News week ending 11 March 2000

Lakelands residents take direct action against car parking

NAAS, 10 March 2000: by Brian Byrne. Lakelands residents in Naas finally got tough today when they took direct action to stop people visiting and working in Naas Hospital from parking in their estate.

They picketed the entrance to the estate, with placards telling motorists bluntly that it is a ‘private estate’ and not a car park for the hospital. The move followed the residents’ association AGM last Tuesday at which homeowners in Lakelands told their representatives they were fed up with the situation.

“Letters and leaflets just haven’t worked,” outgoing chairman Tom O’Keefe told KNN this morning. “It’s now down to a residents/motorists confrontation to make our point.”

He noted that a traffic management condition for the duration of the construction work on the hospital, which has increased the parking needs while at the same time drastically chopping parking space in the hospital, ‘simply hasn’t happened’.

“There was supposed to be a dedicated staff car park in place at the end of February, but that hasn’t happened either,” he said. “feeling against the situation at our AGM was very strong. Up to now, we have played by the rules, but now we have to resort to direct action.”

(ED: This is what is was like every day up to today.)

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UDC selloff could forfeit Naas £466K+ annually

NAAS, 9 March 2000: EXCLUSIVE by Trish Whelan & Brian Byrne. Naas UDC may have forfeited up to £466,000 a year in potential revenue, by agreeing to sell its Corban's Lane town centre car park (above) to private developers planning to build a 400-plus multi-storey car park, shops and a hotel. The developers stand to clear that amount each year, after paying the council just £25,000 from the parking revenue, as agreed by the two parties in legal documents now being prepared. The payment to the UDC will be adjusted annually by the rate of inflation only.

The UDC currently has some 200 spaces in the car park, at the moment free to motorists, and the alternative to the private development would be for the UDC to build their own multi-storey car park. Given the potential revenue, the authority could have raised a bank loan for the project (as Kildare County Council raised a loan for the new Bond Bridge in Maynooth, to be repaid out of development levies).

The £466,000 figure is based on a calculation of charges for parking by the developer at 30p per hour (ED:a probable average charge over the first few years), for 15 hours a day, seven days a week, and then assuming a 75% occupancy. The developers - McDermott and O’Farrell - have agreed to keep open for public use a minimum of 400 car parking spaces between the hours of 9am and 12pm, Monday to Sunday inclusive.

Even if the annual usage of the car park is just 50% - an unlikley situation given the current severe shortage of car parking in Naas - the council would forfeit earnings of potentially over £302,000 a year by allowing the private development.

The £25,000 a year, over the period of a 999-year lease, is in addition to a £142,000 payment for 10 years, representing the capital payment being made by the developers to the UDC for the Corban’s Lane site. This has been regarded by many as a ‘selling of the family jewels’ for a quick gain by the council.

Meanwhile, there seems to be a question as to whether the developer can actually provide the number of car parking spaces required by the UDC under the Naas Development Plan, as the council has incorporated a planning condition that would allow for a ‘car parking levy’ to be charged if this number cannot be provided. This seems at odds with the section where the developers ‘covenant’ to keep 400 spaces for public use. (And there is some question as to whether planning conditions can be incorporated in a long-term lease agreement in advance of a planning application.)

The Corban’s Lane development is one of two proposals for the UDC to effectively sell its car parks to private developers - the second is on the Sallins Road. Naas town clerk Declan Kirrane told KNN that no contract has yet been signed between the UDC and the developers, and no planning application has yet been lodged in respect of the development. “Discussions between the legal representatives of both sides are currently taking place.”

Naas UDC chairman Seamie Moore (right) confirmed yesterday that the carpark in St Corban's will be operated by the developers, who will set the charges and keep the revenue taken. But he said it will be part of the agreement that the developers charges 'will relate to' those being set by the UDC for their own onstreet carparking plan this year.

NOTE: On-street car parking in Dublin is currently 80p per hour, while private car parks are charging upwards of £1.60 per hour. Private car parks in Naas are currently charging 50p per hour.

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Kildare may lose influence on key Dublin transport body

COUNTY HALL, 9 March 2000: by Brian Byrne. Kildare County Council risks losing any input into the election of members on the steering committee of the Dublin Transport Office because of a delay in nominating two representatives to its Advisory Committee. The 26 members of the AC elect two of their number to the DTO.

