Local Notes: Ballyhaunis native celebrates 100th birthday
Ballyhaunis native Austin Boyle (centre) recently celebrated his 100th birthday. Members of Austin's family from Ballyhaunis travelled to Coventry to celebrate with him. Pictured, from left: Jim Donnelly, Ballyhaunis; Austin Boyle, Castlebar; Mary Donnelly, Ballyhaunis, and Bernie Boyle, Castlebar.
Ballyhaunis native Austin Boyle celebrated his 100th birthday on October 15th in the UK city of Coventry.
Austin was born in Ballinphuill on October 15th, 1924, and left Ireland at a very young age, eventually settling in Coventry.
Among the family members who travelled to celebrate the birthday were his niece Mary Donnelly and her husband Jim from Ballinphuil. Also travelling were Austin and Bernie Boyle from Castlebar.
Ballyhaunis mosque looks set for major refurbishment.
Arfan Rafique, whose father Sher Mohammed Rafique built the mosque in 1987, said a large and growing congregation hopes to refurbish the building to its original state. Various extensions to the building over the years will have to be removed as “these added bits have had a bad gravitational pull against the original structure,” he explained.
Located on Clare Road, the structure was the first purpose-built mosque in the country, its green dome and white walls a striking sight when first unveiled to locals. Many impressive features, including chandeliers shipped from Egypt, lent the building interior an impressive aura for a mostly Pakistani congregation which has since expanded dramatically with the growth of a Syrian population now numbered at over 300 as well as a large number of Muslims living in the local direct provision centre.
Dr Rawan Kamal, a Dublin-based architect described the mosque, from a visit: “The uniform plan, bulbous dome, and architectural elements recall the Indo-Islamic tradition of Mughal architecture, specifically the architectural style of seventeenth century mosques in Asia. Dark-green and white walls denote the mosque’s outer edge, with the colours a subtle homage to Pakistan’s national flag...
"As such, the mosque captures the identity of the migrant community, and perhaps represents the strongest and most striking architectural element in the traditional Catholic landscape of Ballyhaunis.”
There’s been a rush of new applications for solar installations by home-owners and businesses in the Ballyhaunis area as property owners seek to avail of the government grant of €2,100 before it drops to the lower level of 1,800 from January 1st.
Paid by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI), the grant is paid upon the installation of solar panels by an SEAI-certified installer. Homeowners are also required to update their building energy (BER) certificate before the grant money is paid.
Once a homeowner registers for the grant it will be valid at the higher rate for up to eight months, one installer with a large order book in the East Mayo area told this column.
“We have a backlog of work of about two months now for domestic instalments and we’ve about three months of installations ahead of us on the roofs of business clients,” explained the solar executive who represents a Monaghan-based firm.
A €10,000 investment in solar panels for a bungalow roof will typically be returned within five years (in savings on electricity bills), said the installer.
“When you add the energy savings and power sold to the grid after you’ve paid for the panels that’s a far better return than you’d get from money in the bank or from most investments these days.”
The recent uploading of dozens of school copybooks dating back over 100 years from Bekan school and the (since closed) Brickens national school onto the National Folklore Collection on the Duchas.ie website offers a fascinating glimpse into the cultural and societal norms of another era.
Writing in handsome, neat cursive script the pupils refer to local town lands and personages.
One copybook reads: “Patrick Costello, Brickens, Claremorris, was a good singer. One night he sang in a public house called the 'Pride of Erin' in Oldham, Lancashire. The song he sang was called 'An Draigneán Donn' or the brown Sloebush. A rich man gave him a pound note and a razor.
"Patrick Byrne, Kilnock, Brickens was a great walker. He used to walk to Drogheda, on his way to England, in two days.
"Michael Harley, Cloonlara, Bekan, was a great story-teller. People used to flock to Costello's mill, Brickens, to hear his stories. His favourite story was ‘The Black Friar of Mayo Abbey’.”
Another copybook, from a school in Ballinvilla Demense and donated by John Finn in Brickens, has a story from Mannin Lake in Larganboy near Ballyhaunis.
