Wexford presbytery has youth on its side

Priests are getting younger. Well, they are in Wexford parish at least, where the presbytery can boast it contains the youngest priests of any such house in Ireland. Father Jim Fegan, the oldest of seven priests living in the School Street presbytery is, according to the Wexford People, "a youthful 35 years old". Five of the six other priests are 30 and under.

Father Fegan, recently appointed parish administrator, told the paper that having young priests around him would make religion more relevant to young people.

"It is a different approach to have such a young group of priests. We are the youngest presbytery in the country if not in the world.

"But when you look back in the history of the church you'll find that a lot of the saints were very young when they did the things to make them saints. St Claire was only 19."

Many of the regional papers have photographs and stories on the Rose of Tralee festival, but the contestants' experiences of the annual pageant were not all sweet, according to the Kerryman.

The paper reports that several contestants claimed they were frightened by "groping" men and people being sick when they visited some of the packed Tralee pubs they had been twinned with.

Each of the 32 Roses was assigned a pub which they visited alone one night.

Four contestants told the paper they never wanted to go through the experience again and hoped that next year's Roses would not have to do it.

"I thought it was horrible, to be honest. We were landed on our own into a pub full of drunk people.

"A lot of the girls complained about glasses being broken near them and about people getting sick," one contestant told the paper.

The Festival of Kerry refused to comment on the allegations but insisted that the twinning would go ahead next year and that it had been a success.

The Sligo Champion reports on ambitious plans to turn a neglected graveyard where 2,500 Famine victims are buried into a garden of remembrance. The County Sligo Famine Commemoration Committee wants to renovate the graveyard near St John's Hospital in Ballytivnan, which is the resting place of those who died while in the Sligo workhouse.

The committee told the paper that it hopes to reveal the identities of the victims and print their names on a special memorial.

"When the old workhouse was demolished, the records disappeared. However, they have to be somewhere and we are determined to find them. We will follow up on every lead we get," said Ms Sheelagh Hanly.

Archaeologists have uncovered a "highly significant" timber roadway in a North Tipperary bog which could be up to 3,500 years old, according to the Guardian.

The seven-metre stretch of road unearthed in Sharragh Bog, Rathcabbin, made of Irish oak split planks laid on round wood runners, is said to date from 148 BC to 1500 BC.

Samples from the planks have been sent to Queen's University, Belfast, for analysis and will be available later this month.

While the State's grain growers are adding up their losses due to the wet summer weather, one bee keeper is pleased that his honey yield was not badly affected.

Mr Pat Bennett, who looks after 80 hives for Teagasc at Clonroche, Co Wexford, told the Enniscorthy Guardian that his returns were only slightly down.

He said he had supplied his bees with sugar syrup when the heavy rains meant that plants did not secrete nectar and the pollen gatherers stayed under cover. "You need to have your bees at maximum strength," said Mr Bennett, a former bee keeper of the year. "They will repay you."

The paper also reports that exhaust fumes from yellow county council dumpers continue to poison the town's air. "On previous occasions this paper has identified to the council vehicles responsible for belching out nasty exhaust fumes," it says. The "latest culprit" was spotted at a roundabout in Abbey Square last week "pumping out a continuous plume of smoke". The Limerick Leader reports that a "blitz" by social welfare officers in Kilmallock and Newcastle West has led to major reductions in fraud and a big drop in the official unemployment figures.

A recent investigation in Kilmallock removed 36 people from the unemployment list, while an address validation exercise in Newcastle West led to the removal of 51 names from the live register.

The paper says more than £3 million has been saved in the mid-west since the social welfare clampdown began nine months ago. About 328 employers have been visited in the region, including 200 in Limerick. "This is just an example of what has been going on in the past nine months and will continue to happen," a social welfare inspector told the paper.