In the makeup of the committee announced two days ago by the minister for the environment, only Kildare County Council has failed to nominate its representatives to the 14-member local authority panel. Dublin Corporation, the three Dublin councils, and Meath and Wicklow councils have all agreed on their representatives.

If Kildare does not have its own representatives at the first meeting, the peripheral council arguably most affected by Dublin’s transportation needs will not have a direct or indirect influence on a body that last year had £37 million to spend.

Before Christmas, a meeting of the council nominated FF councillor Paul Kelly, FG councillor Jim Reilly and Labour councillor Catherine Murphy (right) to the body, but as only two are allowed, a decision was deferred while attempts were made to see if a third could be added. This was because Cllr Murphy’s experience on several key committees in the DTO since the early ’90s was clearly felt to be invaluable. But a straight vote in the council block-controlled for such appointments by FG and FF would exclude the Labour councillor if the membership criteria were rigidly enforced.

Cllr Murphy was originally appointed to the DTO by Leixlip Town Commission, and achieved membership of key groups including the Update Committee of the Dublin Transport Initiative, the Traffic Management Grants Committee, and the Taoiseach’s Taxi Forum. Her input into the update committee undoubtedly influenced the Maynooth rail line upgrade programme. But a change in the representation procedures has eliminated nominations from town commissions and UDCs.

“I would be more than willing to serve if selected,” Cllr Murphy told KNN last night, though acknowledging that the politics of Kildare’s current council militate against her selection as one of two representatives. “I have a strong interest in transport, and I’m more than prepared to put in the time and effort required. But whatever happens, a decision has to be made quickly or Kildare will have no input of any real kind. When people don’t want to make decisions, they defer them, and that’s what happened before Christmas. Now they really have to get off the pot and settle it.”

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Cemetery 'will be tidied up'

NAAS, 9 March 2000: by Trish Whelan. Naas UDC is to tidy up St Corban’s Cemetery, and remove any material ‘that shouldn’t be there,’ according to town clerk Declan Kirrane.

This follows a severe criticism of the state of the Cemetery, by councillor Timmy Conway who said he had been appalled during a recent visit to the Cemetery.

“It resembled a building ground and a skip there is being used for domestic refuse,” councillor Conway said, adding that the situation was ‘intolerable’ and a ‘disgrace’.

Abbeyfarm decision criticised

CELBRIDGE, 9 March 2000: by Bill Trapman. Cllr Geraldine Conway (right) of Celbridge today condemned the decision of An Bord Pleanala to allow the construction of six houses in the Abbeyfarm housing estate in Celbridge. She said that this resolution paves the way for any estate, not taken over by Kildare County Council to be revisited by the developer and recommence building.

“This is extremely unfair to the community that has made their homes in an as estate that was thought to be finished,” she said in a statement. “The residents of Abbeyfarm are furious with this decision and rightly so.
There is no good reason to revisit a completed estate - only greed in a climate of spiralling house prices.”

Cllr Conway said the practice should not be allowed, and that once an estate is completed there should be no going back by the developer to further development.

“This will cause great concern and worry to residents throughout the county, in any estate that remains in the hands of the developer. Following the result of this application there is cause for concern, that a decision to allow permission for these houses, refused by Kildare County Council has been overturned by another body.”

The decision was described yesterday by Deputy Emmet Stagg as ‘regrettable’.

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Company name change could hit Dunstown application

DUNSTOWN, 8 March 2000: EXCLUSIVE by Brian Byrne & Trish Whelan. The controversial power station project for Dunstown Wood near Kilcullen may have hit a new snag for the developers, a Bord na Mona-led consortium including French energy company Elf Aquitaine Gaz and a Finnish partner.

It now seems that their planning application could have to be remade, because the company name under which the application was submitted no longer existed when it was lodged.

Alvale Systems Ltd, incorporated on 1 June last by company formation agents, changed its name to Kildare Energy Limited on 14 December, but the planning application submitted three days later was still in the name of Alvale Systems Limited.

FG councillor Billy Hillis (above) believes this makes the application void, and he has notified Kildare County Council of the position. The council is now writing to the applicants for clarification of their position. A decision on the application due last Friday was deferred until 20 March by the council.

Last night, the protest group from the Dunstown area were seeking legal advice on the validity of the application.

On 16 November, four new directors were appointed, replacing the original company formation agents who set up the entity. The new board members are Marc Heigel and Jean-Michel Merzeau from France, both directors of Elf Aquitaine Gaz; and Michael Culhane and Sean Grogan of Bord na Mona Energy Ltd in Tullamore.

