2010 – The Year in Review - section 1

JANUARY AFTER the dreadful floods of November and December 2009 (remember them?) January dawned with weather-related problems of another kind - snow and ice. [private]The big chill which struck around Christmas persisted into the New Year and we had to report that the Accident and Emergency Dept of University Hospital Galway (UHG) was on high alert as people injured in falls on icy footpaths and roads were brought in for treatment. The number of operations to deal with broken wrists, hips and ankles was more than double compared to the previous year. Something else that had more or less doubled was the county's local authority housing list, and the County Council was examining suggestions to take over some of the unoccupied houses that resulted from the collapse of the building boom. We reported the death of an old friend, Mattie Finn of Finn's Cross, Ballyglunin, who died from smoke inhalation following a fire at his home while his wife and children were out visiting. Action Tuam were building new factory units at the Weir Road, which, despite the recession, chairman John Concannon felt would be ideal for small local industries, and possible craft operations. Less hopeful was the news that Tuam's standing in the national litter rankings had plummetted, and one of the reasons was the appalling littering of the gardens of unoccupied houses on Gilmartin Road. The County Council planned door to door checks to ensure householders were disposing of household waste legally. The weather was still making headlines as we moved further into January, and a new angle was that the county's water supplies were under severe pressure. This was not because all the water was frozen, but resulted from people leaving taps running so that the pipes would not freeze up. One of our main local sources of weather information, now that Michael Cleary of Met Eireann has retired, is Brendan Geraghty of Abbeyknockmoy. He confirmed what we all suspected, that 2009 was the wettest year since he started monitoring rainfall in the early 1960s, or indeed since his father started more than 20 years before. For the record, Abbeyknockmoy experienced 182 wet days during which 57.18 inches of rain fell. Rainfall was higher every year for the previous five years,  and the pious hope was that the trend would reverse in 2010. Natural disasters on a minor scale may have damaged our roads to the tune of well over €10 million, but that was nothing compared with the earthquake that struck Haiti on its Caribbean island. There is always an Irish connection, and in this case it was Leigh-Ann Pye froim Derry, Kilkerrin, who had spent time there as a second level student doing voluntary work. She was greatly relieved to learn that friends she'd made there were largely unharmed. In the weeks since the earthquake, we carried many accounts of fundraising events to help the unfortunate Haitians. Another young woman, Valerie Dolan from Abbeyknockmoy, set off for China to pursue a course of stem cell treatment which she hoped would restore her sight. We recorded the death of Bro John Heneghan, a Tuam man who held leadership roles in the Irish Christian Brothers and was Provincial from 1984 until 1996. Abbeyknockmoy was in the news again with the strange theft of a statue of Our Lady from the grotto in the church car park. Another statue was stolen from a shrine on the N17 near Milltown - a sign of religious mania? No-one could say. There was better news in Mountbellew, where First Year students of St Jarlath's Vocational School there were given a laptop each as part of a pilot e-learning project. If successful it may be extended to all VEC schools in the county. Another community worker, Tuam Town Councillor and former Mayor Martin Ward, announced his resignation from the Council because of health concerns. Cllr Ward made headlines a few years ago when he became the first mayor from the Travelling community in Ireland. There was bad news for householders when Galway Co Council confirmed that it will be imposing charges on all who use its civic amenity sites from this summer. Many public representatives felt that this would simply drive more people to dump illegal in the ditches of rural and bog roads. Tuam was proud of its All-Star Gymnastic Club when it won a place in RTE TV's All-Ireland Talent Show on St Valentine's Night. A simmering dispute over opening hours at the Tuam Leisure Centre, which was taken over by a new management company a few months before, came into the political arena when both Galway County Council and Tuam Town Council expressed concern about the reduction in access for the public, as opposed to people who had taken out membership. Times were tough for the Catholic Church, but one bright note was struck when Fr Michael Kenny offered his parishioners a 15-minute Mass starting at 7.30 am. The daily attendance at Kilconly church jumped from three or four at 8 am to 30 to 40 at the earlier time. On the other hand, Archbishop Michael Neary commented that women would have handled the allegations of sexual abuse better. This was in a letter to priests outlining a greater role for the laity in the future running of parishes and the archdiocese. A Headford student, Dara Lynch, was representing his school, Presentation College, and Connacht-Ulster in the national final of a marketing competition run by mocks.ie. And in another marketing coup, JFC Manufacturing of Tuam won a contract to supply a large number of plastic emergency water tanks to Severn Trent Water in the UK.[/private]