Hurling Hall of Fame.
Farrell led Galway to Liam MacCarthy glory in 1980 when he was only 31 and was back in charge when they bagged back-to-back titles in 1987 and 1988.
And the hurling icon urged Henry Shefflin to target the Leinster Championship with his Tribesmen.
“For Galway this year the big one is to win Leinster and get straight into an AllIreland semi-final. It’s a big year for Henry and it’s the Championship that will count.
“I’d say the county will be patient because there have been games we got hammered in and there wasn’t a word about it.
“Henry has got a good advantage this year, he’s in all last year, he has seen all of the club championship last season, a big help. nThey are as strong as anyone — maybe not Limerick, they’re the benchmark, but you won’t have to worry about them if you win a Leinster title.
“Presuming they win Munster it would be a final before you meet them and if you get that far then you are on a roll.”
A hospital consultant has been found guilty of professional misconduct over his delay in returning to hospital while on-call to attend to a young Carlow woman who died shortly after giving birth at St Luke’s Hospital seven years ago.
e Irish Medical Council also found consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist Da-
vid McMurray guilty of “poor professional performance” over his failure to attend to the patient in a timely manner.
e recent inquiry heard it had taken more than 40 minutes for Dr McMurray to arrive at St Luke’s after he was alerted of the need to bring the patient to theatre to deal with extensive postpartum bleeding, despite living just
ve to eight minutes away from the hospital.
Tracey Campbell Fitzpatrick (36), from Nurney, Co Carlow but originally from Knock, Co Mayo, bled to death from a massive haemorrhage within three hours of giving birth to her second child, a boy named Max, on March 28, 2016.
Dr McMurray, who was the on-call consultant on
Convicted fraudster Catriona
Carey transferred thousands of euro to a bank account in the name of her brother, Kilkenny hurling legend DJ Carey, from a business account currently under investigation by Gardaí in connection with an alleged mortgage scam.
e Sunday Independent has revealed how two payments were made from the Careysfort Asset Estates account in 2020.
On February 25, a sum of €2,000 was transferred to an account named ‘DJ Carey’, while a further €2,000 was sent to an account called ‘DJ Carey AIB’ on March 4, 2020. e rst payment appears to have bounced back.
Recently Ms Carey was arrested by o cers from the Corporate Enforcement Authority (CEA) and was questioned over her role as director of the UK-registered company Careysfort.
She was released without charge after more than 12 hours of questioning, where she was probed over allegations of fraudulent trading, false accounting and breaches of company law.
is investigation is separate from an inquiry by the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau (GNECB).
Ms Carey was involved in an alleged mortgage scam in which she received up to
€400,000 from people innancial distress after promising to help them secure new deals to keep their properties.
e GNECB received dozens of complaints from people who paid her between €5,000 and €60,000 after she said she would secure them new mortgages at a reduced rate. But the deals never materialised.
e Careysfort accounts, seen by the Sunday Independent, show a trail of lavish spending by the former Kilkenny camogie player with the money she received from desperate homeowners.
In November 2019, the money started rolling into the account — and it went out equally as quick.
She bought a €55,000 BMW, went on luxurious holidays abroad, and stayed at some of Ireland’s fanciest hotels.
But she was also making a number of payments to named individuals, including her older brother. e rst payment, on February 25, 2020, appeared to have not gone through and a further payment of €2,000 was then made on March 4.
When contacted last year on the revelations about his sister, DJ Carey had said: “I’m keeping my head down and don’t want to make any comment.”
e two siblings had previously worked together at DJ
Carey Enterprises Limited, which supplied cleaning products to businesses across the country.
Catriona Carey later resigned her role as a director in 2009 and left to start up her own rival cleaning business. People close to them indicated at the time that there had been a falling out between the pair, which caused a rift in the family.
Mr Carey fell on hard times during the nancial crash and his once-successful business was eventually liquidated. AIB secured a High Court judgment for €9.5m in 2011 arising from loans secured on properties he had at Mount Juliet in Kilkenny and the K Club in Kildare.
e ve-time All-Ireland winner was in the headlines last month, after it was revealed he had reached a substantial settlement with AIB regarding his huge debts.
It is understood AIB received about €1.7m from the sale of the golf properties, and the bank subsequently agreed a payment of €60,000 in full and nal settlement of the remaining debt — amounting to a write-down of around 80%.
Representatives of the majority state-owned bank have agreed to appear before an Oireachtas committee to answer questions about the debt write-down.
Price rises are no longer likely for food and nutrition group Glanbia as it looks forward to lower costs this year.
Chief executive Siobhán Talbot said the group had to make “very measured” price moves in 2022 as it navigated volatility in dairy markets and worldwide supply chain issues, which saw costs rise by
around 20pc in part of its business.
Prices went up by more than 16% in its two main divisions
— Glanbia Performance Nutrition and Glanbia Nutritionals-Nutritional Solutions — a move that, along with “margin e ciencies”, helped to keep revenues buoyant despite a slight fall in volumes.
the night, admitted a charge of professional misconduct over his failure to attend Ms Campbell Fitzpatrick in a sufciently timely manner when he knew her clinical condition required his attendance at the hospital.
e inquiry heard Dr McMurray, from Kilkenny, only arrived at St Luke’s at 2.20am, despite having rst been no-
ti ed by a midwife at 1.38am about the patient’s deteriorating health after delivering her baby.
Two other calls about the patient were also made to the consultant at 1.58am and 2.08am.
Dr McMurray, who quali ed as a doctor from Queen’s University in Belfast in 1992 and previously worked in the UK
before moving to Ireland in 2013, also admitted to a separate charge of poor professional performance over his failure to attend Ms Campbell Fitzpatrick in a timely manner.
Counsel for the IMC, Neasa Bird BL, said the inquiry arose as a result of a complaint made by the patient’s husband, Bernard Fitzpatrick.
The preparations are well and truly complete, with just two weeks to the start of Kilkenny Tradfest. The 10th anniversary edition of the festival promises to be one of the best ever, according to Tradfest Chairperson and local publican Brendan Treacy.
“Once again, the staff of this wonderful music festival have outdone our expectations. Complementing our national holiday on St. Patrick’s Day, we set out a decade ago to ensure that locals and visitors alike would have plenty of reasons to make a weekend out of it in Kilkenny.
“ We had a headwind of ination, like many businesses through the year - it was dairy, it was transport, it was other in ationary trends,” Ms Talbot said.
“We absolutely took a series of pricing actions. We did our last one just in the fourth quarter of 2022. We don’t see any signicant moves in 2023.”
“With some of the biggest names in traditional music headlining the festival, including Stockton’s Wing, Scullion, Lisa Lambe, Emma Langford and upcoming stars like Tulua, performing beside legendary groups like the Tulla and
the Kilfenora céilí bands, this festival has something for everyone who has a musical bone in their body!” he told The Kilkenny Observer.
The festival will also continue with the active support of longtime sponsor, Bulmers Ireland,.
Host for the night and long-time voice of Kilkenny’s publicans Pat Crotty drew attention to the more than 100 free gigs and sessions which will take place over the five-day festival:
“Anyone can do a two-day weekend, but we can promise that the ceol agus craic will be ringing out loud and clear from our city pubs for the whole four days, with folk and traditional music to the fore. Without the support of Bulmers, but also the commitment and generosity of all of our members, this simply
would not happen.
“We recognise that our loyal local customers and our visitors deserve the best of our national culture on our national holiday weekend and we hope that they will attend in the same large numbers this year as in previous years. Of course, we would hope that our national rugby team may add to the atmosphere on the Saturday by claiming the triple crown and the Grand Slam!”
Tributes were paid to the festival team of Marian Flannery, Jennifer Cooper and Cathy O’ Connor.
*Book tickets for the headline performances at www.kilkennytradfest.com
When prominent far-right gurehead Tommy Robinson (40) recently arrived in Ireland to ‘observe’ a refugee solidarity rally, a spokesperson told me that Gardai were maintaining a “watching brief” on him. Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley Lennon, said he had been drawn to Ireland by antiimmigration protests and praised those who had organised them. He denied he was invited here.
Irish far-right campaigner Dee Wall, who has been to the fore in anti-vaccination demonstrations, said she had given Robinson “100 blessings to come here”. However, Robinson has been greeted with mixed reaction among anti-refugee campaigners.
A founder of the English Defence League, an Islamophobic organisation, Robinson has been banned from most major social media
platforms but has more than 150,000 subscribers on Telegram. Call them fascist, call them alt-right or call them farright – but from a base of virtually zero a decade ago, they’ve grown to a notable, albeit still relatively small, political presence in Ireland. e combined vote for the far-right here has barely reached 1.3% but in other European countries – most notably France, where Marine Le Pen won a third of the vote in the last presidential election – they do much better.
All of this, though, does beg the question where have the Irish far-right come from, why have they failed to take o electorally, and is there a risk that complacency could allow the forces of ultranationalism and xenophobia to grow here?
In his book Diverse Republic, published by Dublin
University Press in 2022, Professor Bryan Fanning, Professor of Migration and Social Policy at UCD, examines the nature of antipathy to immigration in Ireland and the extent to which this has the potential to be politically exploited. He argues that con icts between conservatives and liberals don’t neatly t into the Irish political context, that Ireland has tended to be more outwardlooking and that the North’s con ict gave us a di erent perspective on tribal or ethnic nationalism.
“Ireland doesn’t have a smaller far-right because we are a particularly wonderful people,” he says. “We have the same tendencies as other people, and yet we have a politics without extreme racism. Racism does exist in Irish society, just as it does in other societies, and it’s fair to say that Ireland’s institutions don’t serve people of colour
or Travellers as well as the white Irish majority.”
In our policing, our prisons and employment generally “you will see people have problems getting on because of race or culture”.
As a relatively small country, Ireland became very educated and very liberal quite fast. “We didn’t have an industrial revolution in the standard sense, going from farmers to post-industrial in one step,” says Fanning. In England, Hungary and Poland, the far-right claim ownership of what it is to be English, Hungarian or Polish, but Irish people in all our diversity are no longer drawn to the type of Irishness that may have been embodied by de Valera. We have seen huge changes aimed at stemming the ow of emigration; we have seen major urbanisation and secularisation; and we are outward-looking in
that we see the country as part of a global economy.
In short, our ‘patriotism’ has been built around our economy.
All that said, in recent weeks, local community groups across the country have expressed concerns over their area’s capacity to house a sudden in ux of hundreds of people and the lack of consultation from the State. But, in fairness, these groups, as a whole, aren’t calling the migrants ‘invaders’.
at’s the preferred description of far-right gures, like Dee Wall, seeking to present an extreme worldview of dangerous foreigners, traitorous politicians and helpless locals. ese gures – BTW, whatever happened to Gemma O’Doherty and John Waters? – often try to insert themselves, online and o ine, into communities, exploiting locals’ con-
cerns and furthering their own agenda.
ese people support political ideologies and belief systems that combine overt forms of nationalism, racism and xenophobia. Far-right communities here – and let’s emphasise they are small in number –advocate for an Ireland that is a monocultural nation for white Irish people only. Sadly, they demonstrate these ‘beliefs’ by describing minorities with dehumanising language, using disinformation to incite tensions and accusing asylum seekers or others of conspiring to threaten to ‘replace’ local populations – their ‘Great Replacement’ theory. e 19th century English philosopher John Stuart Mill said: “ e only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Centuries on, have we learnt anything?
Local businesses are losing out on opportunities to grow because the lack of housing and infrastructure in Ireland is making it impossible to compete for talent, the CEO of Chambers Ireland has told an Oireachtas Committee.
"Businesses are fit for growth, but they are con -
strained by the lack of talent, the lack of housing, the lack of infrastructure,” Chambers Chief Executive Ian Talbot said in his opening statement to the Enterprise Committee.
"We are growing as an economy, but we are not growing at the pace we could grow. Our domestic market
has been constrained by this lack of housing.”
Mr Talbot said chambers members were reporting they were busy but were being forced to "leave opportunities on the table because they do not have the capacity to take on more work”.
He compared the situation of domestic SMEs to the
The announcement of a deal on the Northern Ireland Protocol is welcome and offers hope to people and businesses in the region, according to Seán Kelly MEP and First Vice-Chair of the EU-UK Parliamentary Assembly.
However, Mr Kelly has warned that a political test remains ahead to see if can become reality on the ground.
"The atmosphere in negotiations between the EU and UK became more positive and pragmatic once British Prime Minister Sunak took office. The announcement is the culmination of much hard work and significant progress at a technical level. Both negotiating teams should be commended on achieving this result," said the Kilkenny native.
"There are some legitimate problems in terms of implementing the Protocol, but nobody can deny the patient
and flexible approach taken by the European Commission over the last number of years in trying to solve them. These difficulties are the predicted consequences following the hard Brexit chosen, and the approach the UK took in implementing the subsequent Brexit deal, even if some elected representatives would like you to conveniently forget their own part in it.
"There will be many who will seek to blame the messenger for their own political gain. But the can cannot be kicked down the road any longer," Mr Kelly warned.
"There are some hard truths to be faced at this point and we will need to see strong and responsible political leadership within the Conservative Party and the DUP. That's why this moment is a real leadership test for Prime Minister Sunak. The Prime Minister must create a coalition of
the logical, who are capable of looking beyond the immediate term, to communicate the fact based realities of the situation.
"We all want to see this agreement on the Northern Ireland Protocol become a reality in order to provide certainty to the people and businesses there. A resolution of this impasse offers the hope for the eventual return of the Northern Ireland Assembly so that the electorate may have proper representation. It is also very important economically, by offering businesses the chance to seize trading opportunities not only in terms of Northern Ireland, but also from an all-island perspective."
MEP Kelly said he looked forward to reviewing the detail of the agreement reached.
"The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that the EU and UK are allies, not adversaries, and that should be the solid foundation for future EU-UK relations."
Irish units of multinationals which were becoming less competitive for internal investments to expand because they could not even meet their existing employment targets due to difficulties finding labour.
"Business owner-operators can have confidence in themselves, they can have
confidence in their business model, they can have confidence in their staff, but it is increasingly difficult for them to have confidence in the economic environment which they are trying to operate their business within,” Mr Talbot's said.
"Planning has become an issue for businesses because
it is an issue which the businesses cannot directly address. We need politicians and officials to deliver on them, for everyone.”
He outlined the challenges small employers faced trying to keep staff who need higher wages to afford housing and must move frequently to stay ahead of rising costs.
A brisk walk for just 11 minutes a day could help prevent premature death, scientists have found.
If a brisk walk is not manageable, then other forms of moderate exercise, such as hiking, playing tennis, riding a bike or dancing for 11 minutes a day, will also cut your chance of dying early.
Health experts recommend 150 minutes of moderate physical activity a week but scientists led by the University of Cambridge in Britain looked at 196 studies to see whether half of this amount had health benefits.
They found that just 75 minutes of moderate physical activity a week, or around 11 minutes a day, has "substantial benefits”.
Moderate-intensity physical activity raises your heart rate and makes you breathe faster but you'd still be able to speak and
chat during the activity.
Accumulating 75 minutes a week of moderate-intensity activity brought with it a 23% lower risk of early death. And 75 minutes a week of moderate activity was also enough to reduce the risk of developing cardiovascular disease by 17% and cancer by 7%.
The reduction in risk was greater for some specific cancers. Head and neck, myeloid leukaemia, myeloma, and gastric cardia cancers were between 14-26% less likely to occur if a person did 75 minutes of moderate captivity a week, they found.
For other cancers, such as lung, liver, endometrial, colon, and breast cancer, a 3-11% lower risk was observed.
Dr Soren Brage, from Cambridge's Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit, said: "If you are someone who finds
the idea of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week a bit daunting, then our findings should be good news. Doing some physical activity is better than doing none. This is also a good starting position - if you find that 75 minutes a week is manageable, then you could try stepping it up gradually to the full recommended amount.”
The team found that doing 150 minutes a week of exercise reaped even more rewards than 75 minutes.
The researchers calculated that if everyone in the studies had done the equivalent of at least 150 minutes a week of moderate activity, around one in six early deaths would be prevented.
One in nine cases of cardiovascular disease and one in 20 cases of cancer would also be prevented.
If and when the Protocol gets patched up we should surely be able to breathe a sigh of relief and hope that things will return to normal in the North and that Geo rey Donaldson and the DUP will agree to return to Stormont and do what they were elected to do: govern.
It may be too soon for that though, the game involving Unionist fears about their future hasn’t played out yet. Red and green channels for goods, which give the North the best of both worlds, access to both the UK and the EU may have been worked out but the Unionists still want assurance that the red, white and blue ag will continue ying over the six counties. Acceptance of EU rules and the European Court of Justice is seen as
threat to sovereignty and one which brings a United Ireland closer.
Surely by now that fear of closer relations with the South should have worn away in the face of familiarity? e Border is no longer apparent in any physical sense. Belfast and Dublin are just under two hours apart, yet it still divides us and makes us strangers.
