Of waste disposal and other classes of `filth'

Gardai in Bray were said to have been "horrified" by obscene pornographic movies and magazines seized in two raids on a Bray sex shop, the Bray People reported.

Over 125 items were recovered by gardai in the most recent raid on The Blue Box sex shop, while the previous haul required seven officers to carry it away, the paper revealed. It stated that a local Garda chief described the porn items found in both raids as "very obscene".

Gardai, the paper said, have yet to establish who owns the shop, which remains open until their inquires are completed.

In a similar case which came before the Limerick District Court last week, Judge John Garavan fined the owners of Limerick's 4 Play sex shop £2,400 and banned it from selling videos for five years, the Con]nacht Tribune reported. Shardam Trading Company, which operates the store, was fined £500 for advertising a brothel and a total of £900 for stocking offensive videos and magazines. The company pleaded guilty to the possession of video-recordings entitled Wild Side Plastic Injection, You're Welcome and Starr, all of which, the paper noted, are prohibited under Section 5 of the Video Recording Act 1989.

The shop also entered a guilty plea for having six banned magazines for sale, including Hustler and Big Ones International.

"Ban this book," said the headline of Kerry's Eye. The paper was referring to Booker Prize-nominated The Deposition of Father McCreevy, which, it said, featured "graphic scenes of sexual intercourse with sheep, explicit violence, murder and madness in a fictional West Kerry village in the late 1930s".

Micheal de Mordha of the Blasket Island Heritage Centre described the book as, "only muck" and told the paper, "whoever put it on the shortlist for the Booker Prize should have their heads examined".

But Cllr Michael Healy-Rae went one step further and called for a "fatwa" on the author, Brian O'Doherty. The paper quoted Mr Healy-Rae as saying: "This is outrageous filth and nonsense that should be banned in Ireland, and if this is what the Booker people think is talent, they're all a disgrace."

Mr Healy-Rae is then reported to have said: "The Muslims put a fatwa on Salman Rushdie for insulting them, and I am calling for a fatwa on this guy." The winner of the Booker Prize will be announced on November 7th.

Waste disposal wars hit the counties of Clare and Limerick this week. The Clare Champion warned of an imminent "disposal crisis" with the announcement that the county's central landfill site at Doora outside Ennis is to close. This "shock development" comes after a report from the Environmental Protection Agency that the refuse is causing ground water pollution. The paper reported that Clare County Council will have to make new plans for waste disposal, which are likely to involve the transfer of the county's waste to Limerick and Kerry.

"All Clare's rubbish to be ferried to G'droma" was the headline on the front of the Limerick Leader. It reported that Limerick County Council has already agreed to receive Clare's waste and the most likely site would be the landfill at Gortnadroma. "Clare could be dumping in West Limerick for two years at least," due to opposition to the development of a new Clare landfill site at Inagh, the paper said.

OFFALY County Council has admitted it has no waste management plan, according to the Tullamore Tribune. The county manager, Mr Niall Sweeney, said the Minister for Environment, Mr Dempsey, would now "have to address the issue nationally," the paper stated.

"Out of sight out of mind, or a potential city - which description best fits Portlaoise?" the Leinster Express asked, following a Fine Gael-organised conference last week. The chief executive of the Chamber of Commerce of Ireland, Mr Simon Nugent, suggested that because Portlaoise was now bypassed, it might be out of sight, out of mind. However, the paper quoted Fine Gael TD Mr Charles Flanagan as saying, "In 20 years' time the population will be more than 30,000. In a 25-year period, Portlaoise will have changed from a fairly quiet provincial town to being a small city."

While Portlaoise may have to wait for its city status, the Clare Champion maintained that Ennis has been put out of the running already by Fine Gael's National Spatial Plan. Ennis is off the agenda as a new city "despite a statement from the Fine Gael press office earlier in the year that Ennis is definitely included in the plan," the paper claimed. Ennis has been overlooked, it said, in favour of Tralee, Kilkenny, Letterkenny, Castlebar, Athlone, Portlaoise, Dundalk and Sligo.

Sligo is having its own status problems however, according to the Sligo Champion. Sligo's Mayor, Ald Sean MacManus, accused the Government of "deliberately misleading the people of Sligo over its intentions to downgrade Sligo Corporation to town council status". Ald MacManus told the paper he was still determined this would not happen. "The Government apparently believes we are gullible fools who are easily taken in. This is not the case and we will continue to maintain and intensify our campaign," he said.