The Limerick Blogger: latest Limerick news and Limerick events

Residents of the town of Palaskenry are back out on the street again as contracors, working for Limerick County Council resumed work on re-sourcing the town’s water supply from a local lake to the River Deel.

Residents claim that the water from the river is highly polluted and wish to keep getting their water from the lake. They have painted a white line accross the road outside the town and have vowed to prevent the council workers from crossing it.

When work resumed yesterday, protestors returned and staged a sit in protest, blocking the workers from continuing. Deck chairs and pic nic tables were set up on the road, with enough space to allow traffic to pass.

The council say that the water from the river is given the same treatment as that of the lake, and that the water from the lake is insufficient to meet the demands of a growing town. The lack of sufficient water is affecting the granting of planning permission for people who want to build in the area, the council say.

Four protestors gave an undertaking to the High Court that they would not interfiere with work pending a judicial review of the situation, set to be heard on June 15th. However, it is claimed that they were not present at this new protest.

The council is expected to seek an injunction from the High Court today to stop protestors holding up work on the new pipeline.

Scumbags in the Tipperary town of Carrick-On-Suir are causing havok for passengers and Iarnrod Eireann near a footbridge crossing over the railway line near the town.

Recently barriers were placed on the line resulting in trains having to stop, On another occasion a concrete block was dropped from the footbridge, which smashed through the window of the drivers cab. When the driver made an emergency stop, the scumbags on the bridge threw rocks at the back of the train.

Now Iarnrod Eireann are seeking to have this footbridge closed. This would mean that pedestrians would have to make a 300 metre detour to a pedestrian underpass. Improvements to fencing are also being considered.

The rail company’s Waterford district manager, in a letter to Carrick-On-Suir town council has stated that if something is not done, it will cause disruption to the service. He is quoted in the Irish Examiner as saying “Trade union representatives are deeply concerned also about the safety of their members, and unless proper safeguards are put in place train services on this route cannot be guaranteed.â€?

Some councillors on the town council are not in favour of closing the footbridge, and erecting a cage along the bridge has also been suggested.

Why bother closing it, just tear it down and let people make the detour. If they want to complain then tell them, “If you were watching your little Johnny instead of EastEnders then you wouldn’t have the extra distance to walk now, would you.”

Garda Jerry McCabe’s partner on the day he was killed during an IRA “sanctioned” raid on a post office van in Adare, County Limerick, has told the Irish Examiner that he concentrated more on his recovery than on the politics of whether or not Gda McCabes killers were given an early release.

“My health was more important to me than embarking on political issues” he told the paper. It was eighteen months before Mr. O’Sullivan could return to the Gardai after the incident. He has since retired and is now a beef farmer in County Limerick.

He told the paper’s Mid-West correspondent, Jimmy Woulfe, that he ws wise enough to know that he would not have been able to deal with the whole affair emotionally, and made an effort to prevent the possibility of an early release of the killers to affect his own recovery.

When asked what he thought of the killers he said “You have a filing cabinet and the purpose of a filing cabinet is to file everything away in that cabinet until it is required. The people who perpetrated this atrocity in Adare — they are in the filing cabinet of my brain. A file that will never be opened, I hope, unless somebody else opens it other than I.�

The RTE series, True Lives, is due to feature the events surrounding the death of Garda McCabe next Tuesday to mark the tenth anniversary of his death.

Limerick search and rescue were called to the scene where a man’s body was discovered at 0800 hrs this morning.

The man is believed to be in his fifties. Gardai have as yet not named the man, and are asking anyone with information to contact their Henry Street station.

It is reported by Live 95FM that the man was not seen entering the river, nor is it believed that he was there for a long period of time

Here is a brief summary of what the other local blogs are yapping about.

• “The Wind that Rocks the Barly” has won the Palm D’Or at Cannes. The Dossing Times has the movie trailer
• The Web 2.0 controversy rumbles on. The Advanced Technology Products Blog continues to follow.