“After a time St Patrick came to Holywell, Ballyhaunis. He heard the people of the district tell how the serpent was stealing and devouring cattle and sheep belonging to the people of the neighbourhood. St Patrick resolved to banish him also.
"He went to a blacksmith who lived near where the town of Ballyhaunis now stands. The blacksmith's name was Mannin. He ordered him to make an iron chest with nine bolts on it. When it was made he brought it to the lake where the serpent had his abode.”
The copybooks can be viewed with a search of www.duchas.ie.
Local apparel and shoe shops are losing trade to voracious and canny exporters in China. An online store selling bargain-priced shoes and trading as ‘Doherty Kildare’ has no connection at all with Ireland and rather ships shoes from China.
Selling for €49.99, a pair of “Portland Orthopedic Leather Shoes” was shipped recently to an unsuspecting customer in Ballyhaunis who assumed she was buying from an outlet shop in Kildare Village.
Promising to be the ultimate combination of comfort and style, the shoes came in flimsy packaging post marked by China Post. An enquiry to the customer service email info@dohertydublin.com failed to yield an answer as to why the company is seeking to pass itself off as Irish.
China’s lower postal costs have enabled e-commerce operators to increasingly focus on global markets particularly as China’s economic growth has slowed in recent years. The country has been accused of seeking to flood global markets with goods from its vast manufacturing sector, overwhelming competitors in the process.
Retailers in Ireland have been losing trade to websites like Temu and Shein which exploit the zero tax treatment of personal packages arriving in the post. Temu, which uses An Post as its Irish dispatch agent, is currently the focus of action by EU which wants to increase customs duty to protect European retailers and the local tax base.
A cake sale will be held in St John’s Rest and Care Centre in Knock on Sunday, November 3rd, from 10am to 3pm. Teas and coffees will be served and a super raffle will be held. All monies raised go towards the Aghamore Redevelopment Fund.
The same organisers ran a successful clothes sale at the Community Hall in Ballyhaunis recently. The two-day sale was impacted by the arrival of Storm Ashley but Saturday’s sale alone drew in over €2,000 with Ballyhaunis’ various communities arriving in numbers for the bargains on offer.
Aviation industry watchers will have been disappointed to see the lack of new business for Ireland West Airport Knock coming from the restrictions being placed on capacity at Dublin Airport.
Air traffic to and from Dublin Airport is limited at 32 million passengers per year but despite suggestions from aviation experts and policymakers to move some of the planes to other airports there’s no sign of any dramatic jump in passenger numbers at Knock.
Ryanair, whose boss Michael O’Leary has been vocal in seeking expanded capacity in Dublin, added only one new route, a weekly connection to Tenerife at Knock in 2024.
In fact, traffic through Dublin Airport grew 5% in the second quarter of this year while there was a 1% decrease in numbers going through Ireland West in the same period (although numbers did increase over the first six months of the year compared to the same period last year).
That’s according to the most recent aviation data from the Central Statistics Office which also show very slow growth in freight traffic through the much less congested Ireland West Airport. Only three tons of international air freight passed through the airport in the April-June period of this year, compared to 2,500 tons going through Shannon Airport and 41,000 tons of freight arriving in Dublin Airport in the same period. Overall freight levels handled by Irish airports grew by 9% year on year in the second quarter of 2024.
London-Luton was the top route for Ireland West in the second quarter of 2024, with nearly 37,000 passengers travelling between the two airports. London Stansted and Liverpool were the second and third most popular routes for Ireland West.
There will be a lot of Halloween fun in Ballyhaunis this year with two separate events for the spooky-minded. First up a screening of ‘Hocus Pocus’ on the cinema screen at the Community Hall on Saturday, November 2nd, starting at 7pm. That’s a follow-up to a Halloween Toddler Dance Party (3 to 5pm) on October 28, organised by the Parent and Toddlers Group. Both events take place at the Community Hall.
Congratulations to Paul, Mick and Sean care of Paddy's Bar who won €580 in the Ballyhaunis GAA Club's weekly 50/50 draw on an envelope sold in Paddy’s.
