The Limerick Blogger: latest Limerick news and Limerick events

The Limerick Blogger is three years old today.  So, for those with nothing to do we present you with this, it’s as many Christmas number ones as we could find, 60 in total, stuffed into one Youtube playlist.

List of Christmas number ones sourced from everyhit.com

A Lisnagry man was rescued from an upside down car which was submerged in a river near to Ahane, County Limerick this morning after being there for what Gardai believe was several hours.

63 year old Seamus Ryan had not been seen since he left his home in Knockbrack yesterday evening. His car was spotted by passers by at 1000 hrs this morning and the alarm was raised.

Mr. Ryan was brought to the Mid Western Regional Hospital where he was treated for minor injuries and hypothermia.

Gardai are investigating a gun attack on a house in St. Mary’s Park which took place this morning.

The shots were fired at approximately 0500 hrs this morning. While the house was occupied at the time, there were no injuries.

The area has since been sealed off pending a technical examination.

UPDATE: Local radio reports that as many as 12 shots were fired at the house, which is located on St. Munchin’s Street in St. Mary’s Park.

The woman and children who were in the house at the time have been moved by Gardai to a safe location following the attack.

More for the iweekend travellers, and those travelling to and from the Munster match.

From Met Eireann

Issued at 13:12 Thursday, 18 Dec 2008

Warning of severe winds on Friday.

Strong to gale force southwest winds will gust 55 to 65 knots / 100 to 120 km/h
over Ulster and Connacht on Friday morning, with isolated gusts to 130 km/h possible in exposed coastal and hilly areas.

Winds will veer westerly for the afternoon, and north Leinster and possibly parts of north Munster are also expected to be affected.

Valid 19/0900 to 19/1900.

The head of Limerick Regeneration wrote a nice long-winded article in this weeks LimerickLeader in which he made his case for holding meetings with criminal gangs at their Roxboro office earlier this year.

In all three meetings were held, the last was held in October.

In the article Brendan Kenny claimed that many might be outraged by these meetings, but the fate of children in the areas these gangs come from should be considered.

It was claimed that these gangs themselves wanted an end to the feuding, aparantly for the sake of their children and their grandchildren.

Just weeks after Brendan Kenny invited these people in for a chat over tea and cake , a man who had absolutely nothing to do with these feuding gangs, was lying in a pool of his own blood, dead, in a Dooradoyle housing estate.

We will never know if these people were thinking of their children and grandchildren when they orchestrated, and carried out an operation which resulted in the death of Shane Geoghegan. Geoghegan was shot dead when one of the gangs involved in this feud set out to kill a member of a rival gang, but botched the operation.

It is not the job of the Regeneration to get mixed up with these people. It is the job of the Gardai and the Judiciary, and with a little luck, the prison service. And any busy-body wishing to “end the feud” should not be aiming to end feuding, but to end criminality.

If these people stop killing each other, we will still have drug dealing, drug addiction and the crime that goes with that.

If this is the direction Kenny wishes to take the whole regeneration project, then he might as well pack up the whole thing and use the €3 billion for something that might actually work.

Some light entertainment in the Oireachtas Committee on Transport that was sitting today when both Michael O’ Leary of Ryanair and Dermot Mannion of Aer Lingus outlining their reasons why and why not Ryanair should take over Aer Lingus.  Among some of the shit thrown at O’Leary was a comment from Labour TD Tommy Broughan who told him  that his promise to recognise the unions was like Osama Bin Laden coming out and saying he is becoming a Christian!  Also at the hearing, Aer Lingus has been told that unless it re-instates a Shannon to Heathrow service, there would be considerable support among TDs for the Ryanair takeover bid. A number of TDs from the Shannon region said there was still a lot of anger there, about the pull-out. 

One interesting bit of information to come out of all of this is that apparently Aer LIngus are to hold a press briefing in the next few days in relation to Shannon with rumours circulating that Aer Lingus may be about to reinstate a daily flight to Shannon Heathrow.  This has not been confirmed and could be another ball of smoke in the whole takeover infighting that is going on but there will not be long to wait and see what if anything comes of this as Aer lIngus is due to issue its defence document in realtion to the Ryanair bid in the next few days.

In the last of it’s six monthly reports on racism in Ireland, The National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism reports that a 15 year old girl attending a school in Limerick was subjected to racist attacks, including cyberbullying.

The reports claim that messages such as “pakki whore” were posted on the social network site Bebo. It also claims that a page was set up about her on Bebo containing racist slurs and was passed around to other classmates.

The NCCRI report states that when the school the girl, who is of Iranian decent, attended, they denied responsibility for these incidents.

Nationally, the NCCRI reported that there had been an increase in racist incidents in the last six months. A large proportion of these were related to a newspaper article by Kevin Myers, entitled “Africa is giving nothing to anyone – apart from AIDS,” which was published in the Irish Independent in July.

This will be the last report to be issued by the NCCRI after the Minister for Justice decided to reduce the committee’s budget to zero, forcing them to close their doors and lay off all their staff on December 31st.

Full Six Monthly report on Racist Incidents July – December 2008 (PDF Format)

X Factor judge Louis Walsh has been invited to Limerick to explain himself after a tirade against Limerick in Friday’s Sun newspaper.

Some cross words were exchanged through the media between Limerick County Councillor John Gallaghue and the Walsh when the councillor claimed that young musical hopefuls were being humilliated to create drama and that they were finding it more difficult due to the emergence of staged talent shows.

“These shows are staged to make it more dramatic, and judges like Louis Walsh are playing along with this fake façade..  Some young people are set up to be humiliated and dis-heartened.  It is becoming more obvious that entry to show business is being controlled by a mafia style approach by some promoters, who are making vast sums of money.”

Cllr Gallaghue was speaking at the launch of a charity CD which was raising funds for the Share a Dream foundation last week.

In a front page interview on Friday’s Irish Sun newspaper, Walsh retorted, “Mafia? Sure isn’t he from Limerick, Isn’t that a bit rich.”

According to Tuesday’s Limerick Chronicle, Walsh has been invited to Limerick to explain what is being described as an “attack” on the people of Limerick.

Will he accept the invitation, will he make John Gallaghue blub like Dannii Minogue? Stay tuned to find out!

The condell road is closed tonight (tuesday, wednesday and thursday nights) from 7pm to 7am for road works from the clonmacken roundabout to the shannon bridge roundabout.  Delays and inconvenience ahoy as the new bus lane is being put together.

Some good news in that Newcastlewest based supplier Pallas foods has won a three year deal worth approx 24 million euros to supply fresh produce to the petrol and convenience store Topaz.  Pallas foods has been in operation since the mid 1980’s and currently employs approx 500 people.