Debt-collectors are being employed by the Western Education and Library Board in the North in an effort to recover thousands of overdue library books.
According to the Impartial Reporter, collectors have been so successful in Omagh they are extending their operation to Enniskillen, Lisnaskea and Irvinestown areas. The problem of missing books costs Northern Ireland libraries more than £350,000 sterling a year.
Under the new system, holders of overdue library books will be given written reminders after four weeks and eight weeks. If the books are still not returned, the users can expect notification that a debt-collector will visit their homes. Offenders will incur a "recovery charge" of 35 per cent of the value of the book, plus outstanding fines.
"Scary, Mary" has turned the voters contrary in west Limerick, declared the Limerick Leader. The Tanaiste, Ms Harney "sounded the death-knell" for her party, the Progressive Democrats, when she went on holiday in the south of France as a guest of multi-millionaire Ulick McEvaddy, who is lobbying the Government to allow him to develop a terminal a Dublin Airport. The PDs' precarious hold on one seat in Limerick East is now under threat, the Leader said.
"Whatever advantage of being perceived to hold the high moral ground is now surely forfeit. The PDs must now be regarded as being just like the other parties." In Manhattan, emigrants buy Kerry's Eye on Thursday nights, on the same day it is published. "Who got married, photos of social life in Tralee and who is looking for planning permission" are the main draws of the publication for homesick urbanites.
The Dublin intelligentsia may look askance at the Rose of Tralee festival, but to others the beauty contest is an enviable social fixture.
The Anglo-Celt tried to claim this year's Rose, Geraldine O'Grady of Cork, for Cavan (Geraldine's grandmother lives in Ballyconnell), while the Limerick Leader was consumed by envy. "If a comparatively plain town like Tralee can attain such an eye-catching tourism profile, a handsome city such a Limerick should be ashamed of allowing itself to be overlooked," commented Brendan Halligan.
"Don't forget the real Ireland," urged the Kilkenny People. Welcoming the publication of the Government White Paper on Rural Regeneration, it called for a "more balanced development of the regions".
"What we are calling for is the need to secure the traditional standards of friendliness, of neighbourliness and of mutual social support which has in the past made Ireland a place to be proud of.
"Those qualities cannot easily be sustained in the vast suburbs which are relentlessly creeping out from selected growth centres. Instead, what is developing there are communities which lack any cohesion or sense of identity or common cause.
"The people who live in these sprawling, characterless areas do not usually feel any sense of belonging. That is why the young people who live there frequently indulge in teenage rampages and in acts of wanton violence. They do not feel any sense of being part of a community and for them there is no notion of social responsibility."
The Clare Champion reported concerns that Clare's "cocaine culture" could "wreck the social fabric" of the county. There has been a dramatic increase in drug-related admission to a treatment centre in Ennis, which the Clare County Council chairman, Mr Sean Hillery, thinks is a direct result of a more sophisticated type of dealer becoming involved in cocaine in Clare.
A 19-year-old who has never attended school got 590 points in her Leaving Cert and plans to study at Trinity College Dublin, the Kerryman reported.
Ms Muireann Maguire of Ballydavid took herself through six Leaving Certificate subjects by studying at home and in Dingle library. She is also a published poet.
There has been "some local comment" in Carracastle, Co Mayo, concerning Ms Emer Holohan-Doyle, who was crowned Miss Ireland two weeks ago, according to the Connaught Telegraph.
Emer failed weeks earlier to make much of an impression with the judges of a parish pageant, the annual "Carracastle Lass", the paper revealed. Miss Ireland diplomatically shrugged off the snub - after all, she is on her way to the Miss World finals.
"Hundreds of foreign tourists looked on in amazement" as members of two feuding traveller families, the Wards and the Sweeneys, armed themselves with slash-hooks, baseball bats, pickaxe handles, lump hammers and pieces of timber and fought on the main street of Clifden during the annual Connemara Pony Show. The Connacht Tribune said the "arranged" battle, which took place at 11.30 a.m. on a Thursday, was "another chapter in the long-running saga which led to pitched battles at Tuam Graveyard in 1996 when several people were seriously injured and 18 people subsequently received jail sentences". Yet another instalment to the "saga" occurred on the following Wednesday at 2 a.m., when up to 40 members of one of the Ward family got involved in a "full-scale battle" on Gilmartin Road, Tuam. There were three arrests.