Two generations back partition created a severance in my own family. Most of the relations stayed in the North and contact between them and those who lived in Dublin ceased. Only my grandfather and one of my great uncles remained in touch and met up occasionally at rugby matches. Perhaps it wasn’t surprising that it was sometime after I came
to live in the South that I got to know family I didn’t know I had. at was 40 plus years ago but things have hardly changed. Two thirds of people in the South say that they have no friends in the North, 80% say they have no relations there and more than half say that they haven’t travelled north of the Border in the past ve years, according to research carried out by Analysing and Researching Ireland North and South (ARINS). A bit shocking considering that, by some accounts, a majority in the South want to see uni cation yet we can’t be bothered to get to know the Northerners we lay claim to.
Perhaps sectarianism puts us o cross-border tourism but it’s a pity not
to get to know the glory of the Glens of Antrim, the dimpling drumlins of Co Down, see the Mountains of Mourne rolling down to the sea, or to experience that wry Northern humour and warm hospitality.
Northerners don’t have the same reluctance to come south. Only a quarter say they haven’t come to visit us in the past ve years, yet more than half say they have no friends in the Republic. It’s time to get to know each other better before weaponising ballot boxes for uni cation.
Time for both populations to get to know the practical side of things too. In the decades that I have lived here the economic balance between North and South has reversed. Now, living standards are
higher here; we earn more, are better educated and live longer, whereas the North depends on subvention from Britain where it is now the poorest region. A situation hardly helped by the refusal of both the DUP and Sinn Fein alternately to share power, leaving the electorate without e ective Government for most of the time since 2017.
e economy in the South is six times that of the North, where the rate of economic growth is only a quarter of ours and disposable income here is 12% higher. Only 40% of Northerners get third level quali cations compared with up to 65 % in the South. Women live 1.5 years longer in the South and men 1.4 years.
On the plus side cross-
border trade has boomed post- Brexit: imports from Northern Ireland increased by 65% to almost €4 billion in 2021, while exports from the Republic into the North rose by 54% to €3.7 billion. ere are a growing number of areas of North South co-operation too but there is much more that we could do to make things better for each other on our shared island, especially economically and in relation to the climate crisis and to health.
Last week saw thousands march in Dublin in support of the Ireland For All and against racism. It’s a people-powered movement for diversity and against division. It could be just the kind of movement to promote North South friendship to melt away that divide.
Sleep problems is a question I often get asked about at the shop. My personal favourite remedy to help you get a decent night’s sleep is A.Vogel Dormeasan. It’s a herbal tincture containing valerian and hops. Valerian is traditionally used for muscle tension, pain, and to aid relaxation. Hops is traditionally used to help alleviate anxiety. I took this remedy for several months; it took a few weeks for it to work but when it did the bene ts were amazing. I went to sleep quicker, and when I woke up, I fell back to sleep almost immediately and the next day I felt so much more alert. It’s no wonder I love it!
I know that this won’t work for all of you, so here are some other options. Bach Rescue Unwind for Sleep is a new one that I wrote about last year. Customers are now coming back to tell me that it works brilliantly. It contains Lemon Balm one of my
favourite herbs to aid relaxation, Ashwagandha for stress and anxiety, and Chamomile to soothe and calm. It also contains Rescue Remedy which on its own is great for any situation where you might be feeling a bit agitated or stressed, and this can certainly happen when you can’t get to sleep.
Magnesium is possibly the most used supplement for sleep as so many people are de cient in this important mineral. Our top supplements are Mag365 powder, or if you prefer a capsule there are lots to choose from. Irish Brand Prizmag, contains Magnesium
plus Glycine. Glycine also helps improve sleep and helps Magnesium to work more efciently too.
Another option to try, especially for kids is Jan De Vries Night Essence drops, this is suitable from 2 years of age to adults. is is ideal to help you switch o from overthinking to aid a peaceful night’s sleep.
If you prefer something to massage in, you could try BetterYou Magnesium Sleep Spray with added essential oils. Simply massage into the skin to promote a peaceful night’s sleep. Or for kids from age one upwards there’s BetterYou Magnesium Sleep Kids Body Spray which can help them get a restful night’s sleep.
ese are just some of nature’s solutions to help you and your loved ones get a good night’s sleep. 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:
How old are we? We see the human that passes on the street who looks forty but are really sixty! and o course the reverse! Looks sixty and are really forty!
Yes, it is hard to tell someone’s real age. My grandmother once told me once it is only a number on a piece of paper and how right she was. In her case she was ying into town on her High Nelly bike, the rolls Royce of its day and saddle with springs of a BMW’s suspension.
She had her daily routines. She worked her small farm holding, had her chickens for the fresh Eggs for the breakfast and of course the beautiful brown soda bread and a few cows to produce milk. Many an evening I spent pulling up and pushing down the handle of the butter churn making real butter. Vegetables galore all freshly picked produce that were planted in the spring and then straight to the kitchen table from good Irish country soil, no Spanish imports in the Irish home! Here was a lady and her age was just a number on a page. It may have said born 1915 but really if she said “I’m in my Fifties” well with her vitality and energy you would believe it.
I was fascinated to watch our national broadcaster highlighting the great activity of the senior members of society. Running Marathons in their 80s, swimming more lengths than our Olympic gold medallist , Michele Smith and the dancing steps of a boo-
gying all night lady that would put Michael Flatley to shame, and remember ladies and gentleman he retired because his body couldn’t dance anymore steps at a very tender age, what age is he really compared to our silver circle seniors that are defying the tik toks of Father Times world clock. To be honest it would not surprise me if they had tik tok accounts for streaming their exploits. It is never too late to get ready for the future. Even now you might feel as if you can get out of that comfortable arm chair that you‘ve being using day in and day out and is now has the perfect shape of the two cheeks of your arse in the cushion! Well we have plenty of exercise even I could do! Yes, in a body that has more parts missing and others replaced with second donated parts than that 1972 Ford Cortina you are still planning to repair that the dog now uses as his home!
As Twilight extend their services and facilities for our wonderful senior members and all who wish to avail of Twilight Community Group’s International Cultural House. With our inhouse Fitness Instructors and Dietary Advice personnel, we can get you moving and like our good lady grooving again! We will be providing seat-based exercises, walking clubs and events that are picked by our seniors for our seniors. When comes to our age, I have often noticed the unique way our di er-
ent generations tell us their age. When we are young little whipper snappers and you are asked your age it usually is I am now 6 but I am 7 next birthday. We add one, then in middle age we are reluctant to tell our age as we all want to be younger. Ah but that’s where the appearance is what is the only measuring tape to make a guess and in some cases, years of alcohol and drugs will add many a wrinkle making you the 40th year old that looks 60 unfortunately. But! that is where it all reverts back to our early days as we say “
I am 79 ,,,but 80 next birthday
Now growing up in Newpark was always an education and your age was sometimes a matter for discussion. After a while of adding the extra year it wasn’t unusual to forget what your age actually was! It reminds me of day as we played on the car road or back lanes that gave access to our unbelievable huge gardens. I was asked how old I was? I was a wee bit confused. So I replied “Don’t know, 5 or 6 ! “with a shrug of my shoulder. Well as she was an older girl she wasn’t taking “I don’t Know for an answer. So, she asked me a few very intuitive questions to deduce my age.
“Do you Drink “ I replied NO .. “Do you go out with girls”? … NO with a giggle .“Do you Smoke” ?
NOO ! Your 5 so! Not 6 yet So I went home that evening then, I was asking that century old question of life “How old are we really”
Kilkenny’s Operation TransPAWmation programme is highlighting the importance of the right type of exercise and play for every dog, with their expert team helping Kilkenny’s pet-parents to nd the small changes that will make a big difference to their pet’s health. Recent research indicates that as many as 20% of dog owners in Ireland are unsure what breed group their dog belongs to, while 66% were unable to identify the best type of exercise and play for their dog’s breed group.
Greg Maternik, store manager at Petmania Kilkenny, organiser of the programme, says: “What a dog was traditionally bred for often corresponds with certain hardwired behaviours and behavioural requirements. For a happy and peaceful life together, it is essential that you know of the speci c traits of your dog’s breed, and tailor your dog’s exercise and play to suit.
“As part of Operation TransPAWmation we want to help dog owners nd the best type of exercise and play for their dogs, and maybe discover some small changes that can have a big impact on their dog’s physical and mental health.”
With statistics such as the above, there’s no question that there is plenty of opportunity for pet-parents when it comes to helping to im -
prove their pet’s mental and physical health. And, while the link between physical exercise and good health is well known, the experts at Petmania Kilkenny are tak-
ing this opportunity to also highlight the importance of adequate mental stimulation for your pet, by emphasising the importance of play.
Champion Dog Trainer and expert in pet behaviour training, Samantha Rawson, says:“Your dog just wants to spend time with you – there are plenty of
• Sporting / Gun / Hunting Dogs: these belong are a group of dog breeds that were traditionally bred to accompany a hunt including Retrievers, Spaniels, Pointers and Setters. Games and exercise that will give your dog intensive, regular and invigorating exercise – swimming, tracking, dock-diving are great examples.
• Herding or Pastoral Dog Breeds: Dogs that traditionally assist their humans in the controlling the movement of other animals and include Border Collies, Rough Collies and Corgis. These dogs are extremely intelligent and love to respond to their human’s commands, as well as using their own skilled judgement to make decisions! These dogs will love lots of intensive exercise, free-running with varied terrain and routes, as well as games like dancing and reward-based training.
games, and ways you can interact together without stepping foot outside. Remember dogs need mental as well physical exercise so, when participating in
Operation TransPAWmation initiative, it’s important to value mental and physical activity and stimulation equally.”
With the equal importance of both physical and mental stimulation clear, there’s one thing that the expert pet-care panel at Petmania Kilkenny identify as the key to your dog’s health: recognising and understanding your dog’s breed group, and how this impacts their individual needs. is knowledge allows pet-parents to choose an exercise and play regime that works best for their pet’s breed group, and with Operation TransPAWmation, this could not be easier.
• Toy and Non-Sporting Breed Groups: These are made up of diverse range of dog breeds that are bred solely for companionship. Toy breeds are often smaller versions their larger cousins, but with similar behaviours and interest traits to the larger breed. Toy and Non-Sporting Dog Breeds might be smaller in stature but big in personality. These lovable companion pets have a wide and varied natural instincts but in general will need shorter daily walk.
• Working Dogs: These dogs just love having a job to do! They include breeds like the Siberian Husky, Alaskan Malamute, German Shepherd (Alsatian) and the Bernese Mountain Dog have been bred to do specific, non-herding, jobs. Each Working Dog breed has it own unique skill set to be encouraged and enjoyed. Typically, will need frequent, shorter walks (exception sledding breeds) and lots of mental stimulation. Joining a breed club with these breeds is recommended to help.
• Terrier Group: Originally bred to hunt vermin and rodents as well as to chase small game. Terriers are determined, brave and clever, and have a high prey drive but are great fun, and with lots of energy and are very popular companion dogs. Some of the most popular terrier breeds in Ireland include the Jack Russell Terrier, West Highland Terrier, the Border Terrier and the Schnauzer. Tenacious terriers will enjoy lots of varied on-lead walks and o -lead play.
• Hound Dogs Breeds come in two distinct categories – Sight Hounds and Scent Hounds. Both hound dog groups have been bred traditionally to help their humans while hunting, either on foot or on horseback – making these loyal pups a very popular companion. Scent Hound will love to play hide and seek – games that involve sni ng out their toys and treats! They are also perfect companions for long-lead walks; long distance running or walking and free-running. By comparison to their scent-driven cousins, Sight Hounds will love to high-speed chasing and sprints so games like frisbee or ball-games.
All those who sign-up to Petmania’s Operation TransPAWmation programme today will get FREE access to personalised petcare advice from Petmania’s panel of experts, including Pet Behaviour Expert, Samantha Rawson. Operation TransPAWmation is open to all dog and cat owners and will help pet owners identify small changes to diet, dental care, grooming, parasite control and exercise and play, that can have big impact on their pet’s overall health and wellbeing.
Pet-parents can sign-up to Operation TransPAWmation at www.petmania.ie/ot or by dropping into Petmania Kilkenny at Kilkenny Retail and Business Park.
Believe it or not wholesale gas prices are falling but there’s no guarantee that energy bills will drop soon for households. Businesses are to get an average of 10% reduction on their electricity bills and an average of 15% on gas from March. In a previous column I gave an overview on why the cost of energy was not immediate for households. is has caused some comment in the media and Minister Simon Coveney rightly said that household customers would rightly be questioning the approach by Electric Ireland. He said: “Of course, it’s welcome for businesses that electricity prices are going down by 10% and gas prices by 15%. But I think many households listening to that story on the radio will be asking themselves why isn’t that applying to my bill? And I think that is a fair question,” he said.
As we the householders wait, we can still make some adjust-
ments to reduce our outgoings. So here are ve everyday swaps to save on energy bills courtesy of switcher.ie
1.Lighten the load
Shrink your laundry costs by running one less washing machine cycle a week to save €0.43c a week, that’s more than €22 a year. Set the temp to 30 degrees and fully load your drum to keep washes to a minimum. If your washing machine has an eco-programme, use it to save 30% on energy usage. Save a further €5.19 a week on your weekly laundry when you ditch the dryer. It’s one of the most expensive appliances in our homes, using between 2.5-3 kilowatts an hour (kWh) per hour, so use it sparingly.
2. Cut back shower time
Reduce your shower time to 10 mins a day and save up to €2.13 a week. at’s a whopping €111 a year. Turn the thermostat down a notch and save even more. Simply drying your hair for 10 mins, six days
a week will set you back 0.65c a week. Towel dry for longer and trim drying time to ve minutes to save yourself 0.32c a week and up to €16.64 a year.
3. Meal replacements
Swap your electric cooker for smarter appliances that don’t cost the earth. By rustling up
dinner in a slow cooker instead of the oven and sizzling sausages in an air fryer instead of on the hob you could save €2.14 a week. If your kettle is conking out, replace it with a rapid boil kettle to save up to 0.93c a week on your cuppa. Together these simple swaps
could save you €3.07 a week, or €159.64 a year.
4. Stack ‘em up
You can rack up savings by loading your dishwasher to the max and halving your weekly washes. Cut down from four cycles to two and save around €1.30 a week or €67.60 a year. When upgrading household appliances consider exchanging your corded items to cordless, so you only pay for charging time. You could save around €8.84 a year just by swapping your old upright hoover for a nifty cordless model.
5. Ditch or switch
Whether you’re working from home, or gaming into the early hours, running a desktop computer could cost you up to £3.50 a week. If possible, ditch the desktop and use a laptop as they’re far more energy efcient and save yourself up to €2.42 a week. And switch your 60 watt bulbs with 5 watt LED bulbs that have the same light output could save you at least
€1.33 a week.
Eoin Clarke of Switcher says:
“While global gas prices are falling, the drop isn’t raising a smile for consumers just yet, with rising food prices and high energy bills still hitting Irish households where it hurts.
“Our message is reduce and replace wherever possible. Look to tweak your daily routines and if you need a new appliance, always opt for the energy saving choice because those small changes stack up to make big savings.”
It is frustrating to see energy cost increases applied immediately but reductions taking months to be applied if at all. It is up to the minister to get not only an explanation but a commitment from Electric Ireland that a process will be put in place to allow households bene t from the reductions as quickly as businesses. john@ellis nancial.ie 086 8362622
Sinn Féin TD for Carlow Kilkenny Kathleen Funchion has called on the Government to ‘extend the ban on evictions until the end of the year’ as new gures reveal homelessness in Kilkenny has risen again.
Teachta Funchion said:
“ e latest Department of Housing gures published for January 2023 expose the shocking reality of homelessness in Kilkenny. It continues to be the number one issue that constituents contact my clinic on, it all stems to a lack of a ordable housing.
“ is is a shocking situation and a sign of how devastating the housing crisis is for people in Kilkenny. Behind every number is people who are forced to feel the horrendous impact of this government’s failure to deliver on housing.
“Indeed, these gures do not record all adults and children in emergency accommodation funded by the state or not in receipt of any state funding. When all of these people are included the true gure will be
much higher. ere is also the issue of hidden homeless, people who are living with parents, in overcrowded and unsuitable ac commodation.
“ ese gures highlight the need for the Government to extend the ban on evictions until the end of the year. But they must also Introduce emergency measures to ensure that we are not back in the same place in December.
“We need an acceleration of the Councils tenant-in-situ scheme and its expansion to include cost rental. We need the Minister to use emergency planning and procurement powers to target vacant proper ties and new building technologies to in crease and acceler ate the delivery of additional social and a ordable homes across Kilkenny.
“If the Government fails to act, homelessness numbers will continue to increase through the Spring and Summer in Kilkenny.”
acproperinacceler-
Medical science and those of us with a modicum of common sense agree that a good night’s sleep can work wonders for both mind and body. But what is it that determines how much we need to sleep, and what can cause us to sleep more deeply?
In a new study, researchers from the University of Tsukuba in Japan have now provided some answers, revealing a signalling pathway within brain cells that regulates the length and depth of sleep.
“We examined genetic mutations in mice and how these a ect their patterns of sleep,” says senior author of the study, Professor Hiromasa Funato. “We identi ed a mutation that led to the mice sleeping much longer and more deeply than usual.”
e researchers found that this was caused by low levels of an enzyme called histone deacetylase 4 (HDAC4), which is known to suppress the expression of target genes.
