A round-up of today’s other stories in brief
Teacher opposed to Corrib gas pipeline may leave area
The daughter of one of the Rossport Five opposed to the Corrib gas pipeline in north Mayo has said she, her family and other families may now leave the area. This, said Bríd Ní Sheighin, was due to An Bord Pleanála’s recent approval of the last pipeline section.
Ms Ní Sheighin, who is a teacher and mother of two small children, is married to John Monaghan, blacksmith, artist and spokesman for community group Pobal Chill Chomáin which appealed against the pipeline route.
Mr Monaghan said it was a “long-term decision” and one which broke his heart, given that his wife is a native Irish speaker teaching children in her own Gaeltacht area.
The final section of the project – the third pipeline route – requires a foreshore licence and consents from the Minister for the Environment and the Minister for Energy, respectively, before work can begin. Last week’s decision by An Taisce to pursue a judicial review of An Bord Pleanála’s approval for this final section has been welcomed by Pobal Chill Chomáin.
Election poster ban proposed for Tralee Election candidates in the Kerry North, Limerick West and Kerry South constituencies are being urged not to put up posters in the centre of Kerry’s two largest towns, The poster ban, introduced within wider Killarney some years ago in the interests of tidiness, was said to have worked well. It is now proposed to extend this to Tralee, applying to the core area of Denny Street, The Mall, Edward Street, Ashe Street and Castle Street. Tralee town engineer Gerry Riordan has written to candidates to say the move follows agreement at Tralee Town Council in November. It “is effectively driven by the strides being made by Tralee over the last number of years to promote and improve the appearance of the town”. The town has improved its standing in the Tidy Towns, Mr Riordan said. “I am asking all candidates in the forthcoming general election to agree to a poster ban within the retail core area of Tralee town. “Your assistance . . . will help promote the idea of civic pride . . . and send a positive message that litter is not acceptable in any format,” he wrote in the letter. Anti-sex trafficking seminar in Kerry Demand for cheap labour and for sexual services have seen human trafficking become the third most profitable crime after drugs and smuggling, a seminar in Tralee heard yesterday, writes Anne Lucey. Trafficking was potentially everywhere in rural as well as urban Ireland and there were suspected cases involving a brothel in a remote two-storey farmhouse in the northwest of the country, as well as slave labour in a Dublin suburb, the seminar heard. The event was hosted by the Kerry anti-sex trafficking campaign group in Tralee and heard from senior personnel attached to a dedicated anti-trafficking unit set up by the Department of Justice and Law Reform in recent years. People, especially teachers, were asked to watch out for the signs of human trafficking, such as children not behaving in a way typical of other children their age, and if people were living in groups and working long hours.
