Congratulations to Ciara O’Connor, Lower Athea who graduated recently from Ulster University with an MSc in Dietetics and won the Nutritional Products Prize for Best Nutrition Research Project which is to be published

Athea Tidy Towns

 We were delighted to meet with the producers of Nationwide last week with the view to featuring Athea in an upcoming programme. The producers were suitably impressed with what we have to offer as a parish and will return on Saturday, August 24th for filming. The programme will feature the history of the parish, current economic conditions & community activism. The producers are currently putting a programme outline together which will be confirmed in the next few days. We have a busy few weeks of organising ahead  ensuring we put our best foot forward on National TV. With this in mind, we are again making an appeal to all residents to have their ‘patch’ looking it’s best prior to filming. Huge thanks to everyone who has painted up, power washed, erected flowers etc already this year, the village has never looked better. There are however some remaining buildings that could benefit from a fresh coat of paint. As you will see from the buildings already painted in the village this year, colour selection is key and we are happy to provide advice  & guidance on colour selection in consultation with a local artist. Please get in touch with us by contacting any member of the committee if you require any assistance.

Thanks to funding made available from Councillor John Sheahan, new ‘Welcome to Athea Signs’ will be in place shortly. The signs will create a nice welcome to our visitors and will also help to promote Athea as ‘The Giant’s Village’.

Work is also due to commence shortly on our river walk project out the Glin Road. This will be another new amenity for the parish and will allow us to fully appreciate the beauty of the River Gale and surrounding countryside. Watch this space!

Our group were saddened to hear of the death of Murt Taylor RIP last week. Murt was an absolute gentleman and was a huge help to us with watering during the summer months. Murt will be greatly missed by our community.

We await to hear the fate of our application for funding under the Clár Progamme to construct a sensory garden incorporating a Giant Sculpture at the Giant’s Garden. We expect to hear from the Department in the coming weeks.

Many thanks to Athea GAA for responding to the suggestion from last year’s adjudicator to plant creepers on the car park wall. We look forward to seeing these creepers develop in the coming months. We would also like to thank Seamus Ahern & David O’Connor for painting the fence at the Giant’s Garden, much appreciated.

Congratulations to Ciara O’Connor, Lower Athea who graduated recently from Ulster University with an MSc in Dietetics and won the Nutritional Products Prize for Best Nutrition Research Project which is to be published

Sacristan’s Collection

The Sacristan’s Collection for Carol will take place on Saturday, 10th and Sunday 11th of August. Envelopes can be got in the Church. Your support is appreciated.

Available to Borrow

Fr. Brendan Duggan has 2 fiddles that he is willing to lend to young people who may be interested in learning to play. One is a ½ fiddle for the younger learner and the other is a ¾ fiddle. Contact him on

087-0562674 if interested.

Problems

by Domhnall de Barra

I heard a chilling bit of tape on the radio this morning that really shocked me. It was taken from a rally in America where  Donald Trump told the congregation that if the four Democrat  Congresswomen he had recently told they should go back where they came from didn’t like his immigration policies they could leave the country. Immediately the crowd started to chant “send her back, send her back” referring to one of them llhan Omhar, the only one not born in America.  Although Trump said he tried to intervene, the evidence is the on tape that he did not.  The frightening thing is not that Trump is a racist and wants to further white supremacy but that those at the rally were so fervent in their support for his degrading treatment of elected politicians in their own country. It reminds me of footage from before the 2nd World War when Hitler ranted against the Jews and was enthusiastically supported by the people who believed in the superiority of their own race. We all know what happened as a result of that!  We may think it could never happen today but the evidence is there before our eyes. It is easy to sow division, we have seen it in our own country with the travelling community. They are labelled as tax dodgers, dole spongers, robbers and cheats by certain people, some of whom have never had any contact with them. They are all then tarred with the same brush and suffer as a consequence. I am not saying there are no lawbreakers in the travelling community, of course there are but they do not have a monopoly on it. There are far more criminals from the settled community who now have no qualms about shooting rivals on sight. My point is that any ethnic community can be maligned by deliberately targeting them as undesirables in society. Trump is doing this for very selfish reasons. He wants the support of the gun-toting rednecks and Ku Klux Klan types in his bid to be re-elected and by creating fear and division he wants to appear as the person  who will champion them in their hateful pursuits. We tend to forget that the Southern States fought a war for their right to keep slaves not that long ago and some of them still think of coloured people as less than human. Despite the great strides by people inspired by the likes of the great Martin Luther King, there is still a big percentage of people who fear and detest the coloured races. It does not take much to go from hateful words to hateful deeds and if this happens, the blood is on Trump’s hands. I hope and pray that the more decent members of the Republican Party, and there are quite a few of them, will find their backbone in time and stand up to this bully who should not be looking after a pig sty, never mind a country like the USA.

Parking Problem

I have been asked to highlight  a  problem that faced a visitor to our fair village a while ago. She is  a wheelchair user and wanted to look around the place her ancestors came from before they went to Australia. Unfortunately  she was unable to complete her journey through the streets due to the random parking of cars on the pavement blocking her path. I took a walk to see for myself and, sure enough, there were areas where it was just possible to walk by a badly parked car but it would have been impossible for a wheelchair or a pram to pass. There is also the problem of double parking outside the shop. I know. I have done it myself when in a hurry, but it is not right and would not happen if we had a traffic warden. It is difficult to see how it can be avoided due to the lack of parking spaces available in the centre where most of the business is done between the shop, the butchers, the chemist and pubs. Is there any space nearby that could be turned into a car park so we would not have any more problems?  I look forward to any ideas anyone may have. In the meantime, could motorists think before they park on footpaths that  are there for a purpose. We all have to share the space available and babies in buggies and prams along with wheelchair users need their own space too. In some places footpaths have been made far too wide, for example the path outside the funeral parlour and the Top of the Town. Motorists have to park using a bit of the path or otherwise there would not be any room for two cars to pass each other on the street. This has caused huge problems in Abbeyfeale where the rules are strictly enforced. Now they have jams when two big vehicles cannot pass each other on the main street. Limerick County Council take note and design footpaths and roads so all users are catered for.