Previous studies on HDAC4 have shown that it is greatly a ected by the attachment of phosphate molecules in a process known as phosphorylation. When this occurs, HDAC4 tends to move away from the cell nucleus, and the suppression of certain proteins is reduced. e researchers were interested in whether this phosphorylation of HDAC4 would a ect sleep.
“We focused on a protein called salt-inducible kinase 3, otherwise known as SIK3, which phosphorylates
A home screening test to detect oral and throat cancers from saliva samples, using Artificial Intelligence (AI) will soon be available with the hope of transforming oral and throat cancer detection.
Based on a technology approved initially by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a “breakthrough device,” the saliva test can detect early symptoms of oral and throat cancer with more than 90 percent accuracy.
Due to a lack of effective diagnostic tools, these cancers often go undiagnosed until they have reached an advanced stage, resulting in low survival rates.
CancerDetectTM, produced by Viome Life Sciences, brings unprecedented accuracy to early cancer detection and prevention as the only oral and throat cancer test to offer detection with 95% specificity and 90% sensitivity. Oral and throat cancer is notoriously difficult to detect.
Until now, it can often go undiagnosed until it has reached an advanced stage due to a lack of effective diagnostics tools, leading to low survival rates.
Only 28% of patients receive an early diagnosis, and those receiving a late
HDAC4,” says Professor Funato. “We previously found that this protein has strong e ects on sleep.” e team found that when there was a lack of SIK3 or when HDAC4 was modi ed to prevent phosphorylation, the mice slept less. In contrast, when the mice had a more active version of SIK3,
which increased the phosphorylation of HDAC4, they slept a lot more. ey also identi ed a further protein, LKB1, which phosphorylates SIK3, and has similar sleepsuppressing e ects when de cient.
“Our ndings indicate that there is a signalling pathway within brain cells from LKB1
to SIK3 and then to HDAC4,” says study co-senior author, Professor Masashi Yanagisawa. “ is pathway leads to the phosphorylation of HDAC4, which promotes sleep, most probably because it a ects the expression of sleep-promoting genes.”
e team carried out fur-
ing within the hypothalamus regulates the amount of deep sleep. For both brain regions, the excitatory neurons, which can activate other neurons, were identied as playing a key role. ese results provide an important insight into how sleep is regulated, which could potentially lead to a greater understanding of sleep disorders as well as the development of new treatments.
Good sleep habits (sometimes referred to as “sleep hygiene”) can help you get a good night’s sleep. Some habits that can improve your sleep health:
* Be consistent. Go to bed at the same time each night and get up at the same time each morning, including on the weekends
* Make sure your bedroom is quiet, dark, relaxing, and at a comfortable temperature
* Remove electronic devices, such as TVs, computers, and smart phones, from the bedroom
* Avoid large meals, caffeine, and alcohol before bedtime
ther experiments to identify the brain cells in which these pathways regulate sleep. is involved altering the amounts of SIK3 and HDAC4 in di erent cell types and brain regions. e results indicated that signalling within the cells of the cortex regulates the depth of sleep, while signal-
diagnosis face a prolonged battle with oral cancer.
Early detection directly
increases the five-year survival rate for oral cancer patients, from 50% to 84%.
With CancerDetectTM, Viome has developed a much-needed aid to detect
early-stage cancer, leading to more successful treatment outcomes when con -
* Get some exercise. Being physically active during the day can help you fall asleep more easily at night.
* For more information on sleep eduction, check out the resources here: http://www.sleepeducation.org/essentials-insleep/healthy- sleephabits
firmed with a biopsy.
“Despite all the innovations across the health landscape, oral and throat cancer has remained life-threatening diseases with few options for early detection,” said Naveen Jain, Founder and CEO of Viome Life Sciences.
“As an industry leader on a mission to identify and address the roots of chronic disease, we have been working for years to bring to market clinically-backed diagnostics solutions for cancer detection and other life-threatening and debilitating diseases.
“With the launch of CancerDetectTM for Oral and Throat Cancer, we have achieved this goal and plan to follow this in rapid succession with detection tools for additional life-threatening chronic diseases and cancers,” he said.
In order to train a machine-learning model, the scientists used genetic data from 945 samples, 80 of which came from people with oral cancer and 12 from people with throat cancer.
A major advantage of machine learning is that the more data collected, the more accurate the tool becomes.
1. Aspen, Colorado
Aspen has long been a favoured destination for everyone from elite athletes competing in the X-Games to glamorous skiers and snowboarders looking to see and be seen. It’s a spot where you’re more than likely to ride a chairlift with a pro, then share a toast with an A-lister like Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell or CEOs like Je Bezos, who all own property in the area.
Where to go: ose looking for an upscale après head straight to e Wine Bar at the Little Nell. e lounge sits inside one of the most famous hotels in the area, and o ers guests the chance to sip rare wines while listening to a DJ spin vintage vinyl. e space is small, so we do recommend making reservations at eLittleNell.com.
2. Mammoth, California
Mammoth is a big mountain with big runs, big snow, and a big, giant personality. On the slopes you’re likely to nd people hooting and hollering the entire way down as they seek out powder stashes or make their way to Hemlocks, an o -piste, tree skiing area for those looking to both push their limits and nd an extra thrill. And maybe even earn a post-ski drink.
Where to go: Surprise yourself with an après visit to
the Lakanuki Bar & Cafe. e tiki bar keeps the good times going with fruity cocktails that you don’t often associate with chilly destinations, but one sip will show you that yes, a piña colada does really hit all the right notes after a day on the slopes.
3. Stowe, Vermont Stowe, Vermont, is as charming a destination as they come. Fewer than 1,000 people live in Stowe full time, but that number tends to swell in the winter months when the snow blankets everything, including the famed ski resort. It’s also a spot with a long ski history dating back to the mountain’s inaugural season in 1936, meaning tradition here reigns supreme.
Where to go: ough a lot has changed at Stowe thanks to massive expansion projects and its sale to Vail Resorts in 2017, there are still a few old-school favorites sprinkled around town that throw an après like the good old days. Namely, it’s the Matterhorn. e bar has been serving frosty beers since the ‘50s and has welcomed some of the greatest bands on earth to its tiny stage (including the Monkees and a few members of the Grateful Dead). Make it your rst stop after leaving the mountain — the bartenders won’t mind if you
still have your ski boots on either.
4. Jackson Hole, Wyoming Jackson Hole has arguably the best skiing in America.
e mountain is enormous and o ers skiers and riders the chance to either test their mettle on some of the steepest slopes on the continent or take it easy on some beautiful green trails that o er views across the Teton Mountain Range.
Where to go: ere’s no question on this one. Anyone skiing for the rst time or the 100th in Jackson Hole should head to Million Dollar Cowboy Bar. e bar is both famous and a classic for good reason. It’s located right in the middle of the town and really you can’t miss it thanks to the massive neon cowboy out front. Inside, guests can literally saddle up to the bar thanks to its unique saddle seats, and order whatever drink they’d like. If you can, try to plan a visit around one of its stellar music nights, too.
5. Breckenridge, Colorado Breckenridge is yet another mountain town with a long and happy history for skiers and snowboarders, dating back to its rst season in 1961. People on the slopes here seem to just be a little happier than most. Maybe it’s because it gets an average 300 inches
slopes may be TBar, which sits at the base of Peak 8. e bar is a perfect spot to ski up to for a drink at the end of the day, and it also has a full menu of share-worthy bites so you can nosh on a few items with your ski crew, too.
1. Benguerra Island, Mozambique
Part of Mozambique’s Bazaruto Archipelago, Benguerra Island is located within a national marine reserve in the turquoise Indian Ocean. A quick plane ride from Maputo or Johannesburg, the island is a playground for ocean enthusiasts in search of amingos, dugongs, manta rays, dolphins, and humpback whales that pass through from July to October. Visitors can tour the nonpro t Bazaruto Center for Scienti c Studies (BCSS), a solar-powered ocean observatory. e centre, whose team is majority Benguerran, is on the island’s northern end.
2. Dominica
With green mountains, active volcanoes, blacksand beaches, waterfalls, and hot springs, the true luxury of Dominica is its natural wonders. anks in
Five beautiful Islands to visit
featuring close to 300 miles of paths. e warm, tranquil waters make Dominica ideal for sea kayaking and stand-up paddle-boarding at all experience levels.
3. Sardinia, Italy is sun-soaked Mediterranean island, second in size to Sicily, is attractive not only to beachgoers but also to hikers, thanks to its mountainous landscape. History bu s will love the thousands of nuraghi — beehive-shaped Bronze Age ruins left behind by the Nuragic civilisation between 1900 and 730 BC — scattered across the island’s undulating landscape.
4. Sumba, Indonesia
the savanna, rain forest, and waterfall- lled landscape while the steep thatched roofs of villages stretch skyward. A growing number of culturally sensitive, eco-conscious hotels are o ering travellers exciting ways to seek solitude and adventure here with a lighter footprint.
5. Hvar, Croatia
part to its remoteness, the 293-square-mile, English – and Dominican Creole –
speaking Caribbean island remains o the beaten track. It’s a paradise for
hikers, with its Morne Trois Pitons National Park, a Unesco World Heritage site
Bali may be Indonesia’s most famous holiday destination, but this island to the east is twice as big, equally as alluring— and has a fraction of the tourists. Here, horses run free amid
Hvar isn’t exactly quiet — its harbour on the Adriatic Sea is a pulsing, yacht-thronged scene in the summer. But it’s easy to get away from the crowds and into the Dalmatian island’s quieter corners, including secret beaches and coves and more Unesco-designated sites than any other island can claim, or while wine tasting in a secluded seaside limestone cave. All of it can be explored by bike on more than 100 routes throughout the island.
Where to stay: Beach Bay Hvar Hotel
On Avenue Hassan 11 a small, bald, beady-eyed man approaches my wife and I. “Where you from?
Where you from?” We ignore him. “Francais? German?” he persists. “No,” we say, walking quickly on. “English. You English?” “No,” we reply more vehemently as we Irish do when mistaken for being British.
“Actually we’re Irish”. “Ah, Irish,” he smiles. “How’s she cutting?”
I laugh. You couldn’t but. Here’s a small, pot-bellied, middle-aged Moroccan regurgitating a classic Irish colloquialism! We’re in Agadir in Morocco and, although we are accustomed to being confronted by pedlars of everything and anything (but mostly leather bags) we are nevertheless amused by this Danny DeVito lookalike.
“Why you nervous?” he cheekily asks. We’re not.
We’re just tired of people pushing stu on us, plus we’re trying to get to a particular market. “Where you looking for?” We tell him. He points us in the direction but as it happens he knows of a nearby market, with special prices, for today only, if we would like to come with him. We don’t. Charming as he is, we part company with a smile.
We’re in Morocco for the sun. e sun, however, didn’t show up. Instead a hell of a wind blew up, howling through kasbah, mosque and souk, leaving us wondering if we’d have been better o in Tramore. Okay, so we got some sun but in a country that boasts 355 days of sunshine, out of our seven-day stay, we got only three decent sunny ones. But thank God (or rather Allah) for the Berbers.
e Berbers made our holiday. e Berbers were
the original settlers in Morocco long before the Arab hordes swept in and they are still around in the remote mountain areas where they have preserved their own language and traditional customs to this very day. And so we took ourselves o to the Berber village of Massa about 70kms outside of Agadir where we were promised singing and dancing around an open log re, a threecourse meal and all the red wine we can drink. And all for €30 a head. We were not disappointed.
We arrived at the Berber’s kasbah (fortress) in the magnificent, mauve Moroccan dusk. Habid, our guide, knocked on the great wooden Kasbah door. I was half expecting him to say: “Open sesame” but no, the doors slowly parted and waiting inside was a group of maybe twelve Berbers,
standing around a log fire, crackling and sparking in the African twilight. They looked, for all-the-world, like priests, in their long, white, alb-like robes. As we gathered round, cameras flashing and camcorders purring they broke
into a chant, hands clapping and bodies swaying to some age-old rhythm; their version of “Céad míle fáilte” I guess. And welcome we felt.
On a brief tour of the kasbah, they showed us their bread being freshly baked. They also showed us the meal that we were about to partake of being prepared; fish and chicken tajine (tajine being the earthenware pot in which the food is cooked, an ancient method of cooking unchanged for thousands of years).
We (about 30 of us) then settled ourselves in the various small, but snug, compartments of the kasbah, breaking bread together, literally, and dipping it into our fish starter. After the first course we’re up and out into the yard again. The fire flares up and crackles, spitting sparks into the
night sky as 20 to 30 Berbers chant and sing and circle the fire – with us in tow. No onlookers here. This is participation with a capital P. Circling the fire we sing, what sounds like, an Arabic variation of Ole, Ole, Ole. Back inside then for more food and red wine and chat. Then out again. It was in and out, like Lanigans’s Ball, culminating with a party game involving a cushion and some kissing. Good clean fun and I ended up kissing a Berber! But only on the cheek. Heading home on the bus, Habid our guide tries to get a sing-song going but we are past our fun-by-date judging by the assorted snores throughout the bus. If I had any hint of colour on my face after our stay in Agadir believe me, it was not from the Moroccan sun, it was from whooping it up with the Berbers!
‘Ah, Irish, he smiles. How’s she cutting?...BY JOHN FITZGERALD
e 1947 ooding of the Black Abbey, where the water reached to a staggering fteen feet, prompted an act of clerical heroism. When Dr. Ganey O.P. saw to his horror that the water was about to reach the level of the High Altar, he cried aloud from the boat in which he sailed around the abbey. “What is to become of the Blessed Sacrament and Our Lord’s most sacred vessels in the Tabernacle?” he asked, “We shall rue this day, my brethren!”
ough much of the church
and shivering all over, he emerged from the depths of the ooded House of God like Neptune ascending from the ocean.
He wiped his eyes and thanked God. A small sh fell from a pocket of his saturated clerical garb. A rousing cheer went up from the boats and makeshift rafts when he raised aloft the symbols of Catholic faith that meant so much to him.
“‘Tis better than the Miracle of Dunkirk”, one man hollered, as the cleric was pulled into a boat. He handed over the treasure trove. Gold and silver glittered under a gaunt drizzly sky. “You have become a sher of men” Dr. Ga ney told his dewy-eyed saviour.
had been submerged, and considerable damage caused to the oor and walls, the prospect of what he believed was the “Living Presence of God” succumbing to the ood was the last straw for him. His friends and fellow clerics called out to him from their boats sailing past the Black abbey. ey warned him of the risk of drowning if he tried to save the holy items. ey tried to hold him back, but he broke away and
dived into the freezing water. He swam towards the altar, reciting a litany of prayers and invocations. Shouts of “Go on father, you can do it”, “God save that brave man”, and “Come on, Kilkenny” echoed in his priestly ears as he drew nearer his beloved Holy of Holies. ere was loud applause from the water-borne congregation when he rescued the chalices and communion hosts. Dripping wet
For the rst time since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War the US and Russia are not actively engaged in a joint nuclear treaty. A threat to world security has been dealt after Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘suspended’ Moscow’s participation in the New START treaty and forced the US to re-enter an age of nuclear instability.
“We are entering an extremely dangerous decade of which nuclear employment is once again a potential,” Rebeccah Heinrichs, a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute and an expert on strategic deterrence, told American TV news outlets. “ inking about it in a realistic way needs to be back into the [global] consciousness.”
President Biden has called the Russian leader’s decision a “big mistake” and reports have since surfaced suggesting that Russia may be planning to deploy new nuclear systems as experts question what is next for nuclear deterrence amid the war in Ukraine.
Ms Heinrichs explained that nuclear deterrence is no longer just about restricting the number of arms a nation can have at its disposal; it’s about countering nuclear capabilities.
“Whenever you think about deterrence, it’s not just about numbers. It’s also about [what] we have.”
e expert explained that deterrence only works if an adversarial nation thinks that any action they carry out could be adequately responded to with an equal or greater threat to their own security.
Moscow already knows the US has powerful nuclear warheads. e threat of nuclear warfare is not on the same level as it was in the 20th century when the core principle of deterrence was established between Washington and Moscow – mutually assured destruction.
e top threat now lies in how nuclear weapons can be
employed in the theatre of war and whether the US can appropriately respond to lowyield nuclear capabilities.
“If the Russians are going to threaten to launch a weapon in the European theatre, do we have su cient kinds of weapons that they would believe that we would respond with?” Ms Heinrichs said. “Are they really going to believe that we’re going to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile at their missile sites if they launch a low yield nuclear weapon in Ukraine? No.”
She said that Russia has
been “doggedly” focused on creating more advanced capabilities than the US in terms of “nuclear delivery systems” for the last 15 years.
“When we think about nuclear modernisation for ourselves, we’re talking about maintaining our systems,” she said. “Russians think about modernising their nuclear weapons by making new ones.” But Russia’s withdrawal from the treaty also points to an emerging threat that has become increasing evident following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine – Russia’s burgeoning ties with China.
