Sheep massacre is bad beginning to New Year

THE CURRAGH & NEWBRIDGE, 5 January 2001: by Trish Whelan. It has not been the best start to the New Year for sheep farmer Tom Snell from The Curragh, because marauding dogs attacked many of his ewes due to lamb in coming weeks. The attacks took place just before Christmas, on Christmas morning and on Friday last.

In that period alone Tom lost 22 sheep, savaged by dogs on the loose from their owners. And that may only be the start of his problems as, due to being chased, the surviving ewes may abort their lambs or suffer complications when giving birth.

Tom had 300 sheep in a field he leases at Old Connell Stud outside Newbridge when two dogs - a black Labrador and an Alsatian - arrived there. They terrorised the animals, killing several and injuring others. “They tore the wool off them before starting to eat them,” he told KNN. “It was a pitiful sight.”

On arriving at the scene, Tom shot at the dogs, wounding the Alsatian while the Labrador escaped into a nearby built-up area in Newbridge. Both dogs wore collars, but neither had identification tags. Tom called the gardai, who advised him to shoot some of the sheep who had had their insides torn out and were in great pain. Later, gardai identified one of the dogs at the home of the owners, but, surprisingly, Tom was not allowed take the animal away to be put down.

Another attack took place at his own farm on the edge of The Curragh, this time involving two smaller dogs, owned by someone in the locality. Both animals were shot and the owner has offered to compensate Tom for his loss. “There were 180 sheep in that field and we don’t know how many will abort or have other difficulties,” he says. “It’s been a good while since we had so many sheep killed, but this kind of trouble always comes around at this time of year.”

Between October and December of last year, Tom lost 14 other animals - 10 killed by traffic on roads while other dogs accounted for the rest. “I have pictures of all the sheep killed on the road which I have sent to Kildare County Council in the hope that they will install more grids on the main roads accessing the Curragh. They’ve acknowledged the letter. Jack Wall TD has also brought up the matter of safety grids with the county manager and he has put down a Dail Question on the matter for the minister for defence.”

Tom Snell is appealing to people who own dogs to make sure that they are under their control at all times and he particularly asks people who may have got presents of dogs at Christmas to be aware of their responsibilities. “Far too often these become unwanted pets and they are simply brought to The Curragh and dumped,” he said. “If somebody has such an unwanted pet, they should bring them to the Dog Warden.”

County Development Plan to be revisited?

KILDARE GENERAL: by Brian Byrne. Kildare County Council faces the prospect of a re-opening of the County Development Plan and undertaking the scaling-back of population projections in a number of towns in the county. This follows the intervention of the minister for the environment, Noel Dempsey TD (left), to enforce the Strategic Planning Guidelines for the greater Dublin Region.

The intervention has been welcomed by the Kildare Planning Alliance (see Opinion below) which says that repeated assurances from councillors, senior officials and a consultancy firm that the Guidelines are being adhered to in Kildare ‘have now proven inadequate’. The alliance says that for towns such as Clane, a ‘radical revision’ of draft development plans are now required, and revisions of population targets should also be undertaken for North Kildare towns within the ‘metropolitan area’.

Alliance spokesman John Sweeney says that this third intervention in five years by a minister, efectively rejecting the Kildare County Development Plan as ‘defective’, must give cause for concern.

Meanwhile, there are reports today that Mr Dempsey is finalising plans to establish a Greater Dublin Authority which will take charge of strategic planning, including land use and transportation. The authority’s area would include Meath, Kildare and Wicklow, and it would have powers to regulate all public transport services as well as infrastructural development, including major road and rail projects.

The authority has been under consideration since last spring but its remit is now expected to be extended to include strategic planning. Cabinet ministers have been expressing disquiet about what is described as large-scale "freelance" land rezoning in these counties, in defiance of the Guidelines. Recent decisions by councillors in Meath, Kildare and Wicklow have called the effectiveness of the Guidelines into question.

