Archive News
Gardaí visit schools in bid to stamp out street trouble
Date Published: 11-Mar-2013
BY FRANK FARRAGHER
GARDAÍ are to visit second level schools in the city area over the coming days to try and prevent unruly teenage gatherings in Salthill – last Saturday evening, up to five young people were arrested in the area for public order offences.
Several complaints of public drinking and unsocial behaviour were made to Gardaí in Salthill about the conduct of a small number of young teenagers in a crowd of more than 300 – split into different groups – many of whom were out ‘celebrating’ the finish of their Junior Cert mock exams.
The ‘gathering’ is understood to have been organised through Facebook and other social media networking outlets through Friday and Saturday. There have been a number of similar, though smaller gatherings in the area on several occasions in recent months.
One eyewitness told the Connacht Sentinel that he and his friends were ‘confronted’ on Saturday evening by a ‘gang’ of about 10 male teenagers who were gesturing with empty Buckfast bottles in a threatening manner.
“Another pulled a carpet knife from his tracksuit bottoms. We called the Gardaí, but they told us they were busy on another call-out with someone who was unconscious up the road,” said the eyewitness.
He described the atmosphere in Salthill as ‘very tense with people just waiting for something to kick off’. “It was very intimidating,” he added.
The Centra supermarket in Salthill also closed their doors at 9pm on Saturday night – two hours earlier than normal – although the proprietor, Michael O’Connor, stressed that he just did this as a precautionary measure.
“The last thing I want to do, is to give the impression that gangs were running amok in the area. This wasn’t the case, but given the numbers that were on the street, we decided to close down,” said Michael O’Connor.
He praised the efforts of the Gardaí in their handling of the large numbers of teenagers on the streets, due mainly he added, to the conclusion of the Junior Cert ‘mocks’ last week.
“There is only so much the Gardaí can do and the vast majority of those young people were causing no problem to anyone. But I really think that the issue of parental responsibility has a big role to play when looking at things like this,” said Michael O’Connor.
A Garda spokesman confirmed to the Sentinel that there were ‘four to five’ arrests on Saturday night last in the Salthill area, all for relatively minor public order offences. Most of those incidents would be dealt with by way of caution and consultation with parents, although he didn’t rule out prosecutions being taken also.
There was also concern for a time on Saturday about the condition of a 14-year-old girl in the Salthill area who appeared to have been taken quite ill shortly after 7pm, apparently due to the amount of alcohol she had consumed.
“We will be visiting every second level school in the city over the coming days and weeks to get the message clearly across that unruly behaviour on the streets and drinking in public places will not be tolerated.
“In the run-up to St Patrick’s Weekend, we are also making a special appeal to parents to make it their business at all times to know where their children are, what they are doing, and what time they are to be picked up at,” said Sgt Shane Cummins of Galway Garda Station.
Read more in today’s Connacht 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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