Putin’s decision to ditch the New START treaty coincided with a visit from China’s top diplomat just days after Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed that Beijing was considering providing lethal aid to Russia – a move that would not only escalate the war in Ukraine but would exacerbate already strained geopolitical relations between China and the West.
China has said it has no plans to provide Russia with arms, but security o cials remain wary of the relationship.
“Everything is timed,” Ms Heinrichs said when asked
ar co-operation between the two nations but highlighted that the Russia-China partnership has expanded because they share a common objective in removing the US as top dog from the world order.
“From a US defence perspective, we have to assume the worst,” she said regarding nuclear security when it comes to both Russia and China.
Despite China’s unchecked nuclear expansion, the US and Russia still account for roughly 90% of world’s nuclear arsenal, according to data provided by the Arms Control Association (ACA), with nearly 12,000 nuclear warheads in existence between the two.
Under the original Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) signed in 1991 by President George H. W. Bush and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Washington and Moscow agreed to start clearing out their nuclear stockpiles – which reached their peak in 1985 when more than 70,000 warheads reportedly made up global inventories.
about the signi cance of Putin’s announcement. “ ose two countries continue to move closer. We’re back to the point where you have enemies that, no kidding, want to replace the US as the preeminent power, and they’re investing in nuclear weapons,” she said.
Ms Heinrichs pointed not only to the shared rhetoric that Putin and his Chinese counterpart President Xi Jinping have used in demonising the US but to China’s expanding nuclear programme.
e security expert said she could not speculate on nucle-
e State Department warned last month that Russia was not complying with the stipulations laid out under the New START treaty –which was renewed by Russia and the U.S. in February 2021 for another ve years – by refusing to facilitate inspection activities and bilateral consultive meetings.
It is unclear how Russia will proceed now that it is no longer adhering to the treaty that restricted either Washington or Moscow from deploying more than 1,550 nuclear warheads at a time on delivery systems like intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarinelaunched ballistic missile or heavy bombers.
However, the nuclear security expert said she is not concerned that a nuclear war is looming. But that does not Putin won’t use some such arsenal against Ukraine.
e CIA is destroying other items like wristwatches given as gifts to agency employees. With the US agency being a clandestine intelligence service, many of the details about gifts given to CIA employees from foreign dignitaries and sources are kept secret. But a foreign gift disclosure document released by the State Department shows gifts many CIA employees received were destroyed, including watches ranging in value from $500 to $10,000.
Gift-giving is a major part of foreign relations, a sign of respect and friendship between nations. e White House, State Department, embassies and various other government o ces display gifts from foreign heads of state, and there are vast government storerooms housing other items. However, the US Adminis-
tration has strict rules about what o cials can do with the gifts to avoid apparent or actual bribery from foreign governments. Federal employees are not allowed to accept gifts over a certain value un-
less “refusal of the gift would cause o ence or embarrassment or would otherwise adversely a ect the foreign relations of the United States,” according to U.S. law. Such a gift, assuming it is “tangible,”
may be accepted and must be handed over to become property of the US Administration.
President Biden received a lacquered pen and desk set from Russian President Vladimir Putin valued at $12,000
in 2021, months before Russia invaded Ukraine. It was transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration for storage. e Defence Minister of Qatar gave US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin an $8,000 curvedblade sabre, which is on display in his o ce.
Even gifts of wine and alcohol are not uncommon. Pope Francis gave Secretary of State Antony Blinken a bottle of Salento Primitivo wine, along with a dove sculpture, a book and seven Apostolic Exhortations. Vice-President Kamala Harris received two bottles of rum, among other gifts, from Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei in 2021.
When it comes to the CIA, certain gifts are marked as placed on display, like a $1,110 silk rug and an $800 set of Virginia Woolf pens given
to CIA employees by unnamed persons. Others were not handed over but simply marked as destroyed.
Jewellery, watches, sculptures and other items gifted to CIA employees were marked as being destroyed. One of the watches received by a CIA employee and then destroyed was valued at $10,000. Other destroyed items include iPad minis, jewellery, a frosted glass eagle sculpture given to CIA Director William Burns and a $680 box set of fragrances.
Not destroyed, however, were several consumable gifts of high value. One CIA employee in the past few years received a set of four bottles of vintage wine valued at more $1,100 from an unnamed foreign entity. e gift report notes it was put to “o cial use”.
Cuts to beef prices in recent days are angering farmers, as factory agents warn that “further difficult times” lie ahead.
Quotes for top-end cattle have slipped by 10-15c/kg in the last four weeks despite a strong trade for heavy cattle at marts.
Factory agents were not optimistic about discussing further
price cuts, preferring to emphasise that numbers appear to falling, with last week’s kill expected to be back by 1,500 to 34,000.
When pressed several noted that Irish prices were “badly out of line with Europe” and needed to come back. “We are over 30c/kg ahead of prices in Europe, and that doesn’t work,” one agent said.
A new scheme which will give grants of up to aid 60% of the cost of installing solar panels on farms is now available for farmers after Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue announced the opening of such applications under the new TAMS 3.
The solar scheme will be ringfenced with its own investment ceiling of €90,000 and will be grant aided at the enhanced rate of 60%. The minister also increased the size of the available investments from 11kW to 62kW.
The scheme will enable farmers to generate their own power for their house and holding and will help to achieve a more sustainable rural economy.
“This is the beginning of an exciting and bright future for on-farm energy generation. I encourage everyone to look closely at the scheme to see if it will work for them,” said the Minister.
The new Solar Capital Investment Scheme — now open to applications — is part of a range of new farm investment supports.
The farming organisations say there is “no foundation for attempts to drop the price paid to farmers” just days after Brazil stopped beef exports to China after a positive BSE case there.
ICMSA’s Des Morrison accused meats plants of mounting unwarranted and unacceptable efforts to ‘pull’ prices to farmers in defiance
of all the market facts and data. “In a week when beef exports to China have commenced, where there is a suspect BSE case in Brazil, and where the EU and UK market for beef is solid, there is absolutely no market basis for meat plants to cut the price paid to farmers,” he said. “What we are actually seeing now is the meat plants emptying their own feedlots
to artificially boost cattle supplies and so drive down prices to farmers.
“They want to undermine farmer confidence by cutting prices in a way that will allow them to replenish their feedlots again through reduced farmer confidence around the mart ring. It’s very cynical and has no basis in real data and real figures.”
IFA’s Brendan Golden said Bord Bia predicted supplies of beef cattle would be down by 60,000 head this year, with all of this reduction taking place in the first half of the year.
“This points to a significant tightening in cattle supplies for the coming weeks and months as demand for beef continues to increase,” said Brendan Golden.
Notably, farmers may now also include the energy demand of one house per holding in the sizing of the solar panel array.
The electricity generated from the panels must be consumed on the applicant’s holding — which includes the house. It is not permitted to use the electricity generated for commercial or non-farming consumption or to export the electricity generated.
Further, the installation of the solar panel array on the house is not permitted. The nearest point of a ground-mounted panel array shall be located within 500m of the farmyard. The inverter and ancillary equipment shall be located in the farmyard or next to the panel array.
The scheme is open to farmers who have a minimum of 5ha of owned, leased or rented lands which has been declared under BPS and BISS or equivalent in the year of application or preceding year, or in the case of intensive enterprises, generate a minimum of 20 production units from farming.
Eligible farmers must also have a department identifier.
Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade & Employment, visited CluneTech headquarters in Kilkenny on Thursday, March 2. The occasion was the signing of a global partnership deal between CluneTech company, Taxback International (TBI), and German headquartered global tax practice, WTS Global. The partnership will see WTS utilise TBI’s revolutionary Comply platform to power their VAT compliance services globally.
WTS is already represented in 100 countries worldwide, while Kilkenny-based TBI, founded
in 1996 by entrepreneur Terry Clune and part of the software technology group, CluneTech, has been a world leader in VAT compliance, reclaim, and consultancy for over two decades.
The minister met Terry Clune, CEO, CluneTech and founder of Taxback International (TBI), along with incoming TBI CEO Karl Nolan, CCO Joe Healy and other TBI leaders, and representatives from WTS Global.
The minister also met Transition Year students from across Kilkenny who are participating in CluneTech’s transition week programme.
Plans for a six storey 158 bedroom hotel for Kildare town are being strongly opposed by there operator of Kildare Village and the Irish branch of Tesco
In January last, Murlyn Capital Investments Ltd lodged plans with Kildare County Council for a hotel on a site at the junction of Nurney Rd and Monasterevin Rd adjoining the Kildare Village site.
A planning report lodged with the application contends that a hotel “is perfect for this site in terms of location and in what it can contribute to the tourism of Kildare Town and surrounding area”.
The report states that the planned hotel “will enhance the opportunity for the town to grow as a tourism destination by providing much needed additional accommodation with easy access off the M7 and M8”.
Kildare Village is home to well-known brands such
as Armani, Gym+Coffee, French Connection, Jimmy Choo, BOSS and Karl Lagerfeld and the operator of Kildare Village, Value Retail Dublin Ltd has lodged an objection against the planned hotel and told the county council that it “should be refused”.
On behalf of Value Retail Dublin, RMLA planning consultants has stated that the hotel scheme is 23 metres in height and represents an overbearing and incongruent urban form when compared to the two storey Kildare Village.
The objection contends that the excessive scale, bulk, massing and height is inappropriate for the site.
RMLA contend that the proposed development “will be visually dominant and is excessive for the site with a lack of appropriate parking, serving and general facilities”.
Tesco Ireland operates a ‘Superstore’ adjacent to the
hotel site and has called on the council to refuse planning permission.
In the objection drawn up by RMLA, it argues that the failure to provide car parking facilities for the planned hotel “will result in an overspill into the surrounding developments including the Tesco and Kildare Village private car parks, which will have a detrimental offed t on those existing retail centres”.
RMLA also states that Tesco Ireland “has serious concerns regarding pedestrian safety and the potential hazard that the proposed development will have on the existing operations at the TESCO service yard”.
In a separate objection, the Monasterevin Road Residents Association has told the Council that it is ‘strenuously” objecting to the hotel.
Transport Infrastructure Ireland - which maintains
the country’s national road system - has told the Council that the proposal is at variance with official policy relating to the control of development on or affecting national roads.
TII state that a grant of permission would adversely affect the operation and safety of the national road network.
However, the operator of Curragh Racecourse has made a submission to the Council voting its support for the planned hotel.
The Curragh race-course stages 23 race meetings a year attracting 85,000 racegoers in 2022.
Chief Executive of Curragh Racecourse Ltd, Brian Kavanagh states that “a recurring message we get from our customers, when seeking feedback, is their difficulty in finding accommodation in the locality due to a shortage in availability of beds”.
A decision is due on the application this month.
As a student of journalism, I felt quite chuffed when I received a call from The Kilkenny Observer to submit an article on the play Moll by JB Keane.
I received a phone number for Lake Productions and I was to call the number when I arrived in Kilkenny to determine where rehearsals were being held.
I left my home in Ballyhale and drove the fifteen minutes to town. The phone call determined that rehearsals were being held in Vinny Mc Intyres pub, The Village Inn.
I could feel by Shamrocks geansaí tighten.
(Note to self: check venue before deciding what to wear.)
Those present at The Village Inn counter, threw a few remarks in my direction, but all in good fun I might add.
Luckily, Manchester United and Barcelona were kicking ball on the screen that night so I probably got away lightly.
To the back lounge at The Village inn where Moll AKA Claire Henriques and three local thespians, dressed in priests garb, were running through a scene from the play.
I regularly attend the Thomastown community hall for shows so I straight away recognised Derek Dooley and Michael Hayes from their appearance in The Kings of the Kilburn High Road in 2022.
I was welcomed by director Ger Cody who is directing the production.
Mr Cody explained that as a committee, it is very difficult to look past a John B Keane play. “Over the years, The Field, Sharon’s Grave and Sive have been given a good airing”, he said . And he explained that over the last twenty five years, the character Moll has strut her housekeeping stuff over different stages in Kilkenny on three different occasions.
Ger said that it is great to take down the crossover apron once again and present this very funny play.
Theatre companies, the length and breadth of Ireland have produced the Listowel writers work, and Kilkenny is no different. The canon of work by Keane has brought hours of enjoyment to audiences and actors alike.
And long may it continue.
When we broke for coffee I chatted with Claire who tells me it is her second time to play the role of Moll .
“ I have to say that I love the character Moll. I love her brazenness , her will power and her ability to stand up and be counted in what was a man’s world back in the sixties and seventies”, said the Callan native. “Mind you,” continued Claire , “John B was great for creating strong women in his work. Take such characters as Mena Glavin in Sive: Maggie Polpin in Big Maggie
and Maimie Flanagan in The Field. All powerful women”. And was she enjoying the role?
“It’s like going back in time to Ireland of the sixties, and striking a blow for women’s rights” laughed Claire” Following interviews for a housekeeping job in the parish presbytery, Moll Kettle is awarded the position.
Along the way Moll gets a school built and the church repaired. How she raises the money for these projects leads to Fr Breasts pet hate Bingo being introduced to the parish and Fr Loran’s music loving heart being broken. Attempts at peacemaking by the Canon and challenges by the curates never go well, for anyone but
Moll.
In the midst of caring for the religious around her, Moll is also keeping good eye on her own future. Moll follows advice from a retired housekeeper, who has to get married, as she is penniless.
J. B. Keane was president of Irish PEN, a member of Aosdána, and the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including honorary doctorates from Dublin University, University of Limerick and Marymount, Manhattan College, New York.
John B. Keane died in May 2002, during his beloved Listowel Writers’ Week, of which he was a co-founder. When asked how he would like to be remembered in the 1994 RTE ‘River of Words’
documentary he replied –“as a player who scored the winning point in the Finals of the North Kerry Intermediate Football Final against Duagh in 1959”.
If this rehearsal is anything to go by, then Moll is going to have audiences in stitches. The production is being staged by Lake Productions and will run at Thomastown Community Hall from March 23.
At the end of rehearsals, I was invited by cast members to join them for a post rehearsal drink. Considering my attire, and where I was I made my excuses and left. This production is being supported by ‘Arts Act Grant scheme from Kilkenny County council.
“I’ve explained to you that if father nds us out, he’ll have me locked up until he can get that Paudhaun swine married to me. If that happens, we’re both done for. en who’d help you? And who would you have to give cheek to then – smart little Missy? I know it’s hard on you, Babsie – but it’s harder on me – we’re both goners if I get things wrong.
“Be Gránuaile, Babs – I know you can. en we’ll get out of here. Go soft and cry-babyish, and you’ll end up with just father and Barker unntil you’re sent down the same road as me.”
is sharp statement by ‘Big Sis’ got through.
e seriousness of what was now starting to happen suddenly registered in the sharp brain of the cute little operator. is was not a game.
All her small life she’d tried – and mostly succeeded - in having ‘the last word.’
A sweetie she was, for sure, but many’s the time Molly silently rolled her eyes - and sympathised with whatever future poor fellow would be saddled with ‘Little Miss Smarty!’
Maybe better the Babs should be a nun? Great! But cripes! e poor pupils! Forget that one…
Anyway, even now, in spite of their looming travails – and travels - Babsie would still like to chip Molly over her secretive arrangements. But, wisely, she decided to let that one slip; for the present, anyway. And mainly because Molly - somewhat like a watchful sheepdog mother with a bold puppy – could deliver a very sharp nip indeed.
“Ah, well,” thought the fractious little maid, “I’d better look out. I’m sure she wouldn’t leave me behind … but I’d sooner not chance it!”
e house was gone very quiet now. Barker would be out in the hall, near the back door, and MeeMee huddled up on the hob, as close as was safe to the dying griosach in the grate. No doubt dreaming of slow mice: and her kittendays - when Molly and Babs
had saved her from certain death, after she’d been kicked to bits , all her bones broken, even her tail. Trying to eat cattle food when she was spotted, on the brink of death. Even now, her back legs so damaged and crooked she couldn’t jump up on a chair!
e children loved her very much – in the days when ‘love’ was more than the cliché it often is now – so overused it mostly means zero.
So, in the dim weaving curling yellow light of the guttering tallow candle, Babsie sat, watching in wonder the arrangements Molly was making – and with even more amazement at the accoutrements pulled out from under her bed!
“Here, Babs,” go Molly, quietly, “help me untangle these ropes and sticks – we’ll lay it across from corner to corner – have it ready to drop. We’ll tie the top ends to my bed – shift that over to the window, last thing.” ey worked silently, doing the untangling on the bed.
When this was done, and the ‘ladder’ carefully laid out at on the oor, ready, they both changed into their ‘day clothes’ – which were
basically one of everything. No ‘dressing gowns or evening dresses’ – small stock indeed. Molly’s few decent ‘Sunday clothes were put in with Babsies dress, and that was that. Nothing else was travelling; old shoes were thrown in the corner. e less weight the better.
Babsie threw a longing glance at her few much-loved books. en swung the gaze back to Molly. A hard look back – and that was it. She didn’t have to ask to know the unspoken answer:
“OK - the books – or MeeMee?” No contest.