Congratulations, Minister! KILDARE GENERAL, 5 January, 2001: OPINION by John Sweeney. Kildare Planning Alliance extends its congratulations to Minister Noel Dempsey on his reported intervention in the Co. Kildare planning process in order to enforce the Strategic Planning Guidelines for the Greater Dublin Region. Enforcement of these recommendations by Kildare County Council has been a cornerstone of the policy of the Kildare Planning Alliance and the Alliance is delighted that its many representations to the Minister on this topic have now proven successful. We look forward to the Minister's involvement achieving the radical changes to the Co. Kildare planning process that the Department of the Environment and Local Government has now made mandatory. Kildare Planning Alliance has always been committed to the orderly development of County Kildare and has always supported strategic planning policies designed to achieve this. It endorsed the Strategic Planning Guidelines when they were published and have since frequently echoed the Minister's repeated urgings that compliance with them be strictly enforced. These Guidelines are designed to ensure that future development is channelled into areas where infrastructure can be more easily provided. They also provide for open greenbelt areas in which commuter-related growth will not be catered for and for which publicly paid for infrastructure will not be supplied. Compliance with them became mandatory on January 1st and the Minister has moved swiftly using Section 31 of the new Act to begin the process of bringing non compliant local authorities to heel. In the case of Co. Kildare, repeated assurances from councillors, senior officials, and the consultancy firm brought in to advise on individual town plans (incidentally the same firm which drew up the Strategic Planning Guidelines), have now proven inadequate and Ministerial intervention has been deemed necessary. Kildare Planning Alliance warned of this eventuality repeatedly over the past year. As a result of this non-compliance, the County Council now faces the prospect of reopening of the 1999 County Development Plan, together with a number of ongoing town plans, and undertaking a scaling back of population projections for a number of towns and villages in the county. Where towns lie in the hinterland area their population growth provision is required to reflect natural growth only, without in-migration being a factor. For towns such as Clane a radical revision of their draft Development Plan is now required. For the towns within the 'metropolitan area' revisions of their population targets should now also be undertaken to comply with the guidelines. For example the Guidelines advocate limited further growth for the towns of north Kildare, such as Maynooth, Kilcock, Celbridge and Leixlip. This is the third time in five years however that a Minister for the Environment has rejected Kildare's efforts as defective, a situation which must give cause for concern. For the third time he has condemned some of the population targets in the County Development Plan as excessive and expressed concern that sustainable development policies were not being followed. Kildare Planning Alliance welcomes the responsible exercise of authority which the Minister is displaying and looks forward to seeing the radical steps which the law now requires being implemented by the County Council in full. 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.

Dan digs into the bush to build yet another Tanzanian school

BROWNSTOWN, THE CURRAGH & TANZANIA, 4 January 2001: by Brian Byrne.

“I suddenly realised I was in trouble.”

For some moments, Dan Noud had been distracted by the intense stare from the man who’d turned and looked at him as he made his way through a crowded market in Dar Es Salaam. “There was something very odd about his eyes, and then I became aware that another man was hovering to my left,” the Brownstown-born Pallotine missionary recalls. “It was then I looked down, and saw the knife ...”

Knowing it was already probably too late, Dan swung his shoulder bag in front of his stomach as the man with the staring eyes lunged his blade forward. There was a ripping sound, then a metallic one, and Dan fell backwards with the force of the attack, shouting to two African friends who were walking a little way in front.

“I should have been dead,” he remembers. “Ordinarily, what I’d have in the bag wouldn’t have stopped the blade. But for some reason, when I was leaving home to go to Dar Es Salaam that week, I had gone back to pick up a picture of my mother. It was the metal frame that caught the point of the knife.”

To this day, that picture of Dan’s dead mother is an even more treasured possession than it had been, now with cuts from the deflected knifepoint. He is convinced that it was her intervention from beyond the grave that saved his life.

Anyone listening to Dan Noud tell of his adventures in the African bush would have to believe that there is indeed a divine presence watching over him. After almost 40 years working mostly in Tanzania, he is physically wracked from illness and injuries, he is often mentally exhausted with the effort of keeping his work going on a stipend of £130 a month, and he has brushed with death more often than he cares to remember.

His ‘home’ is two metal freight containers placed on top of each other, the top ‘storey’ being his living quarters, the bottom one a store for scarce medical and other necessities and an ‘office’ to meet with people who want his help.

In the meantime, with the help of many of those same people, he is building a school which will probably also act as a dispensary.

It’s the third, or maybe the fourth time he has done this. Every time he has completed a project, be it a small hospital or a school, and it has become self-sufficient in a growing African community, he has moved on to start again. Somewhere further out in the bush, places which many of the rest of us would describe as ‘God-forsaken’.

But Dan sees beauty and God in the most desperate of places and direst of conditions. And maybe he perversely finds it easier to do so there than back at home in Ireland, where he sees mostly a stifled Church. Maybe reflected in the fact that he will often be given a spontaneous round of applause after ‘preaching’ a homily in a local Kildare church while home on leave.

Certainly, not many of the home-based priests have to deliver babies on the side of a dirt road, drive badly mauled victims of big cat attacks up to 200 miles to hospital, or give emergency treatment to a syphilis-ridden ‘parishioner’ on the kitchen table before breakfast.

Not too many of them suffer from recurring malaria - an endemic illness which kills annually four times as many Africans as does AIDS and which regularly has brought Dan himself to death’s door. Few, I suppose, would have had to carry the top of their finger 150 miles to have it sewn back on after it was lopped off by a closing car door.

That last didn’t work so well, and after six months of complications, including gangrene, they finally had to amputate Dan’s finger completely. Now he can’t even type easily, because the operation left other fingers permanently crooked. Which is a pity, because Dan’s stories should be preserved, if only to show the strength of faith in adversity. And sometimes the opposite.

Africa can be a very unforgiving environment, and mortality is high. Privation is the order of pretty well every day, and Dan Noud could long ago have been forgiven if he’d decided he’d done his bit and come home to an easier life.

