Archive News
Cruisers bypass Ballinasloe
Date Published: 03-Jul-2008
BOATING enthusiasts have confirmed that larger Shannon pleasure craft are not visiting Ballinasloe because of fears about whether they will have sufficient clearance to get safely under a Bord na
Mona bridge near Reilly’s Ford, about an hour downstream from the town.
The single span concrete bridge structure is used to support a Bord na Mona railway system which transports peat from the nearby bogs, and is located over part of the River Suck which was made navigable as far as Ballinasloe eight years ago.
However boating enthusiasts in Ballinasloe, backed up by the Chamber of Commerce, feel that the town is not benefitting sufficiently from the tourist spin-off which should have resulted from the opening up of the town to river Shannon pleasure craft.
Despite the millions of euro that was spent on making the Suck channel navigable to Ballinasloe, and providing it with its very own marina within a stone’s thow of the town centre, the general consensus is that the knock-on impact from a tourist point of view has been disappointing.
Now the town’s Chamber of Commerce has set up a subcommittee aimed at tackling the problems associated with the Bord na Mona bridge in the hope that the flow of boating traffic can be increased to the benefit of local business concerns.
They are hoping to persuade Bord na Mona to raise the bridge further in order to increase headroom and allow the ever increasing number of larger pleasure craft to make their way to Ballinasloe, and
are working alongside another group comprising representatives from the Town Council, Ireland West Tourism, Ballinasloe Area Community Development and RAPID, who are examining tourism
development opportunities in the area.
According to Chamber activist and boating enthusiast, Terry Noone, the number of boats passing through the lock at Poolboy was down almost a quarter last year on the figures achieved when the
Suck was opened up to pleasure craft in 2001, and the indications for this year are not much better. “This is our eighth year and you would think we would have at least doubled on the numbers but instead we are in fact well down on the previous years.”
Last summer’s heavy rainfall and consequent rise in the level of the River Suck exacerbated the situation, and this year’s current rainfall levels would appear to indicate a repetition of the problems
encountered by boat owners who failed to make it to Ballinasloe in the larger craft.
“Our weather has changedyear the river was flooded,” explained Terry Noone who quoted the example of one boat which hit the bridge that month and didn’t realise the damage sustained to its flybridge until it reached the lock in Poolboy. Unable to make the return trip, the boat had to
stay in Ballinasloe for two weeks until the levels of the river went down.
“We want to get people into Ballinasloe but the fact is that there were only two hire boats in the marina last night, and five the night before, and we are not benefitting as we should. What has happened is that boats have got bigger and are higher out of the water.”
Visitors hiring boats along the river Shannon are apparently being told not…
and for the whole of July last
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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