Molly now, with her ears cocked, laid her nger to her lips. e sound came to them of their father rising up the stairs. en shu e along to the ‘far room’ at the end of the house. e clicks of the door opening, then closing. Soon the groan of the old springs. And then, at last, the echoing snortling snores.
“ e last time we’ll have to listen to that ape, thank God.” said Molly. e Babs was a bit shocked at this. But could she disagree with the statement? Not really …. e only sound downstairs was the lonesome chirp of the night-loving cricket, in the cracks of the stonework behind the re. {A long gone sound now…} e waiting was almost over….. “Right, now, Babsie, this is where we begin. First of all,
we’ll have to recover your bloomin’ MeeMee cat from the back of the re. If that cranky puisín starts bawling and carrying on like she usually does if disturbed from her ‘beauty sleep’ – we’re in trouble.
“So if himself does wake up and go down to see what’s going on, just tell him you thought the Mee looked sick and pukey, and you’re bringing her up to look after her. “No, don’t, don’t – leave it to me - I’ll go down with you. “You’re no good at the lies, Babs – nor should you be. But the truth would land us both in more trouble than we could ever handle, ending up with me married to that wretch Paudhaun – and you stuck here on your own, with father.
“Just the odd time, Babs, sad an’ all as it is - truth can ruin you. is is such a time.” A very long speech from Molly, was this - but it needed saying. e junior miss had insisted on MeeMee travelling; Molly had known there’d be at least one request that she’d have to give in to. Arguing with ‘small sis’ could be exhausting – the junior Connolly sibling never ‘let go of her bone’ - until she had her little way! e ‘cat concession’ could be dangerous; but on this vital night in both their young lives – everything was. e father might well have already ordered ‘the Banns called’ for tomorrow - and then order
her away to work at any tick of the clock for the ‘intended –and his hateful mother – until the ceremony. Money for drink was the main – the most powerful reason - for this ne decent daughter being set up for a life of squalid misery. But the soon-to-be ‘vanishing bride’ had a premonition – had felt in her bones all evening - that this night and time was xed in stone – was the best chance they’d ever get. Not a great one – maybe just ‘the least worst’ – but any later time would only be getting even more dangerous. Molly felt she had been given a sign, this very night. She felt that the spirit of her dear departed mother was with her, and would help them through.
“Right, let’s get to hell out of here, B!” she now says, urgently – and little sis gasps again at the tough new language! e house was silent, apart from the rootling snores down the back-end of the upstairs. e two girls now slipped quietly over to the door, opened it slowly, and peeped out. All clear. Time for the rst of many silent, dangerous, moves….
To be continued….
Disclaimer
e opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the author do not re ect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of e Kilkenny Observer.
Whether you are a surfer, a country music enthusiast, a family group or simply someone looking for some time out, Bundoran is the place to be in 2023!
ousands of guests ocking annually for hundreds of years to the county Donegal seaside town, nestled on the Wild Atlantic Way can’t be wrong, as this family friendly destination caters for all tastes from young to old.
For family fun, your rst stop has to be Bundoran’s famous Waterworld. An indoor paradise of slides, pools and water attractions that are a rm favourite for both kids and adults! With four sessions daily, don’t miss your opportunity to slide down the fastest slide in Ireland, get swept up in the rapids or wallow in the wave pool! Within close proximity, and right on the promenade, is Bundoran Adventure Park with its traditional fairground rides and carnival atmosphere and
open daily throughout the summer months. e View wheel there o ers unrivalled views of the town from 36 metres above ground and is always a welcome sight on the town’s skyline. Numerous arcades, the bowling alley, the new soft play area at the Olympic Amusements and the cinema will guarantee a full itinerary for the whole family even on the odd wet day!
Getting wet though is part of the appeal of Bundoran –also known as Ireland’s Surf Capital. e town is a haven for outdoor sports enthusiasts with sur ng, kayaking, paddleboarding and SUPing all on o er. e traditional sports of gol ng, angling (sea, river & lake) and horseriding are all catered for in the town while walking on the famous Roguey Cli Walk is a must for that end of day relaxation.
For the more adventurous, year round outdoor swimming is available in two man
made freshwater pools ( rupenny & West End) which attract swimmers across the twelve months. ese tidal pools are naturally lled daily by water from the Atlantic Ocean.
Let’s not forget Bundoran’s original tourist attraction – the Fairy Bridges and Wishing Chair. So called as locals believed this natural sea arch to be haunted by fairies. e nearby wishing chair o ers the chance for dreams to come true but only by strictly following the ritual. Located on the Rougey Walk near Tullan Strand, this is a must see and o ers panoramic views of Donegal Bay.
With its stunning scenery, vibrant culture, and amenities and activities for all the family, discover Bundoran for the perfect destination for a relaxing getaway or an adventurous escape! Discovering begins here!
For more see www.discoverbundoran.com
Scoil Iognáid de Rís welcomed Minister for Education, Norma Foley, on Friday 24th February. e entrance area was festooned with the colours of the CBS when Minister Foley was welcomed by Fr. Richard Scriven, Chairperson of the Board of Management, Niall Bergin, Principal, Tom Cunni e, Deputy Principal and Ann Marie Cahill, parents’ nominee on the Board. Minister Foley had a special word for Yuliía, mother of one of our Ukrainian pupils, Richie, who also welcomed her to the school. Accompanied by John McGuinness, TD, Councillor Andrew McGuiness and her o cials the Minister spent over an hour visiting the school. e visit was a historical moment in the life of the school as the school community welcomed the rst ever visit of the Minister for Education in its 70 years.
e Céad Míle Faiíte continued when the Minister was met by the Student Council as she made her way to Room 2 where she was introduced to 2nd Class. Ms Moloney, Ms. Larkin and Ms. Delaney were delighted that she called to their classroom and the boys sang for her ‘Circle of Friends’ demonstrating their singing and also the interactive panels and technology which is now part and parcel of every class room in the school.
Walking along the corridor the Minister commented on the variety of art work that adorned the walls: pictures of spring, history projects and so much more. Ms. Brennan’s 5th/6th class welcomed the Minister next. e boys showed o their musical ability playing the ukulele. Explaining that the school was bene ting from the school programme, Music Generation Kilkenny, the boys entertained the Minister with the tune ‘Shooting Stars’.
Continuing the visit, the Minister met Ms Bolger’s class in Room 12.
ere the Minister was assured of her welcome when the boys sang Consider Yourself from Oliver. She
certainly made herself at home as she talked to the boys about the Accelerated Reading Programme in the school. e boys talked to her about their choice of books which include a wide range of novels to books on Irish History. Reminding the boys that Saturday was Ireland Reads Day and with World Book Day fast approaching she encouraged the boys to read as much as they could and spoke about her own love of reading.
Friday 24th was the First Anniversary of the Invasion of Ukraine and Minister Foley was delighted to meet with Ms. Curran and the Ukrainian pupils who were proudly wearing their country’s colours. As she admired their work she was asked to plant a sun ower seed which will be planted in the school grounds. As she left their classroom she commented on the beautifully decorated biscuits that the boys had made that day in the Ukrainian colours.
In each of the classes the Minister asked the boys if they had any questions: Augustas wanted to know how many countries she had visited; Richard asked if she liked her job; Tomas asked what the best part of her job was. When asked if she like hurling or played camogie she commented that she used to play basketball.
e Minister then went out to the hurling eld where she observed the hurling which was in full swing: needless to say, the boys continued with their hurling…priorities!
e Minister returned to the hall where she was o ered a cup of tea as her visit came to an end. e Student Council explained the various displays to the Minister: their own notice board, the Amber Flag display, Green School noticeboard and the display dedicated to the Soccer World Cup.
As her visit came to an end, the oldest and youngest pupils, Diarmuid and Ben, presented the
Minister with a bouquet of owers and a framed collage of activities of the school.
In thanking the boys, Minister Foley commented that the picture would hang on the corridors of the Department of Education. Since becoming the Minister of Education she has received many such pictures and she has decided that their rightful place is in the corridors of her o ce where they will remind her and her o cials of the purpose of their work.
e Minister formally announced the opening of an Autism Class in September 2023. Minister Foley in acknowledging the presence of the Chair of the Board, Fr Scriven and Board Member Ms Ann Marie Cahill thanked all the member of the Board for their commitment to the school commenting that from her own personal experience in education how the Board of Management contribute in a very important way to the life of the school: “a generosity that is not often acknowledged and an asset to the school”. Minister Foley acknowledged the Edmund Rice spirit in the school but also the foresight of Rice who created an education system so that everyone could have a place in education, regardless of gender or background.
Principal Niall Bergin thanked the Minister for her visit. He also thanked the o cials of her department for their help and cooperation in recent months as the School planned for the future. ose plans include welcoming boys and girls into Junior Infants in September 2023 and of course most specially the new Autism Class.
As the Minister left she received a guard of honour from the whole school population. A great round of applause greeted the ‘Home Work Pass’ that the Minister gave as she left.
A memorable day in the 70 years of the school as Scoil Iognáid de Rís looks with con dence to the future.
Prep: 15 mins
Cook: 6 hrs and 35 mins
Serves: 2
Throw a handful of ingredients in the slow cooker at the start of the day and this classic French chicken chasseur will be ready by the time you get home.
Ingredients
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 4 chicken thighs, skin-on and bone-in
• 2 shallots or 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 200g baby chestnut mushrooms, halved
• 200ml white wine
• 1 tbsp tomato purée
• 200g chopped tomatoes
• 2 thyme sprigs
• 1 bay leaf
• 400ml hot chicken stock
• small handful of parsley, finely chopped, to serve
• mash, jackets, pasta or roast potatoes, to serve (optional)
• Method
STEP 1
Heat the slow cooker to low.
Put the oil in a frying pan over a medium-high heat. Season the chicken and fry, skin-side down, for 4-5 mins until crisp. Turn and fry for 3-4 mins more until golden all over. Put on a plate and set
Total time; 30 mins
Ready in 25-30 minutes
Serves: 2-3
Almost a national dish of ailand, Mary Cadogan’s simpli ed take makes it easy to shop for - and very authentic tasting.
Ingredients
•125g (half a 250g pack) rice noodles
•3 tbsp lime juice about 2 limes
•½ tsp cayenne pepper
•2 tsp light muscovado sugar
•2 tbsp sh sauce (nam pla)
•2 tbsp vegetable oil
•200g cooked and peeled tiger prawn, tails left on
•4 spring onions, sliced
•140g beansprout
•25g salted peanut, nely chopped
•a small handful of coriander leaves
To serve
aside.
STEP 2
Tip the shallots into the pan and fry for 10 mins over a medium heat until soft. Add the garlic and mushrooms and fry for 10 mins more until the mushrooms are golden. Pour in the wine and bubble for a few minutes until
reduced by half. Stir in the tomato purée, chopped tomatoes and herbs. Season well and bring to a simmer.
STEP 3
Tip the sauce into the slow cooker, and top with the chicken thighs (in one layer, if possible). Pour over the chicken stock until the
chicken thighs are covered, adding a little more if needed. Cover and cook for 6-8 hrs until the sauce has thickened and the chicken is tender. Transfer the chicken to a plate and bubble the sauce for a few minutes more with the lid off, if you prefer a thicker sauce (you can only do this if there’s a reduce function on the slow cooker. If
not, pour the sauce into a pan and simmer until reduced). Remove the skin from the chicken before serving, if you prefer.
STEP 4
Sprinkle over the parsley and serve the chicken and sauce with buttery mash, jackets, pasta or small roast potatoes, if you like.
•1 or 2 lime, cut into wedges •sweet chilli sauce
Method
STEP 1
Put the noodles in a large heatproof bowl, pour boiling water over them and leave for 4 minutes, then drain and refresh under cold running water.
STEP 2
Put the lime juice, cayenne, sugar and sh sauce in a bowl and mix well. Have all the other ingredients ready by the cooker.
STEP 3
Heat the oil and fry the prawns until warmed through. Add the spring onions and noodles and toss around. Tip in the lime juice mixture, then stir in the beansprouts and half the peanuts and coriander. Cook for 1 minute until everything is heated through.
STEP 4
Pile into a large dish, scatter with the rest of the peanuts and coriander, and serve with lime wedges and sweet chilli sauce.
Slow Horses On Apple TV+ is an espionage thriller that explores familiar themes and character archetypes, but it doesn’t matter thanks to the quality of the writing and acting here. Gary Oldman stars as Jackson Lamb, the ramshackle leader of a bunch of MI5 agents. And Will Smith (no, not that one) of Veep fame contributed to the script.
Looking for a movie that forces you to question the fabric of reality? Aren’t we all. Stop scrolling on whatever streaming service you’ve been staring at, pop onto Prime Video and watch 2013’s low- budget sci- lm Coherence ASAP, e initial premise of Coherence is fairly simple. A few friends meet up for a dinner party the same night a mysterious comet is scheduled to y overhead. It begins as many indie movies do, with a troubled love story, tension between exes and witty banter. en the power goes out and things gets weird.
Inexplicable events ensue while the ensemble of char-
acters scramble to restore the power. Nothing is as it had seemed. Some start to doubt where they are, others are more concerned with who they are. is isn’t a movie about longtime pals’ small talk. It’s a tale about them coming faceto-face with the terrifying truth of their reality. e next hour or so overows with plot twists that could rival those of 2010’s Shutter Island. e lm also expertly alludes to scienti c — and rather philosophical — concepts that have probably crossed the mind of the late Stephen Hawking.
Coherence ties together the social, personal and ex-
istential consequences that would arise from a complex theory of space and time with a heart-thumping mystery. Speckled with red herrings, Easter eggs and a few ambiguities, Coherence is arguably one of the most mind-bending sci- lms. Coherence, which occasionally verges on horror, was made with a scant budget of just $50,000 and shot over a mere ve days. For context, Alfonso Cuarón’s 2013 lm, Gravity, was made with $100 million. Director James Ward Byrkit even decided to forgo a script for the quietly experimental lm. “Each day, instead of getting a script, the actors would get
a page of notes for their individual character, whether it was a backstory or information about their motivations,” he told IndieWire. Because the actors were left in the dark about how the story unfolds, any stress and perplexity in their performances is authentic. e lm’s chaotic disarray was actually happening during the movie’s lming. Coherence will keep you guessing along with the actors, elicit audible gasps and make you feel a bit like a sci- spy. Hours after the credits roll, you might well experience chills as previously overlooked clues and nuances slowly wash over you.
Denzel Washington is undoubtedly best known for his performances in dramatic pictures like Training Day, Malcolm X, and The Little Things, but that’s not to say he hasn’t dabbled in comedy. In the 2013 movie 2 Guns, the Academy Award-winning actor stars alongside Mark Wahlberg in the Baltasar Kormakurdirected action thriller that’s loaded with just as many wisecracks as it is intense shootouts. With that said, it should come as no surprise the fillm is absolutely dominating Netflix.
According to Flix Patrol, a website that tracks all movie and television titles
climbing the charts on different streaming platforms around the world, 2 Guns is the No. 1 movie on Netflix. That’s an impressive feat considering the film was only added to the service on February 16. Previously, The Rise of Gru had the top spot locked down but left it to Denzel Washington to overthrow the minions.
2 Guns follows undercover DEA agent Bobby Trench (Denzel Washington) and U.S. Navy intelligence officer Marcus Stigman (Mark Wahlberg), who has been working undercover as members of a narcotics syndicate for
the past year. The twist: Neither man knows that the other is an undercover agent.
When their attempt to infilltrate a Mexican drug cartel and recover millions goes haywire, the men are disavowed by their superiors, and Trench and Stigman must go on the run lest they wind up in jail or in a grave.
The film is based on the comic book series of the same name created by Steven Grant and Mateus Santolouco, which was published in 2007 by Boom! Studios. In addition to Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg, 2 Guns
stars Paula Patton, Bill Paxton, Edward James Olmos, Robert John Burke, James Marsden, Greg Sproles, Fred Ward, Patrick Fischler, and Kyle Clements. Baltasar Kormakur, who collaborated with Wahlberg on Contraband a year earlier, directs from a script by Blake Masters.
2 Guns opened to mixed reviews from both professional critics and traditional viewers.
The film has been criticised for being formulaic and predictable. However, Denzel Washington received heaps of praise for venturing outside of his comfort zone.
e six-episode seasons, of which there are two, leave little room for bloat. Season one is themed around far- right domestic terrorism, the second on Russian sleeper agents.
2. Hunters
Al Pacino plays a Nazi hunter in Hunters on Amazon Prime, a show that surely would never have attracted such a star presence in the pre-golden age of TV era. e show is currently in its second season, which sees Pacino’s Meyer O erman track down Hitler himself, after it is discovered the Nazi leader is actually still alive. Sound preposterous? Sure, but that’s all part of the Hunters vibe, a tonal melange that reaches its heights when indulging in the ridiculous. And, crucially, season two sticks the landing. ere are 10 episodes in season one, eight in season two.
3. Clark
e con is on. Bill Skarsgard plays Clark Olofsson in this crime story on Net ix based on a real-world gure from Sweden. Some say this represents a career-best performance from Skarsgard, a tall order following his iconic portrayal of Pennywise in horror smash It. He brings life to what is a rather nasty gangster character. Most criticism of Clark revolves around the idea it gets too close to glorifying a monster — a pitfall of true crime content that may or may not be a turn o .
