Local Notes: Ballyhaunis felt the full force of Storm Éowyn
Some of the damage caused by Storm Éowyn on the road leading to the Mosque in Ballyhaunis.
It’s 7am on Saturday morning, a day after the storm and a cold grey-blue pallor shrouds the town, unpunctuated by any of the normal lights of commerce and residence.
Past Corrib Oil, devoid of the lines of tradesmen’s vehicles getting petrol and breakfast. Only darkness and a single grey Volkswagen stuck between the two rows of pumps.
Onwards two hundred metres there’s hope, the sign of Murphy’s Top oil illuminated by the same machine that has the shop lit, the first artificial light seen all morning.
"We’ve the ‘jenny’ keeping her lit,” says the attendant and he’s only taking cash, no cards.
Daylight arrives and it’s back through town on Abbey Street, the hole in the covered multi purpose games area, the Muga, now like a torn white apron, its intact part stretched taut but precariously over a nest of galvanised steel in the Friary Field.
At SuperValu, the hum or a generator is the only sound. From the open doors a queue snakes to the coffee machine. They’re only taking cash.
Down Clare Street the leylandi trees which made the avenue to the mosque a green procession, keeled over in unison, their roots lifting the block brick wall that once framed them.
Further out the road towards Claremorris, palm trees everywhere laid low. A row of beeches too flipped like bowling pins, their circular root balls caked with soil and rainwater drenching the soil in which they used to lie.
Lying in the wet field, creosoted fencing stakes popping up through them like pencils. The geometric bars of the galvanised gate bent into waves.
Despite the dieback disease, most ash trees survived, their branches bare and skeletal compared to the verdant canopy of the leylandi and the intricate, woven branches of the beech.
It’s now Wednesday, nearly a week after the storm and the tooting of the 6am train as it passes the Holywell crossing is another sign of normalcy. The line has reopened.
The electricity lines aren’t yet open however and in the Community Hall there’s a daily trickle of power-less refugees from Ballyhaunis’ hinterlands, charging phones, making tea and using the Internet. Someone talks of an hour-long wait at Supermac's for a burger, queuing with all the others from dark, cold houses.
A week without power at home and there’s only tiredness now, hardly dissipated by the arrival of humanitarian assistance forms with the promise of €100 in aid if you drive to Claremorris to collect it. Seven days without power or shower.
A crowd is expected at the Community Hall on Friday, February 7th (from 4pm to 8pm) and Saturday, February 8th (from 11am to 3pm) for a public consultation for Ballyhaunis Town Centre First Plan, which is set to be a blueprint for future development.
The plan aims to make the town a more attractive place to live, work, visit and run a business.
“Naturally, the views, ideas and knowledge of the local community, businesses, residents of Ballyhaunis and its hinterland are fundamental in this process,” explains a note from the organisers under the guidance of Mayo County Council’s regeneration officer Anne McCarthy.
“Call to the drop-in session being held to allow the people of Ballyhaunis to have their say and to provide valuable information that will form part of the Ballyhaunis TCF Plan.”
Anyone who cannot attend can complete a a survey online at http://ballyhaunis-towncentrefirst.com/.
The Ballyhaunis area will be connected to high-speed broadband within 18 months, according to staff from the National Broadband Ireland (NBI) who were in the town recently on a surveying expedition. Staff in high visibility jackets were seen around Ballyhaunis town and in surrounding townlands, examining cables.
NBI staff told this column they surveyed the cabling in situ in Dunmore and Cloonfad before spending several days examining cable and cabling options in Ballyhaunis.
“Some of it will go underground but some will also go overground,” an NBI staff member said. “It will be installed in 12 to 18 months,” he added.
A Moroccan asylum seeker based in Ballyhaunis has been honoured at the recent awards night hosted by the Mayo Football League. Tarek Yassin received his award as a member of Snugboro United's 2024 League Two Team of the Year.
Describing his joy at receiving the award, Tarek said: "The distinctive thing about this country and not in any other country is the integration and the trust. Even if you have lost confidence in yourself it will give you back your confidence.”
An employee of Nour Foods in Ballyhaunis, Yassin, 35, relocated to Ballyhaunis in 2023 with his family. He was formerly a player with two Middle Eastern clubs, Abu Dhabi-based Al Wahda Football Club, which competes in the UAE Pro League, and Saudi based club Sitani. After a brief spell with Ballyhaunis Town FC in late 2023, Yassin switched to Snugboro United.
The storm which caused widespread disruption in Ballyhaunis was the topic of discussion for members of the Ballyhaunis Language Café who compared Éowyn to weather events at home.
Storms are common in parts of northern Germany, said one member of the group, Marlene Abdelkadder, who said that electricity outages are not an issue because steel pylons rather than timber poles are used to transport electricity cables. Underground cables are run off the national network of large pylons into towns and villages, explained Ms Abdelkadder.
Several Ukrainians pointed to a tornado in 2022 that caused significant damage to a limited area. However, severe weather events are less frequent in central and Eastern Europe, they agreed.
Electricity blackouts and water shortages were a way of life for one Ukrainian lady from a part of the country occupied by Russian troops before she moved to Ireland last year. Nonetheless, she said, the wind that hit her accommodation in Ballyhaunis was “terrifying”.
Logboy paid a sad farewell to Fr Tom Cleary, a popular visitor to the local church from his missionary work as a Columban priest. Fr Tom said Mass during holidays from his mission in Korea before he later moved to Australia.
Many households in Logboy still have photos of a farewell party in the late 1960s held for Fr Tom in Logboy National School after his ordination in 1969 and prior to his departure to the Far East as a member of the Columban religious order.
In a 2008 article in the magazine, Fr Tom described his pastorship of the parish of Hwa Yang Dong in Seoul and the rebuilding of his church there in 1978, his fourth year in Korea.
Fr Tom passed away on January 9 at Mercy Place, Melbourne, where he had been receiving palliative care.
Café entrepreneur Roksana Teter has brought her Tribe coffee chain to Ballyhaunis after being approached by the owners of a recently renovated building on Main Street.
Located on the ground floor of the James Lyons building, formerly a bar and hotel and now a residential facility, the Ballyhaunis outlet of Tribe is the third opened by Roksana, who grew up in Tuam.
A native of Poland and now living in Sligo, Ms Teter, at just 23, now runs three cafes, having opened the Galway outlet in 2023 before setting up in Claremorris six months ago. She buys her coffee from Amsterdam-based Five Ways, a fair-trade company.
Sales have thus far been very good at the Ballyhaunis store , which operates on a take-away basis, said Roksana, who also operates an outlet in Claremorris and another in Galway.
“I have a good feeling about the place. There is a good sense of community,” she said.
A group of retired postal workers continues to demand reforms to their pension entitlements. A 2013 agreement limited the annual increase in An Post pensions to two percent but a sharp rise in the cost of living has made this untenable given the rising cost of living, according to a letter sent by the pensioners to local media and provided to this column by Brickens-based An Post retiree Eugene Delaney.
The letter states that postal workers’ pensions are protected under 1983 legislation and want their pensions to increase by the same percentage as any increases paid to the current workers at An Post.
The company’s pension reserves are in a very healthy state, notes the letter, which demands that postal retirees “who dedicated our careers to public service, should not be left on or below the poverty line”.
