Athea Ladies Club
** Spring Clean **
Athea Ladies Club are doing a clothes collection at the clubhouse this weekend Fri 21st – Sun 23rd May
We will accept all
✅ women’s, men’s and children’s clothing, handbags, belts, all paired shoes, curtains, bed linen, towels and blankets.
X Just NO PILLOWS OR DUVETS.
Just simply put all your unwanted clothes in a black bag and drop them to the clubhouse at any of the following times.
– Friday 21st May 6pm – 9 pm
– Saturday 22nd May 11 am – 12 pm
– Sunday 23rd May 10 am – 12 pm
Capt. Paddy Dalton (1896 – 1921) Jamie Kelly
May 12th marked the 100th anniversary of the death of Captain Paddy Dalton at Gortaglanna along with his comrades Captain Jerry Lyons and Captain Paddy Walsh who were murdered by Crown Forces. During the spring and summer of 1921, the War of Independence raged across the country. North Kerry, a staunchly republican area, was particularly affected. The Flying Columns were having a lot of success and the Black and Tans were retaliating by carrying out atrocities against the local population. The Cork & Kerry Creamery in Athea was burned in December 1920 as part of this retaliation. It took extreme courage to oppose the British and the volunteers’ lives were in constant danger as summary executions were occurring regularly.
Captain Paddy Dalton was born on February 23rd 1896 at Coole. His father was Michael Dalton (1854 – 1933) who was described as a “sterling nationalist” and his mother was Hanora “Nano” White (1858 – 1927) from a neighbouring farm, Coole House. Paddy received his education at Athea National School (then located in the centre of the village) where he enrolled on April 22nd 1901 and remained there until 1911. After school, he began work as a hardware assistant at Faley’s shop on William Street, Listowel. Growing up in the early 1900’s, he was very much aware of the desire for a free nation. He was influenced by the execution of Con Colbert in 1916 and the visit of Countess Markievicz to Athea in 1917. Her rousing speech is reputed to have been an inspiring moment for him.
During his time in Listowel, Dalton became involved in the republican movement by joining the North Kerry Flying Column where he held the rank of Captain. Meanwhile, his bother Thomas Dalton was the officer in charge of the Athea Company of the West Limerick Brigade.
On Thursday May 12th 1921, Paddy Dalton along with Con Dee and Paddy Walsh left Athea heading for Listowel after providing intelligence to their Limerick comrades. They had also attended a mission at St. Bartholomew’s Church prior to leaving Athea as well as having breakfast at Paddy’s first cousins’ house in the village, Josie Liston, Captain of Cumann na mBan. On route to Listowel, they met Jerry Lyons but were surprised and captured by the Black and Tans. They were removed in lorries and taken to the site of the current memorial in Gortaglanna where they were placed before a firing squad. It was here that Walsh, Lyons, and Dalton were shot dead while Con Dee succeeded in making his escape.
The bodies of the three men were then taken to Tralee and subsequently to Listowel where they were returned to their families. Paddy Dalton’s first cousin, Josie Liston claimed his body on behalf of the family which was brought from Listowel by Michael D. Mullane of Templeathea.
His funeral proceeded to Templeathea but was prevented from entering the cemetery by British soldiers who fired on the four local men carrying the coffin – Patrick Woulfe (Corner House, Athea), Patrick Mullane (Harness Maker, Athea), Thade Ahern (Parkanna, Athea) and Jack “The Painter” Liston (Athea). Eight members of Cumann na mBan then stepped forward and carried the remains to the graveside. They were Babs Woulfe (Corner House), Nora O’Sullivan, Molly Carroll, Alice Foley, Nurse Madge Stack, Nora Fitzgerald (Batt’s Bar), Nellín O’Connor and Peg Griffin.
In May 1950, a memorial cross was erected at Gortaglanna at the site of the shooting. In May 1971, as part of the 50th anniversary, a plaque was unveiled at the Corner House, Athea while Dalton’s Terrace was named in his memory. Paddy Dalton is also remembered on the Athea Heritage Trail as well as on a monument in Newcastle West remembering all those who lost their lives as part of Ireland’s struggle for freedom.
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam
St. Bartholomew’s Church, Athea
Mass Intentions next weekend
Fri May 21st 7.30pm: John Danaher. Pat Gleeson (month’s Mind) Jack, Ita and Denis Collins.
Sun May 23rd 10.30am: Mary Dalton & Sr. Liam O’Sullivan.
Your prayers are requested for Patsy O’Connor, Keale, Athea whose funeral takes place this week and for Josephine Kiely of Kilcolman, recently deceased. May they Rest in Peace.
All masses and funeral masses are live streamed on the Church Services TV network via the following link https://churchservices.tv/athea
Churches Open on the 10th of May
We are delighted that churches are open again for people to attend mass and other religious services. The maximum number of people allowed to attend is 50 and the two-metre social distancing rule still applies. As before, the stewards will direct you to the hand sanitizing stations and then to your seats. The stewards will also direct you to Holy Communion and at the end of Mass we ask that you exit the church gradually and safely. Please follow the guidance of the stewards at all times.
Baptismal Information: Any parent wishing to baptise their child must have the baptismal course completed – for further details please contact Theresa on 087 1513565.
