After a short break, Medium-Sized Town, Fairly Big Story was back on ‘Break­fast with Hec­tor’ on RTE 2Fm last week. Tues­day morn­ings just would not be the same with­out the best of the regional news­pa­pers so it was great to be back on air. And thank you to all the lis­ten­ers for their best wishes regard­ing the birth of baby James Dun­can Floyd Casey. I’m still on cloud 9, and every day with the lit­tle fella is just a mag­nif­i­cent gift. More on him later, but here were the sto­ries that made it to the show last Tues­day morn­ing, Feb 24^th. Be sure to tune in every Tues­day morn­ing at 8.20am for my slot.… Actu­ally, be sure to tune into Break­fast with Hec­tor every morn­ing, Mon­day to Fri­day from 7am — 9am.

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Money down the toi­let in Bagenalstown?

Gone are the days when you could spend a penny in Car­low… nowa­days it’s a very costly affair to do your busi­ness in Bagenalstown.

In fact, it costs the same amount to run the land­mark super­loo in the medium-sized town as it does to run the town itself for a year.

For two weeks now, town and county coun­cils in Car­low have been at log­ger­heads over the fate of the loo, described as so clean “you could bring any­one into it”. Some coun­cil­lors want the super­loo scrapped, oth­ers see it as a local land­mark worth saving.

The debate about the super­loo, as reported by Ester Hay­den in the Car­low Peo­ple, took more turns than a S-bend pipe, with an awful lot of blad­der emp­ty­ing over the issue, but you can’t paper over the cracks that it costs €40,000 to run the super­loo, and €50,000 to run the entire town.

Cllr. Denis Foley, always a cham­pion of the super­loo, said he wasn’t in favour of the removal of the super­loo unless there was a replace­ment facil­ity. He said the 15 year lease on the super­loo still had ten years remain­ing and said it would cost €180,000 to break the lease. Cllr. Foley said the old toi­let in the town had been van­dalised repeat­edly whereas the super­loo wasn’t van­dalised. He said it was so clean ‘you could bring any­one into it’.

Cllr. Joe Man­ning said ‘it’s cost­ing €50,000 a year to run the town coun­cil and €40,000 a year to run that toi­let. It’s crazy. It’ll cost us €600,000 to ful­fill the con­tract and just €180,000 to break it.’

Cllr. Paddy Kiely said he was in Cahir recently and ‘wanted to spend a penny’ and he came across ‘a grand pub­lic toi­let. There was noth­ing lav­ish about it and there was room for two or three lads to go into. It was a mas­sive lit­tle toilet.’

He too was against the removal of the super­loo. The debate will carry on around the S-bend for some time to come…

Farm­ers warned about dodgy castrators

The Lim­er­ick Leader has a warn­ing for farm­ers buy­ing cas­tra­tors on the black mar­ket. 12 young bulls had a lucky escape when a faulty cas­tra­tor did not do its job a Lim­er­ick IFA meet­ing­was told. A very good dairy beef farmer said he had bought the cas­tra­tor for €130 last autumn. He cas­trated his wean­lings and about a month later noticed it hadn’t worked. He has been cas­trat­ing cat­tle for don­keys years, reports the paper, but he was quizzing his san­ity. He spoke to two vets who told him the device he bought was defec­tive. If the farmer bought one there must be more out there for sale warns the local IFA.

The bul­locks lucky escape didn’t last long as they were later cas­trated prop­erly. Other farm­ers have been advised to check the nuts and bolts of their castrators.

Cat killer on the loose in Portlaoise

There’s a killer on the loose in Port­laoise. Accord­ing to the Laois Nation­al­ist notices with pho­tographs of one of the dead vic­tims, a black cat, have been posted up in var­i­ous loca­tions around the town warn­ing, “We hope the killer will be found.”

One notice claims that five cats were poi­soned in a three-week period, while another says that five were killed in a two-week period in the Grat­tan Street area of the town.

It also warns pet own­ers “to be care­ful. Don’t let your cats out­side unattended.”

A local per­son from the Grat­tan Street area, who did not wish to be named, said she “wouldn’t be sur­prised if they were poi­soned. Over the years there has been a huge prob­lem with wild cats in this area”.

“The screams of them at night time and the stench that the tom cats leave behind is ter­ri­ble. They also cause awful prob­lems scav­eng­ing through bins.”

A spokesper­son for the Laois Soci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­elty to Ani­mals (LSPCA), Eileen Kerry, said that her asso­ci­a­tion had not received any reports about cats being poisoned.

She said that if peo­ple come across colonies of feral (wild) cats, which can num­ber up to 30, they should con­tact her asso­ci­a­tion. She said to steer clear of pet assas­sins or cat vig­i­lantes. Her asso­ci­a­tion was not ‘rentakill’ but was the only way to deal with feral cats.

Wild boar update – more killed

Lis­ten­ers to MSTFBS will recall that a wild boar was shot dead after been trapped in a chicken coup by a local farmer in the Brit­tas area of the moun­tains. There were fears that there could be more roam­ing the moun­tains. Well, those fears have been realised and the Laois Nation­al­ist has been informed by a very reli­able source in the hunt­ing fra­ter­nity in Laois, that three have been shot recently in Strad­bally and Athy, with oth­ers spot­ted in forests around the Bal­lyfin area.

