NAAS, 22 December 2000: by Brian Byrne & Trish Whelan. The chairman of Naas UDC has strongly criticised what he called 'the lack of tourism promotion of Naas' by County Kildare Failte, the tourism organisation set up to promote the county. Cllr Pat O’Reilly (right) said he would like to see the organisation doing more to promote the capital town of the county.
His comments came in response to a request from County Kildare Failte for funding from Naas UDC. Cllr O’Reilly said: “They would want to be doing something in return for any grant they would get for Naas.”
Mr O’Reilly said he had looked for tourist leaflets on stands in hotels around the county but had found few available for County Kildare. “The only literature I saw was for the Japanese Gardens so I just wonder what Kildare Failte are doing to promote this particular part of the county,” he told last week’s UDC meeting.
Earlier town clerk Declan Kirrane had told councillors that £2,000 was available in the Estimates for tourism promotion for Naas. Cllr Seamie Moore (right) promptly proposed that £1,500 of that should be given to Kildare Failte.
Cllr Willie Callaghan (left) wondered if they allocated a grant, would that entitle the Council to have a representative on the Board of Kildare Failte.
Cllr Seamie Moore (right) said the organisation has a wide range of literature and told how Kildare Failte are considering moving from their present location on Main Street in Naas.
It was agreed to ask Kildare Failte what promotion of Naas would follow any grant from the UDC, before any money is handed over.
Ring roads come closer with finance allocation
NAAS, 22 December 2000: by Brian Byrne. Proposed ring roads around Naas could be a reality sooner than expected with the allocation of Government grants of £5.3m which include £1.5m for the Jigginstown/Millennium Park route; £2.1m for the Newbridge Rd /Kilcullen Rd/Craddockstown road link; £1.25m for the Naas Inner Relief Road from Dublin Road to the Tipper Road; £675,000 for the Newbridge Road/Caragh Road link.
The Government allocation is for 75% of the cost with the local authority having to fund the balance.
Naas UDC last week welcomed the funding allocation saying it would help take traffic from the town. Town clerk Declan Kirrane (right) said financing the roads ‘would not be an issue’.
Town manager Tommy Skehan said all infrastructure plans will be presented to councillors in January.
Council pledges to find home for Boxing Club
COUNTY HALL, 22 December 2000: by Trish Whelan. Kildare County Council have pledged to help find permanent accommodation for St David’s Amateur Boxing Club in Naas.
Deputy Emmet Stagg TD had asked that the club be allowed to use the Drill Hall in Devoy Barracks for training and coaching purposes. He had also sought that the club be accommodated with training facilities in the future development of the Barracks by Kildare County Council and Naas UDC.
County manager Niall Bradley (right) said ‘we would all be very anxious to ensure we facilitate the boxing club’. However the property is still in the ownership of the Department of Defence and is not yet transferred to the local authority.
“Depending on the design for our future offices there, the existing Drill Hall may or may not be left in place,” he said. He said Naas UDC may help out with lands or property in the town.
Architects will be looking at the site in January and after, Mr Bradley said, the situation will become clearer.
He promised to take a personal interest to see if something could be worked out for the club, which Deputy Stagg said has done a lot of positive work with young people in Naas.
Deputy withdraws request for suspension of officials
CELBRIDGE, 21 December 2000: by Trish Whelan. Deputy Emmet Stagg has withdrawn his request for the suspension of two officials of Kildare County Council over the cutting of 20 mature trees in Chestnut Grove in Celbridge.
This follows a detailed discussion yesterday at the Celbridge Area Committee, during which the county engineer informed the meeting as to the reasons that the trees were removed, and gave a guarantee that semi-mature trees would be planted to replaces the trees that were cut down.
At Monday's meeting of the Council, Deputy Stagg had called for the suspension of the two officials over the tree-felling.
Around and About the County...
NEWBRIDGE & NAAS: Eight people were arrested under the Public Order Act over last weekend in Naas. Gardai had a busy night on Saturday last, sending resources to help gardai at Newbridge following a row on the Main Street of Newbridge. Naas gardai were sent to help in the Newbridge incident and in addition to a number of people being put in the cells in Newbridge, another was brought back to the Naas station. A further row erupted at 3.30am in the Fair Green area of Naas and one person was brought to hospital for treatment. Sgt Kevin Gralton of Naas says he intends to stamp out this kind of behaviour on the streets of Naas. A number of ecstacy tablets were seized by gardai at the Ambassador Hotel night club and a Newbridge young woman was arrested in connection with the incident. A file is being prepared for the DPP.
NAAS: Naas UDC plans to drop the school warden service outside St Patrick’s Post Primary School on the Newbridge Road at the end of the school year, on the grounds of low level of usage. In recent years, Naas UDC have provided school wardens at the school crossing at the Sallins Road, at Ballycane School, outside the CBS primary school and at St Patrick’s Post Primary School.