4. Under e Banner Of Heaven
Andrew Gar eld becomes a detective investigating a double murder in a mormon community in the US’s Salt Lake City. is weighty-feeling sevenpart miniseries on Disney + is based on a non- ction book by Jon Krakauer. It has big themes, but is not so big on action, so pick this one up if you’re looking to engage your brain and, sure, your heart too. Each episode runs at a little over an hour bar the roughly 90-minute nale. But as this is a mini series you can be sure you’re not strung along beyond the initial run.
5. I Hate Suzie Too
Celebrity Suzie Pickles’s (Billie Piper) life is turned upside down when compromising pictures of her are leaked online. at is the backstory behind I Hate Susie Too on Now TV, the follow-up second season to 2020’s I Hate Suzie. is season starts with a similarly nightmarish scenario as Suzie’s ex posts a tell-all account of their relationship online.
I Hate Suzie Too explores themes that seem incredibly timely in 2023. It’s affecting, at times anxiety-inducing, and yet incredibly funny at points too. And it all hinges on the ever-brilliant Billie Piper, whose performance is so good it doesn’t matter if you frequently nd the Suzie a little hard to like.
LOTTO
Lotto Results 21st Feb. Numbers drawn 14, 16, 28. No Jackpot winner. €30 each to James & Anne Marie Butler, Rachael Comerford, Jim Langton, Peig Carrigan, Patricia Carroll.
Next weeks Jackpot is €2200. Thanks to all for your support.
CLUB LOTTO
There was no winner of the club lotto (Feburary 21th).
Numbers Drawn were 11, 12, 17, 27 Bonus 15. Next week’s jackpot will be €16,800 (Feburary 28th). Play now at www. oloughlingaels.com/lotto
Promotors Draw. 1. L Lawlor c/o Gerry Buckley. 2. Geraldine Roche c/o Dan O’Driscoll
3. Tasha Webster c/o Paddy Greene. 4. Gerry Buckley. 5. Pauline Cleere c/o Kevin Cleere
6. Brian Murphy Snr. 7. Myra Fox c/o Pauline Greene. 8. Derek Tobin c/o online
9. Tracy Brannigan c/o online. 10. Susan Kelly c/o online. Thank you for your continued support
SPORTS - GYM DEVELOPMENT
Our adult hurlers are running a fundraiser to raise money for gym development. Cards are being distributed through the players. Put your money where your mouth is and maybe win a nice windfall. Contact for entries: Mark Bergin 087.2995892. Alex Sheridan 083.3507153
Ben Leydon 087.9445760 Conor Heary 086.1003550. Evan Walsh 085.7195752
Luke Leydon 085.1033133. Paul Cleere 086.8191872
O’LOUGHLIN GAELS MEMBERSHIP
Please renew membership now on your foireann details. All new members for hurling , camogie, football and handball are invited to view membership details and how to register on www.oloughlingaels.com/membership.
JIM GIBBONS RIP
The people of Freshford and surrounds were shocked and saddened to learn of the passing of Jim Gibbons late of Ballylarkin Freshford. Jim was only in his sixties and although he had been unwell for a short time his death caused widespread shock. He was widely known in the area and especially in the farming community. He was a hard working devoted husband and father. He loved the outdoor life and loved his horses and was involved in Freshford Conkers group over the years. He will be sadly missed by his family and his neighbours and friends. His funeral mass took place in St.Lachtains Church Freshford on Saturday last followed by Cremation in Cork. He is deeply mourned by his wife Dympna, his sons Sam and Thomas, his daugters Ruth, Leah and Beth and extended family to whom sympathy is extended.
NEW BABY
Congratulations to Michael Farrell and his wife Susan on the birth of their baby daughter last week. Michael is an ardent member of Freshford Town soccer club and also St. Lachtains Club while Susan was also a keen footballer.
BIRTHDAY
Special birthday wishes go out to local lad Alan Ra er of Woodview, Freshford who celebrated his 21st birthday last week. Alan marked his coming of age at party with family and friends in Kavanaghs Bar on Saturday night last.
FITNESS SESSIONS
Fitness sessions Boxing/fitness sessions at Community Hall Freshford. Have you had a diagnoses of Parkinsons;, Alzheimers or other neurological condition ? Maybe you are keen to get some level of fitness back or work on you 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
SYMPATHY
Sympathy is extended to Jim Marnell and his family of Clintstown Road on the death of his brother Martin which occurred in the UK last weekend.
Sympathy is also extended to the wife and family of Nicholas Grace, late of Leugh Threeastles who died recently. Burial took place in Tulla Cemetery. Also sympathy is extended to the family of Michael Burke, late of Kilkenny and formerly of Woodsgi who died last weekend. Burial took place in Graine cemetery on Monday last.
DARTS
Freshford Darts League is now at the semifinal stages. In the semifinal on Friday next Farrells C1 play Farrells C2 in Mackeys and McGraths take on Killeens in the other semifinal in Kavanaghs. The A league semifinals and John McGrath Cup semifinal draw will be made on Monday night. The B league is still ongoing with two weeks le before the semifinal stages.
COMMUNITY ALERT
Freshford /Threecastles Community Alert Group remind people that the annual text Alert deadline is the 28th February. It cost just €10 per phone number for this service and to enroll or pay your fee you can contact any of the following committee members :Shem O’Donnell, John
Bergin, Jacinta Power, Anna Morrissey, Mick Cormack Bernadette , Terry Campion and Frances Mullan
CABARET
Conahy Vintage Club present a Cabaret in aid of Crumlin Childrens Hospital in Conahy Shamrocks Gaa Clubhouse on Friday next 3rd March. Music will be by The Dooley Bros and there will be a special door prize and ra le on the night. You are asked to please support this very worthy cause. Tickets are available from any member of the Conahy Vintage Club or in the GAA Clubhouse.
GAA
CAMOGIE
Well done to Local Girl Abbie Whitty was part of Kilkenny u16 camogie team which beat Meath in the first game of championship at Castlecomer on Sunday last.
LAST MAN STANDING
With the national hurling league back into action St Lachtain’s are running a Last Man Standing competition with fantastic prize of €350 for the winner and €50 for the seller of the winner. It started 4th of February & Entries must be in at 12 noon on the day of the first game each weekend Entries can be given to any player or committee member.
DRUG AWARENESS
St Lachtains GA club hosted a drugs awareness night on Monday last in the Community Hall with guest speakers on the night including Conor Harris, former Limerick hurler Ciaran Carey and members of An Garda Siobhan.
SOCCER
Freshford Town Junior side were beaten 2-0 by Evergreen in their home league game on Sunday a ernoon In the schoolboys section the U11boys had a good 3- 1 win over Callan UItd. While the U17 boys were beaten 1-0 by Spa Utd recently
PARISH NEWS
Mass is held in the Parish Church each Wednesday morning at 9.30am and each Sunday morning at 11am. wiith Mass in Tulla church on Saturday evenings at 7.30pm.
Notices
The parish newsletter is available on their website every week and also on the website you are free to pay your dues and make donations or any other contributions and you can find out more about it on the website or feel free to contact in the Parish
O ice. Please note community notices for the parish newsletter should be le in or emailed to the Parish
O ice by 11am on Thursdays. Parish o ice hours are Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 9am to 1pm.
Mass Cards
Special printed parish cards are available at the Parish
O ice or from Annette at Tulla Church signed by Monsignor Kennedy. You can contact the Parish o ice on 056 8832843 or by email – freshfordd@ossory.ie. Contact Mongr Kieron Kennedy on that number or on 087 25235 21
HELP FOR ALL
Are you struggling with anxiety or depression or finding life di icult 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 284342 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.
GOWRAN PARK
Shamrock Chase Day National Hunt takes place on March 11th. Adults: €15.00 per person pre-purchased online or €20.00 per person on the gate
GOWRAN COMMUNITY HUB MEGA DRAW
All funds go towards Gowran’s new community playground/ park, 550 metre walking track and multipurpose ballcourts.
1st prize - €1,000. 2nd prize - €500. 3rd to 10th prize - €100. Tickets only €10 and available for the local committee, local shops/ pubs or DM our Facebook page.
Draw is taking place Easter Sunday 9th April in Cleere’s Bar
KILKENNY GAA DEVELOPMENT SQUADS 2023
Very Best Wishes to the following Young Irelands players involved with Kilkenny GAA Development Squads next Saturday 4th March.
U-16: Thomas Langton U-15: Aidan Keating, Keelan Barcoe, Kieran Carter U-14: Dylan Brennan, Darragh Corcoran, Thomas Carroll, Conor Carroll, Ieuan Carroll, Sam McAviney, KILKENNY GIRLS LOSE TO GALWAY
A er losing to Clare in Round One of The National League, All-Ireland Champions Kilkenny were defeated for The Second straight weekend as they lost 1-17 to 1-13 against Galway in Nowlan Park last Saturday. Once again, Ste i and Ti anie Fitzgerald were the two wing-backs in the starting 15 while Ciara O’Kee e was among the substitutes.
who are part of The St. Kierans College Panel looking to qualify for an All-Ireland Schools Final on Saturday A ernoon Lunchtime in Birr Co. O aly. They will get a tough test of their credentials against the Harty Cup Champions, Cashel Community School of Tipperary with a 12.45pm throw-in.
GAELIC FOOTBALL WRAP-UP
Young Irelands Minor Footballers lost 5-9 to 0-13 against Thomastown in the Roinn A Semi-Final in Thomastown on Sunday Morning.
The Gowran Boys reached The Semi-Final having scored 14 goals in their previous two games, winning 6-6 to 3-4 against James Stephens before firing 8 goals in an 8-11 to 1-4 landslide triumph against Mooncoin in the QuarterFinal. Thomastown will now play St. Martins in the Final. Meanwhile, The Intermediate Team lost out by a solitary point 2-9 to 1-11 against Emeralds in Round 2 of The League having lost 2-9 to 1-2 against Bennettsbridge in Round 1, while The U-13s lost out narrowly 6-2 to 3-8 against Barrow Rangers a er having defeated James Stephens 4-9 to 2-3 the previous weekend.
YOUNG IRELANDS GAA CLUB SPORTS PREDICTION
COMPETITION 2023
Young Irelands GAA Club are organizing a Sports Prediction Competition for 2023.
€1000 worth of prize money with 1st Prize €700, 2nd Prize €200 and 3rd Prize €100. Entry fee is €10 and all entries to be submitted by Sunday 5th March. Check out The Young Irelands GAA Club page on Facebook for further information and you will find contact details for the Organising Committee involved.
SCOR NA NOG
Young Irelands are looking for entrants into this year’s Scor Na Nog Chainnigh and you can enter into the following competitions: Solo Singer, Ballad Group, Music Group, Recitation, Quiz Team, Sketch and/or Dance Team. Entrants must be U-17 on 31/12/2022 and registered members of Club and Scor Na Nog Chill Cill Chainnigh will take place in late March with date and venue to be confirmed.
If you are interested please contact Karina (086 8427777), Orla (087 1315119) or John (087 4139603).
YOUNG IRELANDS INFRASTRUCTURE
Over the past week Young Irelands have completed installation of a new spectator fence at the main pitch. This installation is a welcome improvement to pitch facilities, enhancing safety for players and spectators as well as providing improved professional look and feel to their home grounds.
The club now has the ability to engage with local business sponsorship, indeed over 50 businesses have already signed up to pitch side sponsorship. You can check out The Young Irelands Facebook page and Young Irelands Website for further details.
LOTTO
No winner of Jackpot last week. Numbers, 9, 10, 20. 27. Jackpot now, €5,500.00. Consolation Prizes D’Bally Boys, Patrick O’Neill, Jnr, Ballyreddin, Margaret Nolan Hillview, Marie Butler Grovine, Breda Mc Evoy, Gowran Road. CHURCH NEWS Mass times this week. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, 10.30am.
SYMPATHY Sympathy is extended to the Shanahan family on the death of Michael Shanahan, Gowran Road, Bennettsbridge, Co. Kilkenny and formerly of Haltigan Terrace, Waterford Road, Kilkenny. Michael died on 25th February a er a long illness, in the wonderful care of all the sta at Beechwood Nursing Home, Leighlinbridge, Co. Carlow. Predeceased by his parents Tom and Margaret (Peggy) and his sister Margaret.Deeply regretted by his loving wife Ann, daughter Denise, son-in-law Shane and grandchildren, Luca and Jonah. Sadly missed by his sisters Ann (Rhatigan), Mary (Lawlor), Ber (Cahill) and his brothers Noel and Thomas, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, aunt Bridie, uncle Paddy, nieces, nephews, extended family, neighbours and a wide circle of friends. Requiem Mass was celebrated in St. Bennett’s Church, Bennettsbridge followed by burial in Foulkstown Cemetery.
ART GROUP
Art classes continue each Monday in the Community Centre. Artists are exploring some new techniques and are enjoying the experience. The group is indebted to the ETB for its continued support.
Two Ukrainian artists have been with the group for some months and last Friday, on World Prayer and Fasting Day for Ukraine, the ‘Bridge group sent messages of support to them and their families.
GATHERING GROUP
There was a good attendance at last week’s meeting. Gentle chair exercises are proving popular with the group. A number of talks are in the pipeline also a trip to the Danesfort group is being penciled in for April. Some members opted for a game of skittles while bingo enthusiasts played a few games. A shopping trip is being looked into in the next few months and the group is booked for John B Keane’s play, Moll on 23rd March in Thomastown Concert Hall.
EASTER CAMP
Advance notice of the Bennettsbridge Easter Camp which
will take place from the 11th to 14th April this year. A registration night will be held on Thursday 9th March at the GAA Grounds. Forms will be delivered to the Bennettsbridge Mixed school in the coming weeks. The camp runs from 10 to 2pm daily. Cost €50.00.
ST PATRICKS DAY
Date for your diary. The Annual Irish Dancing Display will be held this year on St Patrick’s Day in the Community Centre. This event is a collaboration between Stella Carroll School of Dancing and Bennettsbridge Ladies Club. Dancers will compete for the Kathleen Conway Memorial Trophy. Proceeds will go to the Carlow Kilkenny Homecare Team.
GAA
MEMBERSHIP 2023
Membership for 2023 is now been 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 start to come in.
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.
FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP
Bennettsbridge footballers are in action at junior, minor and under 13 at the moment. The junior team made it three wins from three in the league with a 1- 9 to 1-8 away to Windgap last weekend. Congratulations to the Bennnettsbridge minors who were crowned championship winners for 2023 on Sunday. The team turned up to play the final but there was no opposition and so were awarded the game. This was an unsatisfactory end to the championship but that was no fault of the ‘Bridge team who were available to fulfil all the fixtures. A young under 13 side lost out to Castlecomer by a goal in the under 13 league a er a close game. See the Kilkenny GAA website for details of the upcoming fixtures.
COLLEGE’S HURLING
Best wishes to Bill Hughes, Timmy Kelly and James Hughes who are on the St Kieran’s panel to play Cashel in the All Ireland semi-final in Birr next Saturday.
CPR AND BASIC FIRST AID TRAINING
There will be a CPR and first aid training upstairs in the clubhouse on Sat-urday March 25th. This is open to the whole community. Places are limited to 10 people and cost is 80 euro per person. If interested please contact Andrea on 087 1226882 to book a place.
ONLINE DRAW
Please watch out for another online GAA draw that will take place in the coming weeks.
SPLIT THE POT
Well done to Noel Skehan who won 151 euro, Sheila Maher who won 30 euro and to Monica Duggan who won 20 euro. Envelopes to enter 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.
CHURCH NEWS
Talks are to be held during Lent in St. Kieran’s College at 7.30pm, Wed. May 1st “the ethics of war in this time of conflict” delivered by Dr. Michael Shortall and Professor Tobias Winright both from St. Patrick’s University, Maynooth. On Tuesday March 7th Rev Dr. Billy Swan, Fern Diocese will speak on “St. Patrick”, How would he speak to a modern Ireland.
MISS ALICE SMITH RIP
Donoughmore, Johnstown. Alice died peacefully at Archersrath Nursing Home recently. She had also resided for some years at Prague House, Freshford. Predeceased by her brother Jerry and her sister Mary, she will be greatly missed by her relations, neighbours and friends. Requiem Mass was in St. Kieran’s Church with burial a erwards in St. Kieran’s Cemetery.
BADMINTON LESSONS
Badminton lessons will be given in Galmoy Hall on Mondays from 7 to 8pm and 8 to 9pm, Friday 7 to 8pm and Saturday 7 to 8pm. Classes €3, siblings €2. To book contact 0879286635.
AUCTION
An auction of top quality firewood in Galmoy Village will be held at 11am Sunday, March 5th, also bales of hay, silage and straw as well as vouchers including fertiliser, nuts and farm implements.
CONAHY VINTAGE CLUB
Conahy Vintage Club are holding a Cabaret in aid of Crumlin Children’s Hospital in the GAA Club house on Friday March 3rd. Music by Dooley Brothers. Door prizes and ra le. Tickets from any vintage club member or the GAA clubhouse.
