Archive News
A Fianna F‡il Connaughton aims to be new star rising in the East
Date Published: 18-Jul-2012
It may be a familiar name to the voters in East Galway but he comes from a very different political background as the potential candidates are coming out of the woodwork in the aftermath of the Dáil boundary changes.
Having a Connaughton name and canvassing votes in the part of East Galway that has now gone into Roscommon should prove of benefit to a potential candidate even if his politics are very different to the one that the electorate are familiar with.
Fianna Fáil’s Ivan Connaughton is ideally located on the Galway-Roscommon boundary in Athleague and he has told The Connacht Tribune that he intends to again be a candidate in the new constituency.
In last year’s General Election he contested the Roscommon-South Leitrim constituency when he polled over 4,000 first preferences and was the ‘last man standing’ but failed to secure a seat.
The seats went to Fine Gael’s Frank Feighan and Denis Naughten with Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan winning an independent seat in Dáil Eireann.
But now the constituency has changed significantly in that Roscommon is now aligned with more than 20,000 voters in North and East Galway in an area stretching from Ballinasloe to Dunmore.
The Athleague-based auctioneer believes that he can be the Fianna Fáil candidate in the southern end of the constituency although he is set to face opposition from Orla Leyden, who has sat on Roscommon County Council for the past two terms.
His father Martin Connaughton has sat on Roscommon County Council to good effect since 1999 and Ivan Connaughton intends to retain this family seat at the 2014 local elections and then contest the Fianna Fáil convention for the 2016 general election in the new Galway-Roscommon constituency.
“I have a great working relationship with the people of East Galway through my profession and I was encouraged by the vote I received at the last general election when Fianna Fáil were going through its toughest ever campaign.
“We are likely to run two candidates in the Galway-Roscommon constituency and I am determined to be on the ballot paper in view of my performance on the last occasion and particularly as I was given only a relatively short run into the campaign as our convention was held only three months before the polling day,” Connaughton said.
There is an outside possibility that Fine Gael TD Paul Connaughton jnr will run in the Roscommon-Galway constituency as his vote has been badly split in Mountbellew. While he would be voting in the three-seater Galway East, his parents are now located in the new Galway-Roscommon constituency just a couple of miles away.
If there were two Connaughton names on the ballot paper in Galway-Roscommon it would present something of a dilemma for the electorate who would have to study their voting preferences very carefully as Ivan Connaughton would appear above his Fine Gael rival.
Galway in Days Gone By
The way we were – Protecting archives of our past
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Archive News
Galway have lot to ponder in poor show
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Archive News
Real Galway flavour to intermediate club hurling battle in Birr
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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