NAAS: Naas Town manager Tommy Skehan wants a Development Plan for the town, in terms of Tidy Towns competitions, to be prepared incorporating all aspects of the town’s environment. Funds have been provided in the estimates to pay for the report. He said: “It is hoped, through the implementation of this plan by the Tidy Towns Committee, the Council, and other bodies, that Naas will once again achieve success in the Tidy Towns Competition.”
ATHY: Athy Community Library will close for Christmas holidays on Friday 22 December at 5pm and will re-open on Tuesday, 2 January 2001 at 10am. The staff of the library would like to wish all their customers a very Happy Christmas and New Year.
Wardens will be 'eyes and ears' of Naas
NAAS, 21 December 2000: by Trish Whelan. Naas is to follow Sweden’s example in setting up a new Community Warden Scheme which will play a role as ‘eyes and ears’ of the local authority and Gardai.
Town clerk Declan Kirrane (right) said Naas UDC will be getting two more wardens for the work. In a full year the payroll cost will be £65,000. The sum of £25,000 has been agreed to fund the setting up of the service.
Their work will include traffic and litter warden duties, as well as monitoring and reporting Public Order offences.
“They will also have a presence on the street helping tourists and keeping an eye on elderly people living alone. But they won’t have any powers of intervention, only a reporting role,” Mr Kirrane said, adding that they will also report any breaches of the planning code such as unauthorised developments.
The new wardens will have their own uniform, radio equipment and transport.
“We would hope that certainly over the summer months they would be working weekends and up to 12pm, and the service may be in place by June of next year,” the town clerk said..
Email pioneer dies
KILCULLEN, 21 December 2000: by Trish Whelan. A native of Kilcullen, Anthony Conroy, one of the first developers of email in Europe, has died at his home in Dublin after a long illness.
He was born and raised in Nicolastown, Kilcullen, and had attended the local national school during the early 1950s.
He was founder and managing director of EuroKom Ltd which specialised in electronic mail. The company was formed in UCD nearly 20 years ago. It supplies secure email to major corporate companies and government agencies all over the world.
He is survived by his wife Claire, his five sons and his four sisters.
Is election prospect prompting attitude change?CELBRIDGE, 21 December, 2000: OPINION by Mike Parle, Kildare Planning Alliance. Are we beginning, to see the beginning, of the beginning, of some small change in attitude that has been dragged from those in power. Is the fear of a negative outcome of the next election strong enough for long-term change to occur? ED: Please note that views expressed under 'OPINION' on KNN are those of the writer concerned, and do not necessarily reflect the views of KNN or its proprietors. This facility is provided in the interests of free speech and public information and may be availed of either to make a point or respond to one. |
Sarto residents say they've had a promise too many
NAAS, 20 December 2000: by Brian Byrne. A road coming apart for 30 years. Dangerous footpaths. A ‘shambolic’ park being used as a dump. And an almost two-year wait by householders for new electricity meters in homes ‘improved’ under a remedial scheme.
Residents of Sarto in Naas are outraged, frustrated and at a loss to understand why they’re in such a position, despite repeated representations to their UDC over many years. Representations met with soothing words and pledges.
Pledges unkept, they say. “We’ve been promised time after time that the road would be done,” Sarto Park Residents Association member Joe Curtis told councillors bluntly during an official presentation of their grievances to the UDC this week. “We’ve been promised too many times.”
Chairman Pat O’Reilly sympathised. “Members of this council have all expressed their concerns about the situation over the last couple of years. I can promise you that you won’t be coming back in 12 months’ time with these problems.”
That went down like shovelfuls of gravel into Sarto potholes. The ones hastily filled - and almost as quickly abraded away - since the UDC members agreed last month that they’d meet a deputation from Sarto. And which have over the years developed into ‘wet weather pools’ at the entrances to 11 homes.
The Sarto people have been raising the road condition issue with the council for FIFTEEN years. They say such a delay is intolerable.
It wasn’t always like that ... they got the UDC to deal with other flooding problems in the area earlier this year, after only TEN years of trying.
The council provides a £300 annual grant towards the upkeep of the Sarto estates, one waste skip, and tractor mowing of major open spaces once a year. The residents themselves provide THREE skips and say that a minimum of THREE mowings are necessary. And no road sweeping was carried out in Sarto by the UDC in the current year.
Well, it’s very hard to sweep roads made of potholes. Though at least the residents try. And, indeed, regular sweeping up by locals of displaced stones from the potholes have apparently prevented many motorists from skidding dangerously on bends.
There was also, allegedly, no council maintenance of gullies in Sarto this year. The residents did anything that was done. This revelation prompted Cllr Seamie Moore to wonder if Naas resident associations should meet annually with a management team from the council to discuss whether gullies had been swept.