FENIAN HC
DINNER DANCE
Fenian HC are holdimg a dinner dance in Langtons on March 16th 2023. Music by Sweet Freedom and DJ Michael Glendon. Tickets €40 from any committee member.
LAST MAN SYTANDING
Next round of last man standing competition starting on march 4th.
MEMORIAL BENCH
A bench, expertly made by local man Liam Quaelly, and situated in the graveyard at St. Mary’s Church of Ireland, Johnstown was blessed by Rev. Robin Bantry White, Rector. The bench was presented by the congregation of St. Marys, Johnstown Town Team and the Johnstown Community in memory of June Bennett, a friend to all and a pillar of support to the community, who sadly died in February. 2022. The base and easy access for limited mobility was erected by Dinny and Keith Beehan. June’s family, husband Osmond, children Robert and Gail as well many from the community were present.
SPA UNITED AFC
WEEKEND RESULTS
Junior League Division 3 Spa 3 Newpark 2, U12 SFAI National Cup Aisling Annacotty 3 Spa 1, U17 boys league division 1A Spa 2 Evergreen3, U14 boys league division
2 Spa 3 Freebooters 1, U12 boys league Division 1 Spa 3
Freebooters 3, U12 girls league division 2 Evergreen 4 Spa
1, U11 boys David Doran Shield Thomastown Utd 1 Spa 4. Well done to Ellie Ahern who scored for the U12 Kilkenny District League squad in their league game against Longford.
Commiserations to the U12 boys who bowed out of the National Cup on Saturday a er a 3-1 defeat away to Aisling Annacotty in Limerick. The boys leave the competition with great memories a er an unbelievable run to the last 16 of the competition. A truly fantastic squad with two of the lads playing a er receiving their confirmation on the morning of the game. Well done to all who travelled to Limerick to support the team.
SPA DEVELOPMENT/FENIANS LOTTO
Winning numbers 2,5,9,28. Five match threes Eoin Ryan, Jim Quinlan, Ray Fitzpatrick, Barry Manning and Sandra He ernan. Next weeks jackpot €19, 700.
CLUB LOTTO
Dicksboro GAA Club LOTTO Results 23rd February. Nos: 5
13 20 23. Jackpot: €7700 Not Won
Draw Prizes, €50: Alice c/o Paddy Grace. €25 each John Hackett c/o Online. €25 each Jason Dempsey c/o Online. €25 each Conor Doheny c/o Online. Hurlers Co Op Sarah O’Donovan c/o Dohertys Bar. Promotors prize T & J Know. New weeks draw €7850
Thank you for your continued support.
CLUB REGISTRATION
Members can now renew their membership directly through ClubZap for the 2023 season and instalment options are available. The club asks that all members renew their membership as soon as possible and in particular before teams return to training or games over the next number of weeks.
FOOTBALL RESULTS
U13 Roinn A Round 3 Dicksboro 3-9 Piltown 1-5. U13 Roinn
C Round 3. Dicksboro 4-8 Slieverue 2-1. Minor A . Dicksboro
0-9 St Martins 2-10. Senior Football Dicksboro 3-10 Kilmoganny 3-8
EASTER CAMP
Registration now Open for our Easter Camp. Skills and drills and lots of fun. For ages 5-12. €30 1 Child. Discounts for Multiple Children from same family. 10am to 1pm. 3rd, 4th and 5th of April. See ClubZap to secure your booking or go to https:/www.dicksborogaa.com/products
KILKENNY REPRESENTATION
Well done to all our Senior Players representing Kilkenny Hurling and Camogie over the weekend. Great to see these players in action in the Black and Amber.
LEINSTER FINALS HANDBALL
We wish 6 of our young players the very best as they play their Leinster Finals representing Kilkenny this weekend in Kilfane. Best of luck to Mikey Stynes, Anthony Cli ord, James Kenny, Rian Dowling, Dan Carroll and Samuel O’Shea.
SINGING CIRCLE
The next singing circle session will take place on Saturday 4th March at St. Aodhan’s Community Centre in Kilmanagh. Come along for a great night of music and dancing.
ATHLETICS CLUB
Graigue-Ballycallan Athletics Club, in conjunction with St. Aidan’s NS parent’s council, will hold a 5k fun run/walk and a chipped 10k run on Sunday 19th March at 11am. With chipped 10k entry there are bespoke medals and bu s. Prizes for 1st place men and women for 10k distance. Entry fees are €20 chipped 10k, €10 individual 5k, €20 family ticket for 5k fun run/walk.
Registration and number collection on the day from 9am. Booking can also be made on www.njuko.net/graigueballycallanac10k2023. Refreshments served a erwards in St. Aidan’s Primary school.
SPECIAL COLLECTION FOR TURKEY/SYRIA
A total of €2,265 was collected in our parish last week for the earthquake appeal. A huge thanks to all who contributed. The parish rounded this amount up to €3,000. This has been sent already to be forwarded to Trocaire who are a member of Emergency Alliance on the ground in Syria/ Turkey.
DEFIBRILLATORS
We have updated our 3 defibrillators in the parish and they are now fully charged and ready if they are ever needed. We are now looking for people to do defibrillator training. This training will take place on Tuesday 7th March from
7pm to 9pm in Ballycallan Hall.
This training is being funded by ETB. If you would like to attend, please text or ring Annette. If you already have this training course completed and are interested in having your name added to our list of trained personnel, please forward you name and number to Annette Wall on 086 835 3993. Thank you for your continued support.
SCHOOL ENROLMENT
Closing Date for Enrolments to St. Aidan’s NS for September 2023 is Friday March 31st. Enrolment Forms are available at this link https://staidans.scoilnet.ie/blog/ enrolment/ or by contacting the school on 776 9340. Enrolment Forms can be emailed to staidansnskilmanagh@gmail.com, posted or handed into the school.
TRAD NIGHT
A Trad Night will be held in The Pound on 16th March in aid of Cois Nore Cancer Support and Craobh Osraí branch of Comhaltas, starting at 9pm - Adm €5. Contact Mary Dunphy for details 086 401 0914. Musicians welcome.
COMMUNITY ALERT
BKK community alert is €10 Euros - payable by the end of March. Pay your membership fee to any of the following committee members - Gerry Ryan (garage), Padraic Flaherty, Bridget Brennan, Danny Butler, Eamonn Phelan, Johnny Dermody. Only paid up members will get text alerts.
RIVER RANGERS SOCCER NEWS
WEEKEND RESULTS
Under 15 St Canice’s Credit Union Division 1A : Thomastown United Ath 2 River Rangers 0 Junior Division 2 League : River Rangers A 2 Castlewarren Celtic 2 River Rangers started out full of energy and were well on top early on. Six corners in 10 minutes showed the pressure Castlewarren were under and it paid o as Charlie Cleere rose above the Castlewarren defence to bullet a header home. Within 10 minutes the lead was doubled as James Gleeson was cool under pressure and despatched a penalty to the back of the net. Just before hal ime Castlewarren got a deflected goal. Castlewarren pressed hard in the 2nd half but Rangers resisted them while creating plenty of chances. With 5 minutes to go Cathal Dermody pulled o a flying save from a close in free kick. Finally 2 minutes into injury time Castlewarren snuck in for the equalizer. They could have had all 3 points but another save from Cathal kept it at 2-2. This was a much improved performance and Rangers will feel they should have gotten all 3 points but are playing some great soccer.
Team: Cathal Dermody, Jack Doyle, Charlie Cleere, James Gleeson, Willie Brennan, Darragh Egan, Tom Dunphy, Scott Lawlor, Jack Walton, Stephen Keoghan, Richie Keoghan, Shane Murphy, Ben Young, Tommy Manogue. Junior Division 3 Emerald Tiles League : East End United 2 River Rangers B 0 Rangers started well and showing great determination were trying to get their first points of the season. East End took the lead with a great strike and with the wind making it di icult for the Rangers keeper. 10 minutes later an East End corner, again aided with the wind, the ball went straight into the net making it 2-0 at the half. Again this team kept at it and with their own corner struck the post. Rangers had chances but East End defended well. A few changes made by Rangers tried hard to get something from this game which they would have deserved but it was not to be. Another impressive performance from all involved and credit to them all.
Under 13 League Division 1 : Evergreen Boys 3 River Rangers 0 Rangers fell behind a er 10 mins. Evergreen added a second a er 20 mins, little between the teams, very few chances for either team for rest of the half. Strong play from Rangers couldn’t find the goal to bring them back into the game. Tommy Butler unlucky not to score a er some great play. Evergreen added a third 15 mins from time, and although Rangers piled on the pressure, could not break the Evergreen defence to score. Best for Rangers were Charlie Teehan, Leo Clarke, Tommy Butler and Joe Bourke when introduced.
Team: Will Cody, Conor Egan, Charlie McCluskey, Charlie Teehan, John Hoyne, Harry Butler, James O’Connor, Billy Ronan, Leo Clarke, Martin Wall, Tommy Butler, Bill Guiry, Joe Bourke.
FIXTURES
Saturday 4th March : Under 19 League Division 1A. River Rangers v Evergreen City in Clonard Park at 11:00
Sunday 5th March : Junior Division 2 League. Evergreen C v River Rangers A in Kells Road at 14:00. Junior Division 3 Emerald Tiles League. Spa United v River Rangers B in Jim Maher Park at 10:30
Anyone wishing to submit news items, events, announcements etc. can do so by email only to elanigan18@gmail. com. If you have any photos that you would like included, please send as an attachment.
The intermediate footballers travelled on Saturday last to play Rower-Inistioge in Inistioge in the JJ Kavanagh and Sons Intermediate League. Unfortunately for Conahy, the home side were victors on a 1-11 to 1-4 score line. With all their league matches played, the locals will have to bind their time to see who they will face in the championship in the coming weeks.
CAMOGIE
Conahy Camogie club was represented by Roisín Phelan, Danielle Morrissey, Ellen Gunner and Emma Mulhall on the Kilkenny intermediate team who defeated Galway in the National League on Saturday. Well done to all the girls involved.
CLUB LOTTO
The numbers drawn in the Conahy Shamrocks GAA Club Lotto were 10, 28 and 32. There was no jackpot winner so the consolation prize winners were Shane Byrne, Caitriona Bolger, Aisling Fitzpatrick, Aoife Mulhall and Mary O’Connor. The promoters’ prize winners were Shay Healy, Margaret Buggy and John McGrath. This week’s jackpot now increases to €2,200.
ST. VINCENT DE PAUL
The members of the Conahy Conference of St Vincent de Paul wish to remind all in the local community that if anybody finds themselves in di iculty, please do not hesitate to contact them on (086) 0519893 in strictest confidence.
CHURCH NOTES
Eucharistic Adoration will continue on Wednesdays in Glengoole church from 10.00 a.m. to 2.00 p.m. and on Thursdays in Gortnahoe Church from 11.00 a.m. to 1.00 p,m. All are welcome to come and spend even 5 or 10 minutes in quiet prayer in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.
FAMILY MASS
March Family Mass will be this Saturday the 4th and Sunday the 5th of March.
LOURDES PILGRIMAGE
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.
HEART TO HAND APPEAL
To help the victims in Turkey and Syria a collection will take place for tinned food, pasta, rice, blankets and sleeping bags(new/good as new). Items can be dropped to Glengoole Hall on Friday evening 6 - 7.30pm and Saturday 10am - 12 noon. Donations to Heart to Hand Gofundme on Facebook. Contact PJ Gleeson 086 2111647 or Carmel Troy 087 6449674
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 434910
GORTNAHOE BINGO
The hall committee are delighted that the return to the hall is proving successful with a full attendance last Saturday night. Bingo continues this Saturday 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 o er including a special €500 game. Parish support would be appreciated.
SPLIT THE POT
Congratulations to Ava Leahy Playschool, who won €210 in last Sunday’s draw. Envelopes are available at the usual outlets. Split the Pot is in support of the Gortnahoe Community Playgroup. The draw takes place each Sunday at 12pm in Gortnahoe Hall. Your support would be appreciated
400 CLUB DRAW
The results for February 2023, 1st Prize €200 Willie and Marie Dunne, Graigue, 2nd Prize €100 was Gregory Czajka, c/o Mary Phelan. Other prize winners were, Rosaleen Lawlor, Urlingford, Cora Fitzpatrick, Fennor, Richard and Mary Dunne, Graigue, Sheila and John Large, Gortnahoe, Tom and Ann Nolan, Graigue, Josephine Ra er, Derryvilla, John and Majella Ryan, Crabb and Oisin, Emily and Kate Gri in, c/o Breda Gri in , Mellison. Promoters Prize Winner, Martin Campion
RUBBISH COLLECTION
It was great to see individuals and groups picking up rubbish on the side of the road throughout our parish over the last 10 days. It would be great if people would volunteer to pick up rubbish in their own area to keep our parish tidy. We would appeal to motorists to refrain from throwing litter out of cars as plastic items, etc can be harmful to the enviroment and does nothing for the beauty of our countryside
MASS TIMES
Hugginstown: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at 9.30a.m.
Vigil - Saturday 4th. at 8.00p.m.; Sunday 5th. at 10.00a.m.
Stoneyford: Wednesday and Friday at 7.00p.m. VigilSaturday 4th. at 6.30p.m.;
FIRST FRIDAY
Friday 3rd. Visitation with Holy Communion will take place as usual on Friday. Please let us know if you would like to receive Holy Communion in your home for the First Fridays or at any other time.
PRAY FOR
Anniversary Masses. David Kenneally, Catstown; Mass in Hugginstown Church on Saturday 4th. at 8.00p.m
Mattie O’Shea, Mary, Kitty, Betty and John O’Shea, Boolyglass: Mass in Hugginstown Church on Sunday 5th. March at 10.00a.m.
ROTA
Week-end: 4th. and 5th. March 2023 . (Second Sunday of Lent)
Readers: Stoneyford: Saturday 6.30p.m. Parents. Hugginstown: Saturday 8.00p.m. Tommy Murphy; Sunday 10.00a.m. Parents.
Eucharistic Ministers: Stoneyford: Saturday 6.30p.m. Kitty Wallace. Hugginstown: Saturday 8.00p.m. Mary Cuddihy; Sunday 10.00a.m. Ann Power.
FIRST HOLY COMMUNION PREPARATION
All children and families are invited to attend the weekend Masses during Lent as part of this preparation. Parents will be involved in the Readings and the Communion Reflection while the children will be involved in the Prayers of the Faithful and the O ertory Gi s. Mass in Stoneyford Church on Saturday 4th. March at 6.30p.m. Mass in Hugginstown Church on Sunday 5th. March at 10.00a.m.
TROCAIRE
Every year during Lent, Trócaire asks for your help to fund lifesaving programmes around the world. Please collect a Trócaire Box which is available in Church Porch. You can contribute Online at www.trocaire.org or By Phone: 1850 408 408. The contents of each and every Trócaire Box, no matter how small, come together to make a significant di erence.
LENTEN STATIONS COLLECTION
Envelopes for the Lenten Station Contribution are available in the Church. Your contribution is for the support of the priests of the Parish and the Diocese. (To donate directly.) Use IBAN: IE19 AIBK 9330 9000 0561 20 (BIC: AIBKIE2D).
All Parish Property and Accounts are registered under the (Diocese of Ossory, Reg. Charity No. 20015831)
LOTTO AGHAVILLER PARISH AND CARRICKSHOCK GAA
Draw: Monday 20th. February 2023. Numbers: 10; 26; 13;
31. No Winner First 3 Numbers Drawn: No Jackpot Winner: 5 x €30.00. Winners: Bridget Dalton, Australia; Betty Butler, Boolyglass; Garry Comerford, Carrickmerlin; Deirdre Irish, Kyleva; Carmel Sheehan, Stonecarthy; 3 x €15.00 (Sellers): Kathleen Fennelly; Mary Doyle; Breda O’Meara;
SAFEGUARDING CONTACTS
Diocesan Designated Liaison Person: Ms. Kathleen Sherry
Tel: 087 100 0232. Aghaviller Parish Representatives are: Teresa Broderick and Carmel O’Toole
LOURDS PILGRIMAGE
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
ONLINE LENTEN RETREAT
The Priory Institute is delighted to o er a free of charge Online Retreat ‘Reflecting on the Sunday Gospels of Lent as Stepping Stones on our Journey to Easter. Visit the website prioryinstitute.com or click on this link https://bit. ly/3DWrTkx to register/find out more.
LENTEN PROGRAMME
Ossory Adult Faith Development.
The ongoing conflict in Ukraine is very much to the forefront of our minds and, no doubt, people are asking questions about this from a Faith and Morality perspective. With this in mind the Adult Faith Development Group are organising an evening conversation to reflect on these questions in St Kieran’s College on Wednesday 1st. March at 7.30p.m. At this gathering Prof. Tobias Winright and Rev. Dr. Michael Shortall both Moral Theologians in St Patrick’s Pontifical University will guide these reflections.
