News
Galway’s nuclear bunker now just a storeroom
It was to be the bolt hole nerve centre for the elite group of people who would keep the city and county ticking over should the nuclear holocaust arrive in the late 1960s . . . now it’s just a basement store in the bowels of the Community College at Moneenageisha in Galway city.
Galway’s only nuclear bunker was constructed as part of the Moneenageisha Vocational School that opened its doors in September, 1969, at a time when the Cuban missile crisis was still fresh in the minds of everyone and the Vietnam War raged on.
Constructing a nuclear bunker under a new school exercised the minds of councillors and local education committees amidst rumours, that as well as the emergency services heads, one Bishop Michael Browne would also be offered shelter in the concrete sanctuary should the nukes start going off.
Civil Defence Officer, Brendan Qualter, showing some of the equipment in the shelter to Galway Community College students Victor Gutu and Taylor Carr who are dressed in 1960s style.
At the time in the mid-1960s, the local Vocational Education voiced their opposition to the construction of the nuclear shelter beneath the floors of the proposed new school after being told that the County Council wanted to locate it there because ‘they were unable to find any other suitable place in Galway’.
The then Chief Executive Officer of the City Vocational Educational Committee, Mr. S. MacDomhnail, advised his members that it would be wrong to accede to a request from Galway County Council for the school to be built ‘on top of a nuclear bomb shelter’.
Now 46 years on from its official opening, the bunker is set to become part of a living history project at the Galway Community College (GCC) with teacher Philip Cribbin planning to get his history pupils to itemise and ‘put on line’ a range of documentation, memorabilia and equipment still held in the centre.
“This [late 1960s] was a very volatile time around the world. It came after the Cuban missile crisis . . . the Vietnam War was at its peak . . . Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy had been assassinated in 1968 . . . US Olympic athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave their black power salutes at the medals’ ceremony in Mexico [also ‘68] . . . and the Cold War between the USA and Russia was still intense,” said Philip Cribbin.
Equipment and bags in the shelter
The Head of History at GCC said that this was an era when there was a very real fear of a nuclear war breaking out between the superpowers and there was a national policy to construct a number of secure bunkers at different locations around the country, where the emergency services and ‘important people’ would move into.
Over recent decades the bunker – reputedly encased in two feet of mass concrete – has been used as a storage facility for the local Civil Defence service, but only about two or three of its many rooms are being accessed.
Head Officer with Galway Civil Defence Brendan Qualter said that there were about eleven rooms in the underground facility including a control and operations centre.
“This was to be a self sufficient and secure centre with its own telecommunications network while there was also a generator to provide emergency power.
A gas mask among the items in the shelter
“It was to be, a place for the directors of operations to locate, should a nuclear disaster occur,” said Brendan Qualter.
Local historian, Peadar O’Dowd, said that the Moneenageisha bomb shelter plan got a lot of attention in Galway before and during its construction in the late 1960s.
“It was a bit of a scary time. Here and there, we would see the odd clip of black and white footage on TV of children in the United States going through drills in the event of a nuclear war.
“There was also a curiosity about who would be going into the bunker should the dreaded nuclear disaster ever occur. Lots of stories did the rounds about who’d be going into the bunker but a lot of them were just bits of Galway gossip.
“It was also felt that the building of this bunker was something of a first for Galway but there were real concerns that Russia and the US could go to war at any time.
A section of the shelter
“John F. Kennedy had been assassinated, the Vietnam War was raging and while people were still talking about the GAA and the All-Irelands, there was a worry out there too about another world war breaking out,” said Peadar O’Dowd.
For one of Philip Cribbin’s fifth year students, the school’s historical legacy will now provide the subject matter for the case study segment of his course that will make up 20% of his exam marks.
“This really is a very local link between the school and what was going on in the world of international politics and history. It was one of those really interesting periods in world history but thankfully the bunker was never called into use,” said Philip Cribbin.
Much of the original material is still intact at the Moneenageisha bunker such as gas masks, Geiger counters for measuring radioactivity, ordinance survey maps, radioactive survival guides and other documentation stored away in boxes . . . and probably unopened for the past 45 years.
Given its solid concrete construction the bunker seems set to remain as a piece of local history for decades to come, providing an ongoing history focal point for Philip Cribbin’s history classes . . . right under their feet.
Significant state investment is required to address ‘shocking’ inequalities that leave cancer patients in the West at greater risk of succumbing to the disease.
