Archive News
Life from the inside of Garda traffic control corps cars
Date Published: {J}
It was bound to happen. It was only a matter of time before TV cameras would be following the Garda traffic corps on duty so now that’s another deterrent, unless people don’t mind having their few minutes of fame being shamed on national TV.
Though faces are blurred out on Traffic Blues, an Irish made series on RTE 1 on Sunday nights, it’s not that hard to identify people by their voices and car type etc. No doubt as the novelty of this series wears off, they will be filming our city streets and town squares to capture what goes on in the early hours of the morning.
And though it’s no harm for people to see what sort of work our Gardaí do or what type of offences can attract their attention on our roads, the real stars of the series will be the Gardaí themselves.
There were one or two very impressive members of the force who seemed at ease in front of the TV cameras, which isn’t as easy as it looks, and who will probably go far in the force.
There was one Garda on the motorway in the Naas area who pulled over a woman for speeding in a Jeep with two sleeping children in the back. Her only excuse was that she was tired and just wanted to get home. The Garda was visibly incredulous and told her straight up it was no excuse, especially with children in the back seat who were depending on her to get them home in one piece. It hit the right note for me and hopefully it did for her. She was doing about 90 miles an hour.
There was a particularly young Garda in Bantry who stopped a guy in a car with no insurance. Both driver and Garda were awfully polite and I couldn’t help thinking if it was ‘Take Two’ and that the original arrest may not have been as smooth but it could have been, I suppose. The Garda, speaking to camera, said the driver admitted immediately that he had no insurance or tax and that this was common enough now in these recessionary times. It’s all right taking the chance until there’s an accident of course and then it’s a whole different story.
Some of the footage goes back to Spring 2009 as I suppose the programme makers wanted to wait for the court case to be dealt with so they have a result for the viewers. But the oldest piece of footage was the most exciting, when a car being chased north of Dundalk, in an attempt to make it across the border, drove the wrong way around a roundabout and then the wrong way on a motorway. It certainly was a miracle that nobody was killed that day. Of course, the Gardaí got them in the end when the car actually crashed going the wrong way on a motorway ramp. I don’t think Traffic Blues will be showing anything but success stories, for the Gardaí that is.
What is amazing is the top quality of the camera equipment being used by traffic corps now. The resolution is good enough for broadcasting as we have seen from the first two in this new series.
For more, read this week’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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