"I don't think the application is right, and didn't think so in the first place," Billy Hillis told KNN last evening. "I became suspicious when somebody mentioned at an earlier meeting that there had been a change of name, but when I pressed them further they clammed up."

Cllr Hillis received details of the name and directorship changes yesterday from the Companies Registration Office. "I think if the planners and the county manager had decided in favour of the project last Friday, they would have had egg on their faces," he says.

Meantime, KNN has learned that any application for a material contravention to the proposed site would be unlikely to get through the council with the required 18 votes. A straw poll indicates that the proposers would only be able to muster around 10 councillors in favour. In such a case, the matter would end up with An Bord Pleanala, as did other applications (see last week's story on KNN).

And an application made last week for a similar project in Navan complicates the situation further, as Bord Gais is unlikely to be able to provide fuel for all the applicants.

If the Dunstown application falls, the promoters may well reconsider an alternative location in Kilberry, Athy. It is thought they didn't take this up in the beginning, despite there being no opposition to it, because it would have required a 22km land line to get the generated power into the National Grid.

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Planning department overwhelmed

COUNTY HALL, 8 March 2000: by Brian Byrne. Kildare County Council's planning department is creaking under the weight of planning applications waiting to be dealt with, to the point that the planners are experiencing severe difficulty in making decisions within the statutory time.

The situation has been exacerbated by a haemorrhage of key planning staff since last summer, when senior executive planner Phillip Jones (left) left to become an inspector at An Bord Pleanala. His was the beginning of a number of other departures last year, and since January of this year alone, four more have departed.

KNN understands that many are gone to other local authorities where the workload isn't as high as in Kildare. "They're working until all hours here at the moment ... nobody could operate for long like that," one source within the council told KNN recently.

The much-trumpeted by minister for finance Charlie McCreevy allocation of extra money for staff in the last quarter of 1999 has done little to help - it is understood that only two applications were made for seven vacant posts at the time.

And the fact that local authority planners can earn up to a third more by going to the private sector, 'without having hassle at all', doesn't make it any easier for councils like Kildare. It also makes it difficult for staff to comply with a promise made by county manager Niall Bradley that planners are 'available for preplanning discussions' in order to more efficiently progress appilcations.

The problem also applies to engineers in local authorities many of whom are being attracted to the private sector, particularly to work in environmental consultancy and service companies.

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Lions help local priest in Venezuela

NAAS & CARACAS, VENEZUELA, 8 March 2000: by Trish Whelan. Helping out in one of the world’s worst disaster areas is Naas priest, Fr Larry Kelly OP. Fr Larry, who was ordained in 1984, is son of Larry and Alice Kelly from Hollywood Park on the Sallins Road. He was educated at Newbridge College and later joined the staff of the college.

He had been involved in missionary work in Argentina for some years and is now assigned to Caracas in Venezuela, recently the scene of what may be Latin America’s worst natural disaster of the twentieth century. It has left death and destruction which will mark Venezuela for a long time to come.

The Naas connection has motivated Naas Lions Club to respond to this crisis and to support Fr Larry in his efforts. The Club has donated a sizeable cheque to the Dominican community for use in Venezuela and every pound of will go directly to the affected area and will have long-term benefits for the local communities there. Pictured below at the handing over of the funds are Tony Frost, Bill Igoe President of Naas Lions Club, with Alice and Larry Kelly, parents of Fr Larry.

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The Dominican Order has a number of parishes in Venezuela, one in Tacagua, near the capital Caracas, one of the worst affected areas. Community priests and nuns are providing shelter, food, mattresses, clothing and water to those made homeless by the disaster. However, the Dominican community does not have the means to sustain this effort on its own and has launched a world-wide appeal for help.

The tragedy happened when persistent heavy rains caused large scale flooding, resulting in mud and rock slides. Whole towns and villages were submerged, houses swept away and roads destroyed, cutting off large regions of the affected area, making access by overland means impossible and severly hampering rescue attempts and assistance.

Naas Lions have opened an account at Allied Irish Bank, Naas and have launched an appeal for donations. The account details are: Naas Lions Club Venezuela Disaster Appeal. Account No 37098058. A small donation would be a big help.