MILL FAMILY RESOURCE CENTRE
LTI PATHWAY TO EMPLOYMENT COURSE QQI LEVEL4
LTI is recruiting for the new programme in the Centre commencing shortly. If anyone is interested in completing this full-time course, please contact us for an expression of interest form. More details can be found on our website www.millfrcurlingford.com
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 SERVICES
Our low cost Counselling Services, includes One-to-One, Family and Teens, aged 12 plus.
General Counselling: Bereavement, Stress, Anxiety & Depression. Other Counselling Services available: Drug, Substance & Gambling Addictions. Play therapy is now also available. Please contact Sue for more information or to make an appointment.
APPEAL FOR CLOTHES DONATIONS
Many thanks to everyone who donated clothes as all funds are used for our counselling services. Any further clothes donations would be greatly appreciated in aid of our counselling services. Donations can be le into the Centre, please call before dropping o . Contact number for the Centre 056-8838466
BY NIALL SHERRY SPORTS EDITOR SPORTSEDITORKILKENNYOBSERVER.IE
Kilkenny 0-34
Kilkenny got back to winning ways in the Allianz National League with a comprehensive 13-point win over Willie Maher’s charges at Laois Hire O’Moore Park last Sunday. e points were more or less secured following an impressive rst half performance by the Cats as they took a 14-point lead into the changing room at halftime. Despite an early major from the home side in the opening stages of the second half, Derek Lyng’s side reasserted the superiority and ran out comfortable winners.
ere was just one change to the Kilkenny starting XV with Dicksboro’s Niall Rowe starting in place of Glenmore’s Shane Murphy.
Galmoy’s Billy Drennan who has been in ne form since entering the senior ranks, struck the rst score of the game in the opening minute and this was quickly added to with points from the returning Eoin Cody and omastown’s John Donnelly. at was Eoin Cody’s rst point in the black and amber since being named captain earlier this year.
Laois got the score board moving when Stephen Maher struck over a placed ball to get the home support warmed up. Drennan then showed his prowess from frees when he knocked his rst free just a minute later. No.4 Fiachra C
Fennell then pointed before ‘Picky’ Maher ri ed over a ‘65 to keep the home side in touch.
Graigue Ballycallan’s Billy Ryan then scored a nice point before play became a little scrappy as the sides battled to gain the upper hand.
John Donnelly then pointed for the rst score in some 5 minutes before Tomas
Keyes replied for the home side. Derek Lyng’s charges then went through somewhat of a purple patch as they struck seven unanswered points in a devastating 10-minute spell up to the 24th minute. A Hat-trick of placed balls from Drennan was accompanied by further scores from mid eld duo, Paddy’s Mullen and Deegan, John Donnelly and one from Tullaroan’s Mossy Keoghan to leave the Cats 9-points ahead.
James Keyes got Laois’s rst score in almost 12 minutes when took a ne score, but the visitors hit back straight away with another free from Billy Drennan. ‘Picky’ Maher red over a placed ball of his own on 27 minutes, but Willie Maher’s side would only register one more score in the opening half, again via Stephen Maher. Kilkenny were
replaced Gearoid Dunne. e deadly Drennan then raised 3 more white ags before being replaced by Walter Walsh with about 20 minutes gone in the second half.
e home side were trying valiantly to stay in the game and registered the next couple of scores via Patrick Purcell and goalkeeper Enda Rowland. Glenmore’s Alan Murphy pointed for the Cats before Maher popped over another placed ball to reduce the de cit to 12 points. John Donnelly who had notched 0-3 then left the eld to be replaced by e Village’s Cian Kenny.
e O’Moore County men hit two quick re points via ‘Picky’ Maher and Ryan Mullaney, but Kilkenny hit back with points from play by O’Loughlin’s Paddy Deegan and Mossy Keoghan. Captain Eoin Cody struck over a brace of frees before referee omas Geeson sounded the long whistle. Final score from Laois Hire O’Moore Park, Laois 1-18, Kilkenny 0-34.
Kilkenny Scorers: Billy Drennan 0-11 (eight frees), Martin Keoghan and Eoin Cody (two frees) 0-4, John Donnelly 0-3, Billy Ryan, Paddy Mullen and Paddy Deegan 0-2, Tommy Walsh, Cillian Buckley, Eoin Murphy, Alan Murphy, Padraig Walsh, Gearoid Dunne 0-1. Laois Scorers: Stephen Maher 0-10 (nine frees), Martin Phelan 1-0, Enda Rowland 0-2 (frees) Fiachra C-Fennell, Tomas Keyes, Aaron Dunphy, James Keyes, Paddy Purcell, Ryan Mullaney 0-1.
KILKENNY: E Murphy; S Murphy, C Delaney, P Walsh; T Walsh, R Reid, C Buckley; P Deegan, P Mullen; B Ryan, J Donnelly, Eoin Cody; B Drennan, M Keoghan, G Dunne. Subs: S Murphy for T Walsh (HT), A Murphy for Mullen (46), T Cli ord for G Dunne (51), W Walsh for Drennan (56), C Kenny for Donnelly (62)
wing-back pairing of Tommy Walsh and Cillian Buckley got on the scoresheet, while Paddy Mullen, Billy Ryan and Mossy Keoghan all got their second scores of the games. Billy Drennan got a lovely point from play and there was even time for former All-Star keeper
Eoin Murphy to strike over a long range free to leave the Cats in a very commanding position at the short whistle, 0-21 for the visitors, 0-7 for the hosts.
Cats boss Lyng replaced Tommy Walsh with Glenmore’s Shane Murphy in the only change for the Cats as they took to the O’Moore Park pitch for the second half.
Willie Maher would have been reminding his charges that there was still a half of hurling to be
played and they certainly came out with a spring int their step. e rst Laois attack of the second half resulted in the only green ag of the day being raised. Centre-back Patrick Purcell sent a beautiful ball into full forward Martin Phelan in the heart of the Cats defence and the No-14 made no mistake in ring past Eoin Murphy. Laois tagged on the next score as well via substitute Aaron Dunphy. Fresh from his goal fest in the
Tullaroan’s Gearoid Dunne got Kilkenny’s rst score of the second period, and this was added to by his fellow club man Padraig Walsh.
Stephen ‘Picky’ Maher then hit a brace of points, but this was not eating su ciently into the Cats lead. Billy Drennan and Mossy Keoghan notched points for the visitors before Alan Murphy entered the fray in place of Paddy Mullen. ‘Picky’ Maher and goalkeeper Enda Rowland added free’s for the home side
LAOIS: E Rowland; P Dunne, L O’Connell, D Hartnett; P Delaney, P Purcell, I Shanahan; F C Fennell, J Keyes; R Mullaney, S Maher, J Kelly; R King, Martin Phelan, T Keyes. *Subs: *P Lalor and A Dunphy for Fennell and Dunne (both HT), E Lyons for J Keyes (45), J Duggan for T Keyes (52), D Delaney for King (65), Referee: T Gleeson (Dublin)
Back to winning ways for our hurlers away to Laois. You could sense from early on in proceedings that Derek Lyng’s side were determined to Leave O’Moore Park with nothing less than maximum points.
Again, young Billy Drennan was on-point with his placed ball efforts, finishing the day with 0-11, a tally which included 8 frees. He’s settling in nicely.
The starting team was strengthened with the return of Eoin Murphy and Shamrocks Ballyhale trio, Richie Reid, Paddy Mullen and this season’s captain Eoin Cody. Midfield chipped in with 5 points, while the half-forward line hit 0-9.
Things are beginning to take shape. Yes, it was (only) Laois, but it’s another building block en-route to the championship. Next up for Derek Lyng’s charges is the visit of Dublin.
• Congratulations to TJ Reid who was named GWA’s Personality of the Year for 2022 at Dublin’s Iveagh Garden Hotel recently. There’s plenty more awards there for the taking for the imperious Reid!
BY NIALL SHERRY SPORTS EDITOR SPORTSEDITORKILKENNYOBSERVER.IE
Division 1A
UPMC Nowlan Park
Kilkenny 1-13
Galway 1-17
It’s back to the drawing board for our senior camog’s after they fell to their second successive defeat in division 1A of the Very Camogie League at UPMC Nowlan Park. On this occasion it was the visitors from Galway that took the points as Brian Dowling’s panel failed to recover from the surprise opening round defeat to Clare a week earlier.
ere were a number of changes to the Kilkenny side ahead of throw-in, with All-Star and Player of the Year Miriam Walsh arriving at the ground on crutches. Walsh was replaced by Dicksoro’s Asha McHardy, while Laura Murphy started ahead of Sophie O’Dwyer.
Goalkeeper Aoife Norris had a watching brief as Rower Inistioge’s Emma Kavanagh was in between the sticks. e nal change was Ciara O’Keefe starting in place of James Stephens Michelle Teehan.
e visitors took the lead within the rst minute of the play, thanks to a ne point from Ailish O’Reilly. Cathal Murray’s charges doubled the lead soon after thanks to a point from Carrie Dolan. e home side got o the mark in the 6th minute with a ne e ort from Julianne Malone. e rst placed ball converted on the day came from Carrie Dolan on eight minutes.
Mullinavat’s Malone got her second point of the game with a lovely e ort from out on the left. e Tribeswomen then hit three on the bounce, with points from Carrie Dolan (2) and one from mid elder Aoife Donohoe to leave the visitors 4 points ahead halfway through the opening period.
Windgap’s Denise Gaule then struck over a lovely point, but Galway responded with one of their own from Aine Keane. Brian Dowling’s side then asserted their authority between the 21st and 30th minutes, with four home scores courtesy of Asha McHardy, Gaule, Michaela Kenneally and Katie Power and one from the westerners Sabina Rabbitte to leave the home side just one point behind. e nal two scores of the opening period came from Cathal Murray’s team, via the impressive Ailish O’Reilly and the accurate Carrie Dolan. When ref Any Larkin sounded the short whistle, Kilkenny were trailing their opponents 0-7 to 0-10.
As the teams took to the pitch for the second half, the Stripey women would have been hoping for a fast start, but the exact opposite happened. From the throw-in Galway went on the attack. Kilkenny initially dealt with the attack, but the visitors recycled the ball well and a surging run from Aoife Donohue saw the sliotar ri ed to the net by Ailish O’Reilly.
A response was needed, and Denise Gaule slotted over a placed ball to try and settle her team. Dicksboro’s Asha McHardy popped over a ne point before Carrie Dolan replied with a free of her own to give Galway a ve-point lead. Two points on the bounce from Dicksboro players got the Cats back into, a well struck point from corner forward Jenny Cli ord followed by another score for Miriam Walsh’s replacement, Asha McHardy.
Denise Gaule struck another free before what the home side thought would be a de ning score came with 14 minutes of the second half played.
Ste Fitzgerald emerged from a ruck and passed to Niamh Deely who surged through the centre of the park before nding Jenny Cli ord.
e nippy forward beat her marker before had passing to Juliann Malone who made no mistake in ring past
Galway keeper, Fiona Ryan. e Noresiders were now up by one. Galway didn’t panic. e next four scores would come from the Tribeswomen. ree of those would come from the hurl of Carrie Dolan, who was putting on a ne display of free taking. e very impressive Ailish O’Reilly tagged on a point to turn the tie in favour of the visitors. Denise Gaule struck another to keep matters tight, but two further scores in the nal few minutes of play from Niamh Hanni y and a free from Carrie Dolan saw the visitors triumph at UPMC Nolan Park on a scoreline of Kilkenny 1-13, Galway 1-17.
A second defeat for our senior camogs in this season’s league. Galway took the spoils at UPMC Nowlan Park last weekend, and they probably just about deserved the victory.
Kilkenny made some changes following the defeat to Clare, one enforced, with Miriam Walsh arriving at the ground on crutches. Hopefully Miriam’s injury is not serious as she brings so much to the Stripey women line-up. Dicksboro’s Asha McHardy replaced Walsh and acquitted herself quite well, taking a couple of lovely scores. Denise Gaule was heavily involved across all areas of the pitch and delivered some quality scores as well. With the new league format this season, it’s only the top two that go through, meaning its highly unlikely that our senior ladies will be contesting a league final this year. e ust need to regroup and secure 1st di ision one status, then concentrate on championship preparation.
Our intermediate ladies secured a fantastic win over Galway in Clara earlier in the day. Conahy’s Danielle Morrissey in impressive form. She had good support in the shape of Slieverue’s Caroline Kennedy, Thomastown’s Therese Donnelly and O’Loughlin’s Danielle Quigley.
Next up for our seniors is a trip to the capital to take on the Dubs, while Hannah Scott will captain the intermediate side against away to Tipperary.
*Congratulations to Grace Walsh who was named Gaelic Writer’s Association Camogie Personality of the Year at a recent awards ceremony in the Iveagh Garden Hotel in Dublin.
KILKENNY COUNTY COUNCIL
NOTICE OF FURTHER INFORMATION / REVISED PLANS SUBMITTED UNDER PLANNING REFERENCE
NUMBER: 22-238
The development applied for consisted of: Planning Permission is sought by Roche Injury Clinic Ltd. for change of use from existing filling station / residential use to injury clinic use; & also to include the following:
1. Partial demolishing of the existing building.
2. To construct 2no.single storey extensions to both sides of the remaining building; comprising of proposed clinical spaces, gym spaces, staff areas and ancillary accommodation.
3. Internal and elevational modifications to the existing building.
4. Totem pole signage.
5. Development is accessed via existing vehicular entrance; with proposed modification to same.
6. Connection to existing public mains water system.
7. New ancillary carpark and all associated site developments works at Arden, Drakeland Lower, Co. Kilkenny. R95 DA21.
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.
Monday to Friday, and 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.
We, Rence Ltd intend to apply to Kilkenny County Council for Planning Permission to construct a new commercial/industrial entrance to access my lands and all associated site development works at Hebron Industrial Estate, Hebron Road, Leggettsrath West, 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 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, and such submissions or observations 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.
KILKENNY
I Aidan Kelly Agricultural Design & Planning Services (085 7466211, www.adps.ie) intends to apply to Kilkenny County Council on behalf of my clients Edward & Eamonn O’ Gorman. Permission to construct Extension to cubicle shed with slatted tanks and all associated site works at Kildrinagh, Woodsgift via Thurles 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.
PATRICK (PADDY) DOLLARD
1ST ANNIVERSARY
Patrick (Paddy) Dollard, Conahy, Kilkenny.
On this, his 1st anniversary, the family of the late Paddy, together with their families, wish to express their deepest gratitude to all those who sympathised with us following our sad loss.
Thanks to all who sent mass cards, messages of sympathy, condolences in RIP, attended the house, the funeral mass in person or virtually, and for the ongoing support we have received since his passing. Thank you to all our amazing family, neighbours and friends, words cannot express our gratitude. Thank you to all who provided refreshments at the house.
To all who participated in his funeral mass, to Fr. Willie Hennessy for the time and spiritual care he gave to Paddy and his lovely funeral celebration of Paddy’s life. Also thank you to Fr. Eamonn O’Gorman for his participation and visits to Paddy.
Thanks to Conahy Shamrocks GAA for the guard of honour, the neighbours that assisted with car parking and for Ann Byrne for looking after the church. Thank you to Alison and Pat for the music and live streaming.
Thank you to all the doctors, nurses and staff in Waterford University Hospital, particularly to the renal home therapy nurses, who provided support to Paddy in his final days. Thank you to Carlow/Kilkenny home care team and public health nurses in Ballyragget for your care to Paddy.
A special thank you to Coady’s undertakers who showed such professionalism and compassion to us in this difficult time.
Thank you to Paddy’s close friends and neighbours who called frequently to visit him throughout the years. Your friendship meant so much to him.
To Dr. Frayne, Catherine and Yvonne in Coolbawn Health centre, we will be forever grateful to you for the care you gave Paddy for so many years.
Paddy’s 1st anniversary mass will be celebrated on Sunday the 5th March at 11.30 in St Colman’s Church, Conahy.
MICHAEL (MICK) BROPHY
14TH ANNIVERSARY
With loving thoughts of Mick, late of Derdimus, Callan Road, Kilkenny, who left our home on 6th March 2009.
No words we write could ever say How much we miss you everyday Life goes on, we know that’s true But we can’t get over losing you
Sometimes we laugh Some days we cry Remembering you And the things we used to do You are forever in our hearts We will always love you
Siobhán & Jack XX
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.H.D.
GERALDINE RYAN
9TH ANNIVERSARY
In loving memory of Geraldine, late of Greenfields, Freshford Road, Kilkenny who died March 3rd 2014
Your life was one of kindly deeds A helping hand for others needs Sincere and true in heart and mind Beautiful memories left behind
Always loved and much missed Anne, Fran, Phil, Richard and Martin children, Eoghain, Niamh and Niall daughter-in-law Jen and grandchildren Eilbhe and Rían.
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.R.
PADDY DELANEY
38TH ANNIVERSARY
In memory of Paddy Delaney, late of Walkin Street, Kilkenny who died on 1st March 1985.
Gone from us that smiling face
The cheerful pleasant ways In bygone happy days
A life made beautiful by kindly deeds
A helping hand for others needs
To a beautiful life comes a happy end He died as he lived, everyone’s friend.
Always remembered by his daughters Kathleen, Theresa and family.
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.P.
