Archive News
City escapes the worst so far
Date Published: 24-Nov-2009
THE city escaped relatively unscathed from the horrendous flooding that has swamped parts of County Galway but city businesses, homeowners and commuters are being put on high alert with Met Éireann forecasting more heavy rains later today (Tuesday).
Galway City Council outdoor staff were working around the clock over the weekend battling to clear floods from the city’s main arteries and to stave-off rising water levels that threatened to flood-out around half a dozen homes in the Menlo area.
The main flood points in the city over the weekend were at Two-Mile-Ditch, on the Tuam Road, Castlegar which was completely submerged and was only open for local access, and at Menlo where the local turlough (seasonal lake) caused flooding at the village and threatened several homes.
Areas like Salthill, which have suffered severe flooding in the past, experienced only minor problems, and the city centre also only suffered minor road surface flooding as city’s entire drainage network was under severe pressure to cope, said Director of Services at Galway City Council, Ciarán Hayes.
My Hayes said the Council’s preventative measures such as providing around 2,000 sandbags to businesses and homeowners helped the city to escape relatively unscathed.
He said that the main vulnerable areas and problem points were at Two-Mile-Ditch and at Menlo where flooding was at its highest in the city – pumping equipment used by Council staff managed to relieve the immediate danger to homes in Menlo, and also made the N17 passable. The pumping is ongoing and will continue until the flood threat is dealt with.
“It is because of the tireless work our crews put in at the weekend that we were relatively (unscathed) compared with other parts of the County and they should be given full credit,” he told the Sentinel, adding that the weather forecast is being monitored and crews are on standby for today’s predicted heavy rainfall. “It’s not over yet,” he said.
Mr Hayes once again refuted “in the strongest possible terms” suggestions from Cllr Pádraig Conneely that blocked gullies were causing serious difficulties throughout the city.
“That has no basis in fact. I can categorically state that the problems are not due to blocked drains but are due to the sheer volumes of water they have been asked to cope with,” he said.
Galway Gardaí have warned motorists to take care and slow down on the city’s roads and said that travel should only be undertaken if absolutely necessary.
“Road travel should only be of the essential nature, and all motorists need to slow down,” a spokesperson said. Mr Hayes reiterated this call and advised homeowners and businesses in vulnerable areas to take precautionary measures such as sandbagging to protect their premises from flooding.
Meanwhile, Cllr Terry O’Flaherty has called on the Council to examine the possibility of laying underground pipe near the turlough in Menlo to deal with the flooding crisis there.
Councillor Derek Nolan also called for a report into the flooding in Menlo. “One resident told me that this is the worst flooding the area has experienced in the 35 years he has lived there,” he said.
Mr Hayes said a solution needs to be examined closely but he said “the last thing we want to do is inadvertently cause pollution to the vital water source” of the Corrib by pumping water into it.
For further coverage see pages 3-6 of today’s Sentinel.
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
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.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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