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Kildare aviator calls for new Tuskar crash inquiry

LEIXLIP, 7 March 2000: by Brian Byrne & Trish Whelan. Ireland’s most veteran pilot, Straffan-born Captain Darby Kennedy, has called for a new investigation into the Aer Lingus Viscount crash off Tuskar Rock in 1968 that claimed almost 60 lives but has never been satisfactorily explained. He says he believes there are things about the tragedy ‘that should be exposed’ and he supports a demand for a public inquiry.

Captain Kennedy, the founder and chairman of Weston Aerodrome at Leixlip, has a special interest in the truth being told. He was an Aer Lingus pilot himself at the time, and had regularly flown the same route as the doomed flight 712 (on a plane similar to the Air Canada one on left).

“But for the grace of God, I could have been on it,” he told KNN in an exclusive interview, adding that throughout his 65-year flying career, he had come close to tragedy several times and had only survived ‘because God was my co-pilot’.

His own view of the accident doesn’t relate at all to the story that the ill-fated plane was hit by a British missile. Indeed, he believes his own experiences as a commercial pilot at the time hold answers that would come out if there was now a public inquiry. “Stuff has been dragged under the carpet. A whole lot that was investigated but never published ... because they hoped it would go away.”

Captain Kennedy discounts the missile theory as a ‘story that was put out’, that doesn’t stand up simply because where the accident happened was outside the range of any missile then available in Britain. And he says the other theory of a collision with another plane is equally unlikely because wreckage of another aircraft was never found.

Quite simply, he believes that failure of a control cable to one of the trim tabs on the tailplane caused the aircraft to rapidly go out of control and spin into the sea. It’s a theory backed up by the fact that part of one of those particular control surfaces was found on a beach north of Wexford, a considerable distance before where the main bulk of the wreckage was found.

The doomed flight took off from Dublin and reached what pilots call ‘the top of the climb’ just over Wexford. The procedure was to cruise as far as Bristol, then begin the descent towards London. “At the top of the climb, you would take the automatic pilot out and you’d trim the plane manually - you had a wheel beside you which worked one of these little fellows way back on the tail, and trimmed the aeroplane out so you could let go of the controls and stay put, and then you put in your autopilot again.

“My feeling is that one of these little wires broke ... the trim tab set up what we call ‘flutter’. If you get flutter, the bloody thing goes mad and the control column would do this [he demonstrated severe juddering] ... then something broke away. The pilot then attempted to slow down, put out the wheels and flaps and things like that to slow her down to try and regain control. But during that time he got into a spin and went down.”

It’s a scenario which Captain Kennedy believes did not get adequate examination in the subsequent inquiry, but in his own experience of the time, planes could be parked in unsatisfactory conditions during their layovers in overseas airports, with consequent danger of damage to control surfaces.

“That aeroplane had been flying for five days in bad weather ... it was out doing what we called ‘round the houses’, going to different airports. It was due back that night for its first check-up in five or six days ... and that was a long time without an inspection of these vital areas.”

He can recall vividly when a control surface came loose while piloting a small plane. He thought he ‘was finished’ as the plane started to shake to pieces. “I just got down on the ground before the thing broke up altogether. The tail, that is. If you lose your tail in an aeroplane, you haven’t much hope ... down you go.”

He also remembers it happening to a colleague during a test flight of a De Havilland before it was due to carry passengers to Liverpool. “I was supposed to do that flight, but I was late, and Captain Ivan Hammond was given the job. A control broke and he force-landed in Malahide and the plane tipped up on the sand opposite the hotel. I’ve been in aviation long enough to know these things happen.

“But in that Viscount thing I’ve been very worried, because I often took a night trip to England with mails or freight and we used to leave the plane loading at Manchester or somewhere like that. They’d bring you in and park you where it suited them, not where it suited you from an airman’s point of view. An aeroplane, if it is going to be parked on a stormy night, with the winds gusting to 40 miles an hour, should be parked with its nose into the wind. If you park downwind, these control surfaces can be seen to shake and flap all the time, with the wind behind them.

Captain Darby Kennedy was Aer Lingus Chief Pilot until 1947. He rejoined the company in 1960 and retired again in 1971.

“On the Saturday morning, 24 hours or so before the Tuskar crash, I had to take a plane to London, and the wind was so strong that they had to load the freight in the hangar because the doors were big and they could be damaged by the strong wind. Next day we were having lunch and I heard about the crash ...”

