Fake Fall for Money
A PROMINENT city retailer says he may a make a formal complaint to Gardai after a young man entered his store and “staged” a fall in the hope of initiating a personal injuries claim.
The incident happened last week in the middle of the afternoon at Gleeson’s Spar on Catherine Street.
According to the store’s owner, Shane Gleeson, alert staff observed the man acting suspiciously after he went to the refrigerated section.
CCTV footage of the incident captures the man, who appears to be aged in his early twenties, pouring some milk onto the floor before deliberately stepping in it and falling.
The footage also shows the man making a phone call while still lying on the shop floor.
According to Shane Gleeson, when he told the man to get up and leave the store he threatened to sue him.
“He told me he had phoned his solicitor and that it was going to cost me thousands, but we have heard nothing from his solicitor yet and if he does put in a claim we will ask the Gardai to prosecute him for fraud,” said Gleeson, who says the CCTV footage clearly shows the man “staged” the fall.
“On the video you can see him at the milk and spilling it and then he lines himself up for the trip and he very carefully went down without hurting himself. Then he started screaming and roaring,” he said.
Gleeson said the incident shows how far some people are willing to go in the hope of making some money.
“These kind of people are desperate and they are chancers but I think modern technology has put an end to their antics. This sort of thing won’t work in any shop any more because of the quality of CCTV,” he said.

Limerick Leader


Bishop Isn’t Sorry
THE Bishop of Elphin, Most Reverend Christopher Jones, has stood by his claim that many children from broken homes and those outside marriage were "born losers" because of the odds stacked against them.
Jones said it was now recognized in virtually all research that the best possible environment for parents, children, and indeed for society itself, was “the family rooted in marriage.”
The bishop, who is president of the Catholic marriage care service Accord, also claimed that children who grew up in homes where there was no love or security invariably became dysfunctional adults and went on to cost the state billions each year because of delinquency, drugs or crime.
He said we now lived in a society and culture "which ignores what is best and beautiful in our marriages, families and communities, instead celebrating film stars, soap stars, pop stars and football stars, even though the rewards they receive are obscene."
However, Jones also pointed out that he was not criticizing single parents, saying he knew single parents who "made heroic efforts to rear their children in love for life and who succeeded very well."
He added though that during his 17 years working in social services in Sligo, he had seen the damage wrought on children as a result of marriage breakdown.  Children who endure trauma in the home, such as when their parents break up, can be injured for life, he said.
He acknowledged that some marriages broke down for unavoidable reasons and that in those cases, "compassion ought to be our overriding response."
Stressing that he was not finger-wagging or making judgments about people who had children outside marriage, Jones said that nonetheless "all of us must support and promote the most important institution in the state -- family rooted marriage."
"When a culture of marriage weakens, an ever-growing number of children will never experience the inestimable value of being raised by a loving, married mother and father," Jones said.

The Sligo Champion

Ryanair Cuts

RYANAIR is to pull out of its Cork-Dublin route from Sunday, October 30 citing a decline in air traffic due to motorway improvements as the reason for the decision.
Passengers who have booked to travel on this route after the closure will receive a full refund in due course.
Cork Chamber and Dublin Chamber have voiced their disappointment at the move and have called for another carrier to resume the flight.
Cork Chamber chief executive Conor Healy said, "While recent improvements to road and rail options have offered additional choice and competition for those wishing to travel between the Cork region and Dublin, flight connections are still very important for those wishing to use Dublin Airport for domestic travel, in addition to onward international connections."
Ryanair is also ending its daily return flights from Kerry Airport to Dublin from September 7.  However, Aer Arann will take over the route from early November under a government subsidized PSO contract.

The Corkman


Kerry Burial Records

DETAILS of over 70,000 Kerry burial records have been compiled in a new website aimed at assisting those looking to trace their Kerry roots.
Some records on the website -- www.kerryLAburials.ie -- date back to the 1800s, and all have been indexed to allow people all over the world to search the records by name, address, date of burial or graveyard.  It also contains detailed maps giving directions to each of the public graveyards in Kerry.
Mayor of Kerry Tim Buckley said the project was hugely important to those interested in their family history and those looking to trace their roots.
"Just think of the many hundreds of thousands of people who left from Kerry over the past centuries to travel to foreign shores in search of work," he said.
“Now their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren are scattered across the globe in their millions. These are people who are hugely aware of their Irish and Kerry heritage and are actively looking to trace their roots.
"This website will greatly increase their chances of tracing where their ancestors came from, and in doing so will, we hope, lead to greater visits to Kerry as people look to visit their ancestors' birthplace and burial place."
People whose family members may have been omitted from the online record due to the loss of records in the past are being asked to get in contact with Kerry County Council.
Padraig Corkery, director of Communications, Kerry County Council, said that there may be gaps in some of the records.
"The burial records are listed chronologically, so even if there has been more than one burial in a grave, they will not appear on the same page of the records that have been put online,” he said. “They were filled in as burials happened. If a record of a burial is not recorded, then we would ask people to come in and we will update the records. The website is constantly evolving." 

The Kerryman


Pub Can’t Survive
A WELL-known Wexford publican has decided to call it a day because business is so bad.
James Ryan, who has run Chaz Bar on the Quay for the past nine years with his sister Sandra, will serve his last pint on the premises on Sunday.
“It's desperately difficult to make a living in the bar trade at the moment,” he said after deciding not to renew his lease on the pub.
Ryan has witnessed a dramatic decline in takings over the past two years, with an acceleration in recent months as more people become unemployed or experience a decline in disposable income.
“We've been getting the same number of people in but they're not spending the same amount of money.  It's that extra 20 that's crucial. People are spending it on something else,” said Ryan.
Ryan, who is taking up a job in another licensed premises, said the cost of running a business in Wexford is increasing while income is decreasing.
“I would have stayed on in the pub if things had not been so difficult,” he said.
“We had massive good times and made lots of friends. I will definitely miss it.”

Wexford People