Archive News
Recession forcing more to flee home violence in Galway

Date Published: 10-Dec-2012
By Dara Bradley
The ongoing recession has contributed to a surge in the numbers of Galway women fleeing the family home with their children to escape domestic violence.
A Galway-based charity said that financial hardship caused by the recession was adding to tensions within marriages, and increasing incidents of women seeking refuge from abusive husbands.
COPE Galway said that its refuge is too small to accommodate the sheer volume of women fleeing an abusive partner – in a minority of cases, women are forced to return to the home in which they are abused due to a lack of suitable refuge space.
In fact, demand for its women’s domestic violence accommodation centre in the city is in such great demand that COPE has had to refer almost as many women and children to services outside of Galway as it has assisted because of a lack of space.
COPE released startling figures yesterday, which showed that 108 women with 175 children were supported through the Waterside House Domestic Violence refuge located near Galway Courthouse, a ‘safe house’ for women and children getting away from a violent partner.
But it can only accommodate six women and up to 15 children at any one time and COPE confirmed that a further 199 women and 300 children were referred to other counties because of the lack of space. “We would refer them to Athlone or Limerick, but that’s not always practical, or we might put them up in B&Bs,” said COPE’s director of development, Fintan Maher.
Mr Maher said families’ financial woes were heightening tensions within the home and leading to domestic violence. Years ago, during the good times, couples would separate but that might not be an option now, he said, when explaining the possible reasons for the increase.
COPE’s two other services for women have also experienced increases in the numbers of women with children presenting.
Osterley Lodge, in Salthill, designed mainly to accommodate single women, experienced a 100% increase in the number of women with children using the service in 2012, the charity said. Some 22 women with 32 children were accommodated at the hostel for homeless women in the first 11 months of 2012.
Teach Corrib Homeless Day Centre, on the Seamus Quirke Road, which is a non-residential facility for homeless women or women on the verge of homelessness, worked with 74 families this year with 167 children, which is an increase of 30% on last year.
The three COPE services combined, Osterley Lodge, Teach Corrib and Waterside House, provided accommodation and assistance to some 374 children this year.
Mr Maher said the Government’s “short sighted” cuts to child benefit in the Budget would drive more women and children into crisis and into seeking COPE’s help.
Read more in today’s Connacht Sentinel
Galway in Days Gone By
The way we were – Protecting archives of our past

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
Archive News
Galway have lot to ponder in poor show

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.
Archive News
Real Galway flavour to intermediate club hurling battle in Birr

Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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