But it won't be so, because ‘home’ is now where he’s spent the last four decades. Brownstown, where he was born and where his family have lived for generations, is not where he’ll retire to.

Because, while the environment and the life can be unforgiving, the people of Africa have a special place in Dan’s heart. And he in theirs. “When I’m old, they’ll look after me,” he told me. “When I die, Africa is where I want to be buried.”

Dan Noud has spent many tens of thousands of pounds in his endeavours, but rarely has a penny to his own name. Friends in County Kildare have for many years responded to his calls for help, raising money for his projects, finding him a 4WD vehicle or - the last time he was home - a motorcycle, so he can get around his ‘parish’.

(The bike was part of a fairly recent close encounter with the Grim Reaper, when, after discharging himself from hospital, he fell asleep while riding home and woke up in the trees beside the bent Suzuki.)

He sometimes ‘does the rounds’ of wealthier parts of the world, preaching on occasion in the US to raise funds, and he is appreciative of financial help that comes from a number of European sources, including German aid organisations.

And though he has spent most of his life away, he still keeps in touch with Ireland every night, via the short-wave transmissions from RTE of edited versions of radio programmes here. A small radio, a gift from a friend, is his only ‘luxury’.

It makes you think, doesn’t it? Especially at this time of the year.

Dan Noud can be contacted at SCP 178 Kateshi, via Arusha, Tanzania, East Africa. In the meantime, a number of fundraising functions are planned for the near future in Newbridge. Donations can be made to a special bank account in Kilcullen under the name of TOIL, a group of people who give Dan Noud a dig out when they can.

Do what you can, because divine intervention is OK, but is best saved for life-threatening occasions.

Kildare Failte rebuts UDC chairman's claims

NAAS, 3 January 2001: by Brian Byrne. The county’s tourism development company has asked for a meeting with Naas UDC following suggestions by the chairman, Cllr Pat O’Reilly (right), that Kildare Failte is ‘not doing enough to promote Naas’ (see KNN story here). Cllr O’Reilly’s comments came during a discussion at last month’s UDC meeting on an application for funding from Kildare Failte.

KF chairman Tom Malone (left) has written a strong letter to Cllr O’Reilly on the matter, in which he also invites any or all members of the council to visit Kildare Failte’s headquarters offices on South Main Street, Naas. And Mr Malone told KNN that it seems most of the councillors who commented on the organisation’s work were ‘ill-informed’.

“To the best of my knowledge, only one of them came to our recent AGM,” he said this week. “If they had, they would know that we are doing our best on limited funding, and they might also appreciate that our remit is to work for the complete county, not just Naas. Besides, our former development executive made it a point to meet with the town clerk and a number of councillors last year so they would be aware of our activities.”

Mr Malone noted that his organisation had received no support from Naas UDC since Kildare Failte was founded. The application to the UDC at last month’s meeting was made in the light of the fact that the UDC had an annual sum available for tourism promotion but had not even spent it.

In a comment on one councillor’s statement that the tourism organisation’s offices in Naas were ‘not even wheelchair accessible’, Mr Malone said that they ‘couldn’t afford a downstairs office’. And he revealed that prior to the last local elections, KF had asked Naas UDC to accommodate them in the Town Hall, as it was the administrative centre of town and a logical place for the county’s tourism development operation.

“That idea was shot out of the water,” he said. “But we are still serving Naas by having our headquarters on its Main Street. And we are quite willing and able to show just what we do if we can get a chance to talk to the council.”

Sudsy ducks can oil their feathers NAAS, 3 January, 2001: OPINION by John Kavanagh. I note Cllr Charlie Byrne’s concern on the lakes and the wash water from the Esmondale Estate. But I wonder is he also aware of another source of pollution of the lakes? Visual and chemical pollution due to the recent drainage works on the Ballymore Road. Alongside the lakes and series of new drains has been put in to drain the road. Leading from these drains are earthworks and if one follows these they lead to a set of orange pipes which one can clearly see just above the surface of the lakes.   In laying these pipes both the earth banks and the path were dug up and neither have been restored to their former condition (which my daughter underlined by tripping on the path). While walking there yesterday I noticed that the water coming from these pipes was brown and oily in colour. I would also guess that this water also contained considerable quantities of other chemicals that may come off the salted roads. So now not only can the ducks wash in the suds of Esmondale, they also can oil their feathers and have a bit of salt for their tea from the roads of Lakeside Park. And when the water level drops a bit in the summer there will be a load of new lakeshore homes for rats. 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.

Can you help Michael Marks? Michael Marks, singer, songwriter, long term resident of Kildare and Newbridge, whose album Camouflage was voted CD of the Week by RTE in a 'best new songwriter' item, is now living in Holland badly affected by osteoarthritis. He is producing out of his home studio his first release since Camouflage ... Rythms from a Rubber Room. Record collectors can contact Mick at mickey.marks@wxs.nl A limited run of acoustic copies is being made available to finance production of an album to follow.

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