A meeting of Regional Health Forum West heard that survival rates for breast, lung and colorectal cancers than the national average, and with the most deprived quintile of the population, the West’s residents faced poorer outcomes from a cancer diagnosis.
For breast cancer patients, the five-year survival rate was 80% in the West versus 85% nationally; for lung cancer patients it was 16.7% in the west against a 19.5% national survival rate; and in the West’s colorectal cancer patients, there was a 62.6% survival rate where the national average was 63.1%.
These startling statistics were provided in answer to a question from Ballinasloe-based Cllr Evelyn Parsons (Ind) who said it was yet another reminder that cancer treatment infrastructure in the West was in dire need of improvement.
“The situation is pretty stark. In the Western Regional Health Forum area, we have the highest incidence of deprivation and the highest health inequalities because of that – we have the highest incidences of cancer nationally because of that,” said Cllr Parsons, who is also a general practitioner.
In details provided by CEO of Saolta Health Care Group, which operates Galway’s hospitals, it was stated that a number of factors were impacting on patient outcomes.
Get the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.
On the eve of completing his 150th marathon, an odyssey that has taken him across 53 countries, Loughrea’s Marathon Man has announced that he is planning to hang up his running shoes.
But not before Jarlath Fitzgerald completes another ten races, making it 160 marathons on the occasion of his 60th birthday.
“I want to draw the line in 2026. I turn 57 in October and when I reach 60 it’s the finishing line. The longer races are taking it out of me. I did 20 miles there two weeks ago and didn’t feel good. It’s getting harder,” he reveals.
“I’ve arthritis in both hips and there’s wear and tear in the knees.”
We speak as he is about to head out for a run before his shift in Supervalu Loughrea. Despite his physical complaints, he still clocks up 30 miles every second week and generally runs four days a week.
Jarlath receives injections to his left hip to keep the pain at bay while running on the road.
To give his joints a break, during the winter he runs cross country and often does a five-mile trek around Kylebrack Wood.
He is planning on running his 150th marathon in Cork on June 4, where a group of 20 made up of work colleagues, friends and running mates from Loughrea Athletics Club will join him.
Some are doing the 10k, others are doing the half marathon, but all will be there on the finishing line to cheer him on in the phenomenal achievement.
Get the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.
From the Galway City Tribune – An impassioned plea for a ‘masterplan’ that would guide Galway City into the future has been made in the Dáil. Galway West TD Catherine Connolly stated this week that there needed to be an all-inclusive approach with “vision and leadership” in order to build a sustainable city.
Deputy Connolly spoke at length at the crisis surrounding traffic and housing in Galway city and said that not all of the blame could be laid at the door of the local authority.
She said that her preference would be the provision of light rail as the main form of public transport, but that this would have to be driven by the government.
“I sat on the local council for 17 years and despaired at all of the solutions going down one road, metaphorically and literally. In 2005 we put Park & Ride into the development plan, but that has not been rolled out. A 2016 transport strategy was outdated at the time and still has not been updated.
“Due to the housing crisis in the city, a task force was set up in 2019. Not a single report or analysis has been published on the cause of the crisis,” added Deputy Connolly.
She then referred to a report from the Land Development Agency (LDA) that identified lands suitable for the provision of housing. But she said that two-thirds of these had significant problems and a large portion was in Merlin Park University Hospital which, she said, would never have housing built on it.
In response, Minister Simon Harris spoke of the continuing job investment in the city and also in higher education, which is his portfolio.
But turning his attention to traffic congestion, he accepted that there were “real issues” when it came to transport, mobility and accessibility around Galway.
“We share the view that we need a Park & Ride facility and I understand there are also Bus Connects plans.
“I also suggest that the City Council reflect on her comments. I am proud to be in a Government that is providing unparalleled levels of investment to local authorities and unparalleled opportunities for local authorities to draw down,” he said.
Then Minister Harris referred to the controversial Galway City Outer Ring Road which he said was “struck down by An Bord Pleanála”, despite a lot of energy having been put into that project.
However, Deputy Connolly picked up on this and pointed out that An Bord Pleanála did not say ‘No’ to the ring road.
“The High Court said ‘No’ to the ring road because An Bord Pleanála acknowledged it failed utterly to consider climate change and our climate change obligations.
“That tells us something about An Bord Pleanála and the management that submitted such a plan.”
In the end, Minister Harris agreed that there needed to be a masterplan for Galway City.
“I suggest it is for the local authority to come up with a vision and then work with the Government to try to fund and implement that.”
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