The paper received a pic­ture of a recently shot boar, with the hunter cen­sored.
He did give the paper a quote. “I can assure you, there’s more of them in the county than a lot of peo­ple think,” he said. Euro­pean wild boar were classed as extinct for over 5,000 years

King­dom on high alert over Kil­lar­ney flasher

Kerry’s Eye News­pa­per leads with a shock­ing story of a masked man who exposed him­self to a young woman walk­ing on her own in Kil­lar­ney National Park last Sun­day after­noon. The paper fears it is a repeat of streak­ing inci­dents reported last July.  

The man, naked but for a bal­a­clava, had con­cealed him­self in a tree but emerged to com­mit his lewd act as the vic­tim passed by.

The fright­en­ing inci­dent has prompted local Gar­dai to warn peo­ple, espe­cially women, not to walk on their own in quiet areas of the Park for their own per­sonal safety.

“That woman was ter­ri­fied,” a senior Garda said. “It’s gone beyond a joke.” 

Two garda vehi­cles sped to the scene between Muck­ross House and Torc Water­fall at 4.15pm on Sun­day, in response to an emer­gency call made by the shocked woman, who is in her 20s. 

“We don’t know if it’s con­nected to the per­son in the sum­mer,” a Garda spokes­woman said. “His face was cov­ered and he was par­tially dressed. We want peo­ple to let us know if they see any­thing suspicious.”

The fright­en­ing inci­dent has prompted Gar­dai and Con­ser­va­tion Rangers to step up patrols in the Muck­ross area. 

Gar­dai are appeal­ing to local jar­veys and peo­ple who walk or cycle the National Park reg­u­larly to report any sight­ings of sus­pi­cious indi­vid­u­als, vehi­cles or cyclists.

Aran Island’s first ever park­ing ticket!

One Inis Mór dri­ver made his­tory in a way they’d rather for­get on Mon­day last when they became the recip­i­ent of the first ever road traf­fic vio­la­tion ticket issued on the Aran Islands.

Com­mu­nity War­den Mar­tin Man­nion attached the dreaded paper­work to the win­dow of a car at Kil­ro­nan Har­bour on Mon­day morn­ing as the new County Coun­cil Traf­fic Plan kicked in on Inis Mór.

The Plan was agreed by Gal­way County Coun­cil in 2011 and it came into effect on Jan­u­ary 1. Local Com­mu­nity War­dens have been given the author­ity to issue on the spot fine tick­ets to motorists who dis­obey the law, espe­cially near Kil­ro­nan har­bour. They can also hit those with no tax discs.

Report­ing in the Con­naught Tri­bune, Máirtín Ó Catháin put the num­ber of vehi­cles on Inis Mór island at about 400. The islands have a spe­cial rate of motor tax of €95 per year – up from €88 euro due to bud­get changes – which applies to all vehi­cles irre­spec­tive of capacity.

A pow­er­ful jeep type vehi­cle that could cost over €1,000 in motor tax on the main­land can be taxed on the island at the spe­cial rate of €95. The on-the-spot fine for non-display of a tax disc is €60.

War­ren­point Wel­comes Care­ful Drivers

Cor­mac Camp­bell has a great astory in the Newry Reporter about yet another car that recently went through the ‘War­ren­point Wel­comes Care­ful Dri­vers’ wall at Nar­row Water.

The wall, located close to War­ren­point Golf Club, is right beside a sign read­ing ‘War­ren­point wel­comes care­ful dri­vers’. Iron­i­cally it has been dam­aged dozens of times in the past decade by crash­ing vehi­cles. It is hit around three times a year by vehi­cles dri­ving towards the sea­side town.

Among the sug­ges­tions for the high num­ber of crashes are the shape of a nearby round­about and the belief that many vehi­cles fail to slow down suf­fi­ciently when approach­ing the end of the Newry dual carriageway.

Speak­ing to the Newry Reporter, Golf Club Pres­i­dent Peter Fitzsim­mons said that the prob­lem often leads to con­sid­er­able expense for the club.

“The club is out the expense of repairs if we can’t iden­tify who was involved in the crash,” he said.“We are cer­tainly delighted when peo­ple want to join us at the golf club but hope­fully they will come in the main entrance.”

Statue thieves know no bounds – they’re now steal­ing miniatures

Huge statue rob­beries have been going on all over the coun­try for many months now, but in Kerry they do things a lit­tle dif­fer­ently. A minia­ture bronze replica of one of Tralee’s most iconic stat­ues has been stolen from the Ashe Memo­r­ial Hal in the town, along with a small amount of cash.

Esti­mated to be worth approx­i­mately €5,000, the stolen piece is a scale model of the statue of Rose of Tralee which cur­rently stands in the Rose Gar­den in the town park.

Accord­ing to Tralee gar­daí, the valu­able bronze scale model was taken from tourist office at the Ashe Memo­r­ial Hall in the early hours of Wednes­day morn­ing last.