Course Dates: Tues 8th June/ Tues 13th July.
Car Radio Service: We have recently installed a radio service which allows you to listen to mass on your car radio when parked in the church car parks – please tune your radio to 105fm.
Church opening
The Church is open daily for private prayer. If you wish to book an anniversary mass, a wedding or get a mass card signed please contact Fr. Brendan on 087-0562674 or Siobhan on 087-2237858.
Crowning of our Lady
As May is the month of our Blessed Mother Mary, we will place a crown of flowers on the statue of Mary at next Sunday’s mass. If anyone wishes to leave some flowers in the church for this occasion, please do.
The Way I See It
By Domhnall de Barra
Once again, the housing crisis in Ireland has come to the fore as prices, particularly in Dublin, rise to heights that rule out even well paid professionals. The ordinary working person has no real opportunity to get on the property ladder and those who might have a chance are crippled because they are saddled with rents that are so high that there is no spare money to save for a mortgage. Why has this situation come about?. To understand fully, we have to go back to the birth of this state and how our early leaders handled independence. They modelled the Oireachtas on the British political system with two houses, the Seanad became our House of Lords and the Dáil the House of Commons. We did not have any royalty so we created the position of Uachtarán that would act in the same way. We adopted their legal and judicial systems keeping most of the laws on the statute books and we created county and urban councils to emulate the councils across the water. I am not saying this was a bad thing because, at the time, it was working well in Britain and did the same job here. As working class people in Britain gained more power, services such as health and housing were provided and because local authorities built thousands of houses each year there was an abundance of homes available to rent at reasonable rates and later to buy on a purchase scheme. The National Health Service was free to all and ensured medical help for those who could not afford private care.
We, of course, followed their example in this country and, even in times when money was scarce, all the local authorities built houses and cottages and regional health boards built hospitals and created clinics and practices to look after people’s health free of charge. The suburbs of cities and towns were full of terraced public housing so there was a home for everybody. In the countryside, the county council would build a cottage for anyone who could provide an acre of land. They became known as labourers cottages, mainly because they housed the working classes but they were well built and there was many a fine family reared in them. The situation continued like this until the 1970s when Margaret Thatcher changed the whole system and privatised many functions including housing. The idea was that the private sector would invest in housing that could be sold to the public and it would save the government the expense of building them themselves. It was based on the American “free market” capitalist system. The private sector would make money and would boost employment. The saying was “a rising tide raises all boats” which is fine if you have a boat but, if you don’t you will be swamped by that very tide. We, of course followed suit here and did exactly the same thing. There was a rush for land on which to build housing and banks were only too willing to provide finance for speculators who stood to make fortunes. There was a cosy cartel of politicians, developers and bankers who manipulated the construction sector to enrich themselves and, because they all got too greedy, we eventually went over the cliff edge with the banking collapse. The rest, as they say is history and we have not recovered from it yet. Because the government was not building houses we now faced a shortage. The same applied throughout the counties and the single cottage in rural areas disappeared. The fall out from the banking crash meant there was very little money available for housing and developers didn’t take any risks resulting in many people, who normally would be entitled to a house, becoming homeless. In recent years the government has tried various schemes, tinkering with the problem without any great success. There is no simple solution but we must forget the idea that private enterprise will solve all our problems. Private enterprise exists to make money and has its place in society but it should never have been given free rein on the housing market. It is time to go back to the tried and trusted method. Local authorities should be obliged to build a certain amount of public housing each year, some to rent and some to buy at affordable rates. We have an obsession in this country with owning our own homes. This is not the case in many other countries where people are content to live all their lives in rented accommodation. Again there is room for both but we must not continue with the situation where families are being put up in hotels or, worse still, sleeping rough. It is not going to change overnight but some opposition parties are pushing for more state involvement and even though I don’t always agree with Sinn Fein and the ultra left, I think they have the right idea this time.
Another problem with house building is the planning process. Getting a house built on your own land in rural Ireland can be a long and costly process. Anybody can object to the propose structure and the costs of adding services to a site are prohibitive. Why do councils charge so much to connect the services they were set up to provide? Surely young people starting off need a helping hand and not be crippled with forking out thousands of Euros before a block is laid. When it comes to objections we really must do something about the fact that somebody living hundreds of miles away, who has never been to the area where the site is located, can lodge an objection on environmental grounds. We have seen planning refused because of scenic areas, rare worms, birds, frogs etc. Am I wrong in thinking that a house for humans is more important than the disruption to a rare species of animal. Of course there has to be some regulation or people would do what they liked but let it be reasonable planning and focused on the provision of homes for our people.
The cyber attack on the health service highlights how dangerous modern technology can be. Little by little, we are all being forced to use the internet as our way of banking and doing business. We use cards for shopping and paying bills and buying online. We give our details over the phone and trust that they are safe but we now know that the opposite is the case. All our computers, laptops, tablets and smart phones are wide open to being hacked and all our data being ransomed back to us. We need more security than we have at the moment but in the meantime we should be very wary of offering our card details to any person or company we do not know. They say crypto currency is the way of the future but, because it is not tied to any country or bank, a hacker could empty an account at the press of a button and there is no way of tracking the money. I’m sure that the powers that be will come up with solutions eventually but, until then, I won’t be investing in any type of bit coin.