Captain Kennedy is certain not all has been told in relation to the Tuskar crash. He says detail ‘explanations’, such as the claim that the piece of trim tab found on a beach north of Wexford was carried there from Wexford Harbour on a piece of seaweed, simply don’t wash. And he suggests that one reason for the failure to find the cause of the crash is because it might show up maintenance procedure inadequacies at the time.

“These are all things that are quite scandalous, and should be opened up again. The sad part about it is ... it suited someone to try and get this thing forgotten.”

©2000 Telling Tales Ltd.

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'Get the bus to ease traffic' say councillors

NAAS, 7 March 2000: by Trish Whelan. More people in Naas should use the local bus service to help alleviate the chronic traffic congestion in the town, according to UDC councillor Anthony Egan (left) who said the bus service is not being used to its capacity.

“Everybody knows the situation in the town ... and it’s getting worse by the day,” he said, asking the Council to bring forward plans to help the traffic situation.

Councillor Pat McCarthy said it was a timely debate. He wondered if the bus operators could reduce fares for a week to promote the operation. He told how a major supermarket in the town has doubled its charge for its home delivery service, up £1 to £2, and felt this would only encourage people to use cars to shop.

“We need to talk to the management of these organisations about the necessity to discourage cars. I feel it’s a retrograde step,” he said. Councillor Evelyn Bracken agreed, saying ‘it should go out from the Council that the supermarkets are charging far too much for their service'.

Councillor Pat O’Reilly (right) believed much of the traffic problem to be caused by trucks delivering to shops, calling ‘at will.’ He said it is something the UDC is going to have to clamp down on. Chairman Seamie Moore said there was a need for bye-laws to deal with offending trucks parking along the street. He also felt there should be more ‘neighbourhood’ shops outside the town centre.

Councillor Mary Glennon agreed more people should avail of the bus service including schoolchildren thus allowing their parents to leave their cars at home.

Town manager Terry O Niadh said the numbers of cars per head are set to increase and catching the bus instead would be the answer.

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Temporary traffic lights measure

LEIXLIP, 7 March 2000: by Brian Byrne. Kildare County Council engineers are to remove the filter phase of traffic lights at the bottom of Captain’s Hill in Leixlip as a temporary measure to alleviate traffic delays caused by defective phasing. The temporary work is expected to cost around £1,000.

Meanwhile, new traffic lights for the junction won’t be available for another six week - they were originally supposed to be in place in mid-March. Local councillor Catherine Murphy (right) says she is pleased about the temporary solution, as traffic has often been backed up as far as Louisa Bridge.

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Top band to play in Germany

LEIXLIP, 7 March 2000: by Brian Byrne. The Narraghmore Pipe Band is to represent Ireland in Germany in June, when it will play during Ireland’s National Day at Expo 2000 in Hanover. It will perform for the Taoiseach and other Irish dignitories at the event.

The band, which won the World Championship last year, has been in iexistence for over 80 years. It was recently honoured with a civic reception by Kildare County Council. Further information is available on the band’s website here.

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Dunstown plan 'could pollute Dublin's water'

BRANNOCKSTOWN, 6 March 2000: by Brian Byrne. The possibility of Dublin’s water supply being contaminated from the proposed power station at Dunstown has been raised by a Brannockstown resident who suggests that any pollution from the stack will end up in Poulaphuca Reservoir.

“If you take a map and put a dot on it at Dunstown, you’ll see clearly that anything coming airborne from the plant will likely fall into the reservoir, given the prevailing westerly wind,” says Simon Pallister (above) of Booleybeg. “And even if it shifts southerly, the lake is so long that there is still a strong possibility that pollutants will drift down to the water.”

Mr Pallister flys a microlite aeroplane from his home and is very aware of both the prevailing winds and the topography of the Kildare/Wicklow borderlands, and the reservoir itself. “The lake is just six miles downwind of Dunstown, and I’d worry about fallout killing fish, for instance ... how would the waterworks filters handle rotting fish and the resultant bacteria? Humans need water and air to survive, you know?”

Meanwhile, Kildare County Council has extended until March 20 the time until a decision on the planning permission is made. If the county manager agrees to allow the proposal, it is likely that a material contravention of the County Development Plan will be required, and objectors are currently targeting councillors to persuade them not to agree.

Main Rover, Land Rover and Volvo dealers, Kildare town. Phone 045 521203; Fax 045 521785. See our selection here. And read Brian Byrne's review of the new Rover 75.

