News from around the 32 counties of Ireland

Fermanagh

A border construction project is proving to be a blazing success for a Co Fermanagh firm that has just been appointed as the main contractor for a €3.7 million two-storey fire station in Monaghan Town.

To be located at Annahagh, it will also include an access road to serve the six-bay fire station, ancillary spaces and offices. It has also emerged that a separate maintenance building and training tower have also been approved in the plans.

Associated site works and landscaping will also be provided with the main construction work now agreed for McGurran Construction of Derrygonnelly.
(Source:4ni.co.uk)

Galway

Playwright and poet, Patricia Burke Brogan vows she will chain herself to the Magdalen statue in Forster Street rather than see it removed.

Fears that the statue, a memorial to the women who suffered in the Magdalen Laundry, will be removed to make way for a bus corridor has raised alarm and concern.

Ms Burke Brogan, herself a former nun who spent a short time in the Galway Magdalen Laundry and who wrote about her experiences in a play called Eclipsed – which was later made into a film – said she was horrified.

“I thought I was living a nightmare when I heard it was going to be moved. That statue represents the pain of the women and that pain is in the very earth on which the statue was erected on the site of the old gateway.

“It would be much better that they would knock the bank across the road, the Anglo Irish that has given us all the trouble, if they want to widen the road.
(Source:Galway News)

Kerry

British Ambassador to Ireland Julian King stressed the strong commercial links between the two countries, and in particular the potential of more British tourists to provide economic growth in Ireland.

However, pressed continuously about the possibility a visit by the queen to Killarney and to Muckross House which itself had hosted a visit by Queen Victoria in 1861, Mr King gave very little away.

There were a million extra potential visitors that could be attracted, he said.

Mr King was speaking to reporters in the Edwardian boardroom of the State-owned Muckross House, on his first official visit to Co Kerry during a relaxed press meeting in which he insisted on being called “Julian”.

Mr King had accepted an invitation from the chairman of the board of trustees, Marcus Treacy, also a director of Killarney Golf and Fishing Club, to lunch and to visit Muckross House on a day Killarney was bathed in sunshine
Last night, before meeting tourism representatives, he accepted an invitation to become honorary ambassador for Kerry tourism.
(Source:Irish Times)

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Nster.com