A Limerick solicitor whose delays in doing his job nearly resulted in the eviction of a woman from her home was featured on last night’s Prime Time investigates show entitled “Fighting the Law.”

Solicitor Joseph Griffin took his time to produce title deeds for a house belonging to Annette Strachen. When her local authority did not receive the deeds, they threatened to evict her.

It was only when she took the solicitor before the Solicitors Disciplinary Delay before she could get the deeds issue resolved.

However she was left with massive debts because of the whole affair.

The full programme can be viewed here. (RealPlayer required)

Calaiste Chiarain in Croom, County Limerick is accusing the Department of Education of victimising them after they were being refused funding for a €12m expansion.

The school, which is noted for the fact that all the students do their school work using laptops, has expanded from just under 100 students in 1999 to 700 this year, is hoping to move from its current location to a new campus next to the orthopedic hospital in the town.

A site has been purchased and planning permission has been granted, Now the school is waiting for the green light from the Department. The school is currently overcrowded and students have their classes in portacabins.

It is believed by parents and staff at the school that schools in the city are trying to stop the school’s growth as students are chosing to go to the Croom college rather than attend schools in the City. The Irish Examiner reports that one unnamed school, is trying to have the number of students attending the school capped at a certain level.

Declan Garvey, who is on the school’s board of management is quoted in the paper as claiming that the school has become the victim of schools politics.

The school has become popular amongst students from the city after it went into a partnership with Dell Computers, where both students and staff purchase their own laptops at a discount from the computer manufacturer. Michael Dell himself has visited the school and described it as one of the finest of its kind in the world, during his visit in September 2004.

The Department, through a spokesperson told the Examiner that the move for the school would be considered as part of its Schools Building Modernisation Scheme for 2006 – 2010.

The man who died when his motorcycle collided with a car over the weekend has been named locally as Finbar O’Keeffe. He was 24 years old.

His death brings the number of dead on Limerick’s roads to 6 and the number nationally to 162.

The incident happened in the Kilmallock area of County Limerick.

The funeral of murder victim Keith Ryan has taken place today at St. Munchin’s church.

Speaking at the funeral Mass, Canon Michael Liston, spoke of the shock within the local community as a result of the 25-year old’s death.

Two men have been charged in connection with his death.

I may not be famaliar with all this Web 2.0 malarky, however it has made Cork the centre of the blogosphere of late and the discussion has spread to one or two of the blogs around this neck of the woods. A brief history. In 1999 some guy came up with the term Web 2.0. But in 2003 some other guys decided to claim it as their own by putting a patent on it, They wanted to turn it into their own Service Mark. (SM). Anyway, all of a sudden, they decided to send angry letters to a non-profit group called IT@Cork and all hell broke loose after that. (see comments in linked post) Two things that riled people up is (a) the goons that sent the solicitors letter did not come up with the term “Web 2.0″(see previous link) and (b) The whole idea of Web 2.0 is that the internet should become more accessible to everyone. Sticking a service mark on the term Web 2.0 would allow only one company use the term when organising events, exhibitions and conferences.

If one could explain it in three or so lines, Web 1.0 was a time when you just surfed pages on the internet, whereas Web 2.0 was the internet of user interaction, blogging, podcasting, and encyclopedias where the ordinary man on the street could write an entry.

And if I am completely wrong in my understanding, it won’t be long before I am corrected.

Anyway, that is a brief explanation of the history of Web 2.0 as I see it, the Advanced Technology Products Interactive Blog, based in Limrick is following the developments, as is most other blogs who write about technology. Anyway, just also to let those interested know that said local blog has been added to our list of permenent links to Local bloggers.

Other stuff on the local blogs today:

• The NewsWire is following a story of a gangland shooting in Dublin City.
• Irish weather – in Irish from Braz.
• The Dossing Times voises is distain at a story on abortion which appeared in yesterday’s Sunday Times.