That global thought didn’t impress the delegation either. Nor were they uplifted by the fact that, by tradition, Naas UDC officials won’t comment or answer questions during a such presentations. The town clerk didn’t even raise his head when the chairman said he didn’t know the answer to a query from Cllr Willie Callaghan as to whether the non-provision of electricity meters was an ESB or a contractor’s issue.
(Declan Kirrane knew the answer, though, because he gave it when the ordinary meeting resumed. But the delegation was gone then.)
As they asked clarification questions, councillors expressed their concern at the situation, continuing tradition. Then Cllr O’Reilly thanked the delegation for their presentation, and promised that members would bear in mind what they had said.
“I hope we don’t have to go to Phase Two, with the placards,” one of the Sarto people said afterwards. But he gave the impression his hope had about the same value as the longevity of a recently-filled Sarto pothole.
The delegation went home. And, after dealing swiftly with the rest of a short agenda on the night of their Christmas dinner, the council adjourned. Sarto residents can have THEIR Christmas dinners safe in the expectation that the world as they know it will not end in the year 2000.
Pictured above after making their presentation to Naas UDC are Joe Curtis, Paddy O'Connor, Jim O'Sullivan and Tommy Duffin.
Travellers to be moved onto Magee site by tomorrow
KILDARE, 20 December 2000: by Trish Whelan. Kildare County Council has given an undertaking to the High Court that illegally parked travellers in Kildare Town will be placed on a site in the former Magee Barracks (above) by Thursday of this week.
The undertaking was given by assistant county manager Tommy Skehan during a court hearing on Monday.
The site chosen is not the one which caused considerable anxiety amongst local residents of the Melitta Road in recent weeks, but is inside the main gate of the former Barracks, close to where refugees and asylum seekers have been accommodated over the last year.
Kildare County Council in a statement make it clear that this site is only in place for one year and that they will carry out early in 2001 the identification of a longterm site for facilities for travellers in Kildare Town.
The travellers in question have been parked illegally at the weigh bridge in Kildare Town for over two years and before that were parked for a number of years in the UDC Corban’s Lane car park in Naas.
Complaint made to KCC about 'brutal' tree felling
CELBRIDGE, 20 December 2000: by Trish Whelan. A resident of The Grove in Celbridge has made a formal complaint to Kildare County Council, through local Cllr Kathleen Walsh (left), over what he calls ‘the brutal felling of a mature Ash tree’ outside his house on December 15 as well as damage to a green verge by a JCB at the entrance to The Grove at Hazelhatch Road which occurred when the men concerned were stacking the cut branches.
Brendan McAtamney says there are many mature Ash trees lining the Hazelhatch Road as it sweeps into Celbridge. Four are located beside his house and branches from the trees were overhanging both the road and back garden.
In October, his wife Caroline telephoned Kildare County Council’s area officer in Maynooth regarding the ownership and responsibility of the trees on the road. A week later he returned the call, saying he had seen the trees and he suggested that they needed pruning. He is alleged to have said this would be done when other similar work was being carried out in the locality.
On Friday, December 15, at 1.45pm, Mr McAtamney says his wife returned home to find that a tree cutter had felled the largest tree, to ground level. “This man informed her that he was instructed to get rid of the four trees,” Brendan says in his letter of complaint. Mrs McAtamney insisted that the man refrain from felling any of the other trees and to prune them as originally agreed. “The contractor asked her not to make a fuss, as otherwise he would not be paid,” Brendan writes.
Caroline then telephoned the Council’s Area Officer who said he had made an ‘informed decision’ after speaking to professionals to chop down the trees, as to prune them would leave them bare or leggy and ‘asthetically unpleasing’. Until 3.30pm on the day the tree cutter and his workmen had only pruned one of the trees on the roadside. The branches from the felled tree and the half-pruned tree were then scooped up by a JCB and put on an open green space in front of his house which he says caused widespread tyre damage to the grass. Saleable wood was then taken away.
Brendan McAtamney wants to know why the contractor was authorized to fell trees when in October the Area Officer had stated they required pruning. He also wants to know why was the original issue of overhanging trees in his garden not addressed at any stage (except for the one felled tree!). He says no one ever visited his garden to see what branches needed pruning.
He also asks why it was necessary to plough up an open green space of a mature estate during the branch removal process.
He wants the remaining trees left untouched and says he will pay for a professional to do the pruning job properly. He wants Kildare County Council to repay the residents of The Grove (Hazelhatch Road) because they have taken the visual character away and suggests they plant several small estate trees to the entrance to the estate. He also wants the open green space to be returned to its original state.
Prayers and nationwide appeal for Naas man
NAAS, 18 December 2000: by Trish Whelan. Prayers were said at Masses in Naas yesterday for the safe return of 22-year-old Trevor Deely who has been missing since the early hours of December 8 last.
