Archive News
Melissa and Sheila drawn together by call of wild
Date Published: {J}
It was serendipitous how Sheila Gallagher and Melissa Griffith met and not only became bosom buddies, but entrepreneurial partners.
They lived only about a mile and a half apart in the city, but though they had many common interests, their paths didn’t meet until they found themselves protesting during the controversial Eyre Square enhancement plans in 2000.
They both love trees and nature and were horrified that the City Council was contemplating uprooting some of the trees on the Square.
It was a battle that was lost, but out of it came a friendship between the two women that led to the establishment of the Green Sod Land Trust, which recently won a Social Eco Entrepreneurs award, which not only puts them on the map but is valued at about €35,000.
The Trust acquired their first piece of land in Carlow during the year and are working on amassing other tracts of land, all to be placed in trust for the future. They obviously don’t have money to buy land but are hoping more and more people will leave the Trust land in their wills or that companies will donate land.
The lands acquired by the Trust will be protected from development as the ethos of the company is to accumulate land for its own sake, to allow wildlife, ecosystems and habitats to exist without interference.
Melissa says she always had a passion for caring for the environment for its own sake, not for any need that it serve people.
Sheila says that of all the people she met during that campaign to save the Eyre Square trees, Melissa was noticeable for her practicality.
“We kept the occupation going and Melissa would come along with vouchers from local cafes, restaurants and shops so we could get drinks and food. She wasn’t just a talker, she was a doer.
“She was always talking about setting up a conversation café where like minded people could meet regularly to talk about life, philosophy, whatever. . . so myself and Melissa started meeting every Sunday morning for a long walk around the city to discuss how we would set it up but it never happened.”
So Sheila and Melissa continued the practice of meeting up long after the bulldozer came in to knock the trees. Melissa says it was heartbreaking the day that happened and she couldn’t watch. So the friendship blossomed and then progressed to chats about how they could combine their passion for the environment and do something practical.
“What would you do if you couldn’t fail?” asked Melissa and they put their heads together and came up with the idea of a land trust, the first of its kind in Ireland.
It is based on the John Muir Trust in Scotland and after years of research, they took the plunge and set up the Green Sod in 2006 so that they could at least protect land.
Basically the two women didn’t want to lose another battle like Eyre Square. They wanted to protect land because as far as they could see nobody else was doing it, certainly not the Government.
“It’s true that we don’t trust the authorities to protect green land,” says Sheila, quickly backed up by Melissa who adds: “The Government has certainly not stepped up to the mark of their commitment to Agenda 21 and the Kyoto Agreement. Thousands of EU laws are being breached in relation to our natural habitats and water directives. We know that the natural heritage is worth about €2bn annually because of the green image we have but if something is not done, we won’t have it for long.”
To this day, Sheila gets emotional talking about Eyre Square. “In an organised vote by the Galway Environmental Alliance, 2,500 registered voters in the city voted to save the trees and yet this was totally ignored by the City Council,” she says.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
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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