Not exactly a tús maith for Túsla agency

Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley

Deputy Mayor, Independent City Councillor, Noel Larkin recently launched what was described as a “new innovative useful” website. It was developed by Túsla, the new child and family agency set up by Government in January.

We didn’t log on but apparently this super-d-duper website contains all sorts of information about resources available to children and families in Galway and Roscommon.

Though we haven’t looked, we can say with almost 100% certainty that Túsla’s savage cuts to the budget of the Therapeutic Learning Centre in Ballinasloe, does not feature on this new fandangle website.

No, there were no fancy launches and press releases announcing Túsla’s 50% cuts that will rob over 60 toddlers throughout Galway of early intervention therapy.

That cut was one of the first things Túsla did since it came into existence.

Tús maith my eye!

Calamity Jane

On the subject of Túsla, did you see Fine Gael Galway senator Hildergarde Naughton on the Vincent Browne show on TV3 recently?

She was on to talk about the Tuam babies – shameless bandwagon jumping, but we digress – and calamitously kept calling Túsla, Tulsa, as in the city in Oklahoma and not the child and family agency.

If we’re not mistaken, didn’t Hildergarde play Calamity Jane in Patrician Musical Society’s production of Oklahoma a few years back?

An art-attack!

Eamon Bradshaw, Galway Harbour CEO, tells us he nearly had an ‘art-attack’ and crashed the car every morning travelling to work last week.

It’s not that his driving skills have changed. It’s just that the large art installation on the front of Comerford House beside the Spanish Arch has been giving him a fright.

The large-scale portrait drawing exhibit of a young man is from artist Joe Caslin’s latest project Our Nation’s Sons.

The portrait, on a smaller scale, is also on the front page of the Galway Film Fleadh programme.

Turns out that the ‘young man’ in the portrait is Peter Bradshaw, Eamon’s son, who apparently was randomly approached by Joe to model for the project while he was sitting next to him on a Galway-Dublin train.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.