And, speaking on the Pat Kenny radio show this morning, his distraught father, Michael, said his son’s disappearance has completely baffled gardai investigating the case.
Trevor moved from Naas eighteen months ago and now lives at St James’ Court on Serpentine Avenue in Dublin. A Bank of Ireland employee based in the bank’s IT section at Leeson Bridge, he had been to a staff Christmas party on Thursday night, December 7. Colleagues on the Bank’s night shift say he had dropped in at 3.35am to check his e-mail on his way home from the party. (Taxis were on strike at the time). He was last seen walking along Baggot Street Bridge towards Haddington Road, heading for home.
Trevor is described as 6 feet tall with fair hair and of slim build. “He was struggling home against the wind and rain with a light blue golf umbrella,” his father explained. Mr Deely said his son’s disappearance ‘is out of character as he had always phoned home whenever he was away’. He said his son loves his job and has a large number of friends both from work and in Naas, who are now helping Gardai with the search.
Mr Deely said the gardai have put in ‘an enormous effort’ to find his son and divers have searched the canal near where he was last seen. “Today, they are carrying out a further diving search but Gardai have pretty well ruled out the possibility that Trevor had fallen into the canal,” he said.
The investigation has discovered that the young man’s mobile phone and bank account have been untouched since his disappearance. “He took £60 out that night and nothing has been touched since,” Mr Deely said. “The family are distraught and we are at our wit’s end. We don’t know what to think,” he said adding: “There are thousands of people out there on those streets at that time of night, surely someone must have seen him.”
Anyone with information relating to Trevor’s disappearance should contact Gardai at Harcourt Terrace, 01 6669500.
Woodcutters do it with wood and style
KILDARE GENERAL, 18 December 2000: by Trish Whelan. The results of many hours spent beavering away in sheds and garages throughout the region by members of the Midlands Chapter of the Irish Woodturners Guild were plain to see at the group’s fantastic exhibition in Naas last week.
The exhibition was formally opened by Gerry Egan of Coillte, the Irish Forestry Board, which sponsored the show for the third year running. Mr Egan said wood turning is a fine example of exposing the added value of timber in a range of different shapes and forms.
He added that it was a fantastic turn out for people doing woodturning on a part time basis. He hoped the public would go and see the extensive range of ‘magnificent products’ on show. Extolling the virtues of wood, he said it has a warmth and texture and a depth of colour unmatched by any other material.
The 250 exhibits ranged from fairy castles to dinosaurs as well as platters, lamps, bowls, clocks and ornaments.
This was the Chapter’s fourth annual woodturning exhibition and chairman, Naas man Paddy O’Connor (Sarto Road) welcomed the huge crowd which consisted mainly of friends and neighbours of the exhibitors.
A special competition within the group was sponsored by FBD Insurance, represented by Tim O’Connell who also presented the prizes. Winners were, Kieran McCarthy (Carbury), Kieran Higgins, (Naas), Oliver Glennon (Kilkea, Castledermot), Paddy O’Connor (Naas) and Larry Boyd (Wicklow).
Other Kildare exhibitors included Paddy O’Connor and Paddy Sheridan (Naas); Brian Ashmore and his son Jonathan, Jerry Carbery, Jim Gorman, Tommy Kiernan, Brian McCann, all from Athy; Jim Clarke (Carbury), Justin Dunne (Colbinstown), Martin Gleeson and Robert Hammond (Sallins). Others included Ciaran McCarthy and Arthur Dawson (Carlow) Francis Morrin (Ratoath), Charles Kelly (Rathvilly) and Karl Gill (Portlaoise).
Wants end to 'closed door meetings'
NAAS, 18 December 2000: by Trish Whelan. A Naas councillor has sought to stop private and in-committee meetings held by Naas UDC and has vowed to inform the press of happenings at any such meetings in the future.
Following a survey, Cllr Mary Glennon says Naas UDC holds more meetings in private than any other local authority in the country.
A motion presented by her to Naas UDC that these meetings be abolished 'in the interests of openness and transparency and that future minutes of meetings be electronically recorded' was agreed with certain amendments. She agreed that planning matters and those of a sensitive nature should remain private.
"We agreed to go to the Protocol Committee to decide the exact parameters. The VEC were interviewed in private as were the GAA yet when the Boards of Management of the local schools were interviewed, it was at a public meeting," she said.
"I feel these are issues of importance to the whole town. It should be a matter of course that the meetings are public and only in exceptional circumstances should they be held in private. If it’s not held in public, it’s an opportunity for someone to immediately go and spill the beans and perhaps not to tell the full story whereas if the meetings are in public, that won’t happen," she said.
Cllr Glennon said she had never in her work as a journalist or as a councillor, come across journalists who did not respect the sensitivity of some issues. "We have to trust the press," she added.
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