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Naas UDC 'not grasping traveller nettle'

NAAS, 6 March 2000: by Trish Whelan. Naas UDC does not appear to be able to grasp the nettle when it comes to providing accommodation for travellers. That was the view of the Naas Equality for Travellers (NET) group who were commenting on the local situation following the publication of a national survey which showed that travellers are affected by prejudice from nearly 50pc of adults in the country.

Public perception of travellers’ needs and rights is affected by the state of a place left when they move on from illegal parking sites, NET spokesperson Elizabeth Trappe (pictured above on right with fellow NET members Gill Welby and Sean Sourke) admitted this week, but it is because they are left in a position with no water or toilet facilities that they are forced to break the law in parking where they shouldn’t.

She said within the Naas area, there are presently two families which Naas UDC recognises as in need of accommodation. One, she said, is requesting a house, the other a small site for their caravan with space for extended family. “With one family on a site, there is less danger of feuding or other difficulties arising,” she said.

The use of the word ‘indigenous’ was criticised by NET member Sean Sourke who said that the term that should be used was ‘travellers who want to settle in a locality'. “Councillors and officials are trying to make it appear that unless you were born and reared in County Kildare you have no right to be there.”

Ms Trappe, secretary of NET, said travellers can experience discrimination when seeking services and access to facilities such as public houses and are conscious of being followed around supermarkets on a regular basis. “It is also common for travellers holding medical cards not to be able to get on a doctor’s list, though we have not had that problem reported in Naas.”

NET treasurer Gill Welby gave credit to the success of a schools problem where travellers go into classrooms and explain their background and culture to improve awareness amongst young people. “It’s a success,” she said “which is due primarily to the travellers exhibition which originated from the Athy Travellers Club shown around the county”. Naas-based traveller Elizabeth McDonagh from the Rathasker Road is part of the programme.

NET says there appears to be a willingness within Naas UDC ‘to do something’, but it’s ‘a slow process’. Individual councillors are afraid to be seen to be pro traveller. The group feels strongly about Naas UDC putting up barricades around the town to prevent illegal parking by travellers. “Why don’t they just put a sign up saying ‘travellers not wanted’,” said Sean Sourke, who said the thousands of pounds being spent by the council to move travellers on would be better spent on providing a proper place for them in the town.

He said Naas is unique amongst the larger towns in the county to have no space whatsoever for travellers. “As the town expands, houses are being built where travellers previously parked. You’re seeing them being squeezed out of the town.”

NET also makes the point that they have no direct consultation path with the two local authorities in the area, although they say that Naas UDC have always responded quickly when asked for a meeting. “We are part of the local traveller consultative committee,” said Ms Trappe. “But nobody comes to ask our advice when the issues are being debated.”

The primary obstacle in the way of improving the lot of travellers in Naas is getting land for a site and overcoming public opposition which could be overcome through consultation with local people as had proven successful elsewhere.

Ms Trappe said if there was even one unit of accommodation of some sort in Naas, NET would feel that ‘something positive had been accomplished’. “But this is the Council’s responsibility by law, and it’s up to them to do it. We’re only a small voluntary group.”

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Charley's Aunt coming on a visit

KILCULLEN, 6 March 2000: by Brian Byrne. When 'Charley's Aunt' opens to audiences in Kilcullen on Thursday 23 March, it will make a number of pieces of history. First, it will be the first full drama production in the new Town Hall Theatre since its refurbishment and millennial opening to view on New Year's Eve. It will also have treading the boards, for the first time, a number of people who are essentially the new generation of Kilcullen Drama Group. But, most interestingly, it will have Vivian Clarke (above), one of the proprietors of Clarke's Menswear in Newbridge, playing the part his father did 30 years ago when the play was last performed by the group.

The show will run from 23-31 March, with the official gala opening night on Friday 24 March. But the night before is much more relevant for an organisation which has given Kilcullen its best drama and farce and everything in between for several generations. It is the night when senior citizens are the special guests, and in case anybody fitting the description hasn't noticed, they are all welcome that night.

The play is being lauded as 'the funniest ever written', one which playgoers 'may never see the likes of again' as well as 'special' and 'best medicine' as laughter. Bookings can be made through Bernard Berney at 045 481497.

Pictured below are some of the cast in costumed preparation, being photographed by Lesley O'Brien.

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