The first thing that strikes you about the Ennis parish homepage is the awful synthesised muzak version of Vivaldi's Four Seasons that plays as soon as the site loads up. Only phone waiting systems have committed worse crimes against classical music. Things, thankfully, improve after that. In fact, the site does very well what it sets out to do - provide information on religious services in the town. The historic information provided on the five churches in the town, four Catholic and one Church of Ireland, is very well researched and presented. Particularly interesting is a section on the organ in the Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul. Its list of organists, choirmasters and choirmistresses since 1930 is a nice tribute to people whose contribution to church life can often be overlooked. There are also short personal histories of some of the priests that work in the parish.
The listing of Mass times is something of use to people visiting the area as well as to locals. Protestant services at Shannon Airport are also mentioned on the site.
The children's page has links to 11 local schools, a figure which is very impressive in a town with a population of less than 20,000. The Parish News and Groups sections provide good information on local organisations such as the Altar Society and the Bereavement Support Group.
One area that the site could expand to would be to include information on non-Christian groups in the town, particularly as Ennis now has a reasonably big immigrant community. Overall, though, the people of Ennis can be proud of this site. It seems that they have made very good use of being awarded the title of Information Age Town a few years ago.
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