Local Notes: Ballyhaunis RSS workers are honoured
Retiring Rural Social Scheme (RSS) workers John Joe Lyons, Tom Carney and Tom Lily at the retirement party held at Delaney's Bar, Ballyhaunis
The invaluable work performed by Rural Social Scheme (RSS) workers was honoured at a retirement party on August 7th for four RSS workers. John Joe Lyons and Tom Carney were both honoured for their lengthy service as RSS workers attached to Ballyhaunis Tidy Towns and the Abbey Partnership.
Also honoured were Tom Lilly who is retiring from his RSS post at Ballyhaunis GAA and Colm Devaney who is retiring as RSS worker attached to Ballyhaunis Rugby Club.
The various groups hosting the RSS workers jointly sponsored the farewell party at Delaney’s Bar. Also in attendance was Ann Moran, the RSS supervisor employed by Mayo Northeast LEADER Partnership which administers the government-funded scheme locally.
Initiated in 2003, the RSS aims to provide income support for farmers and fishermen in receipt of long-term social welfare payments and to provide services of benefit to rural communities. To encourage more applicants to sign up, the scheme was recently extended to non-farming rural dwellers.
The ferocity of a major wildfire in Gorthaganny last year was recalled by the head of the local fire service and a local officer of the National Parks and Wildlife Service in a documentary on the two-day fire screened in Ballyhaunis last week.
Ballyhaunis fire station chief Enda Caulfield said his team struggled in heat of 1,000 degrees as the fire took a grip on a local forestry plantation.
“The fire was travelling at great speed. We decided to contain the fire to stop it crossing the road,” said Mr Caulfield, who described the dry vegetation and strong breeze in early May 2025 as the “perfect conditions” for a wildfire.
He was speaking on the documentary made by Adam Kaczmarek.
Mr Caulfield called for helicopter support from the national fire service when it became clear that local houses were threatened by the fast-moving blaze on Sunday May 17th.
“It was hard going on Sunday and Monday, I was getting calls from locals who were very worried. They were saying ‘The house is covered in smoke’ and we can’t go out."
The fire destroyed large parts of the raised bog, a special area of conservation (SAC) which sprawls from Gorthaganny to Ballinlough and Ballyhaunis. Also fuelling the fire were dried-out coniferous trees felled by Storm Éowyn in January, explained the fire chief.
The gradual dying out of turf-cutting may be contributing to a long-term increased prevalence of bog fires, explained Mr Caulfield.
“People used to burn off a small area of bog for cutting turf but now there’s less turf cutting and bogs are reverting to nature so there’s more vegetation.”
Liam Cribbon, an officer with the National Parks and Wildlife Service, explained that rewetting of bogs will aid their preservation and reduce the ability of a fire to spread.
"After the fire I was filming the bog with a drone to assess damage and I could hear the call of a curlew, possibly seeking it’s chicks lost in the blaze."
The consequence of the fire on local wildlife will last decades, said Mr Cribbon, who detailed the destruction of wildlife in the bog.
"Everything that couldn’t fly, 90 percent of them were killed. The hares and the pine marten probably were able to escape but frogs and lizards would have been burnt alive.”
Remarkable drone footage captured by Adam Kaczmarek showed the fire moving rapidly through the bog. In the film, Mr Caulfield explained how fire is capable of jumping 150 metres due to sparks carried by the breeze. The drone footage also showed the fire burning in two circular shapes.
Newly ignited fires often burn in a circular shape because the flames spread evenly in all directions before gaining momentum. If the wind is light, the fire can continue burning in a circle for some time.
A public consultation on August 21 will help determine the fate of the long-derelict former scouts' den in Ballyhaunis. The consultation from 10am to 1pm at the doorway of SuperValu in Ballyhaunis and in the afternoon at the doorway of the Friary church will canvass local opinion on what should be done with the structure.
The consultation is being organised by Mayo County Council alongside the Abbey Trust, the ownership body for St Mary’s Abbey, known locally as the Friary, where the scouts' den is located. The surveying of locals will be carried out by the Carrick-on-Shannon-based consultancy TBLA, which was also engaged by the council to produce the Town Centre First plan for Ballyhaunis in 2024. The public consultation is part of a feasibility report for the scouts' den site being funded through the government’s Town and Village Renewal Scheme.
Figuring out the fate of the scouts' den is one of a flurry of events at the Friary this month. Several heritage-focused events will take place at the Friary as part of plans to preserve the site, which was gifted by the Augustinian order to the community in 2002.
On Monday, August 17th, the Friary will host a brooch-making workshop for children which starts at 10.30am, hosted by Scéal Heritage, which will host a stained glass workshop for youths on August 21st. The workshops are free but must be booked at scealheritage@gmail.com.
A symposium on the history of the Friary and medieval Ireland will be hosted at the Friary on August 22nd.
Funded by the Heritage Council, the events are part of a wider planning process for the preservation of the site. Ballyhaunis Abbey Trust and Mayo County Council have secured grants from the government-funded Heritage Council to provide a masterplan for the friary site as well as a conservation plan for the Friary church, which was originally built in the 1400s, to ensure the historic site is preserved for future generations. Additional funds to cover the cost of the plans is being sourced from philanthropic funding.
The preservation and development of the Friary were highlighted as priorities for the local community in research for the Town Centre First plan compiled for the town through local consultation.
The Abbey Trust is chaired by the chief executive of Mayo County Council and includes representatives from the community appointed by Ballyhaunis Community Council.
Locals unable to attend the consultation on the scouts' den in person can share their views on its future by writing to Scoutsden@tbla.eu.
The Brackloon Reunion committee wish to invite everyone to come and join them for an evening of music, storytelling, craic and spraoi on Saturday, August 22nd, at 8pm in the Ballyhaunis Community Hall.
Organised as part of the Mayo County Council ‘Clans of Mayo’ initiative, the event will include screening of local heritage videos of interest reminiscing aspects of times past, explained committee member Seamus Kenny.
“A premise of the event is focussed on local communities reaching out to diaspora on the basis that diaspora relationships are rooted in people and place,” explained Seamus. “The evening celebration is an ideal opportunity to renew friendships and welcome old friends. All are welcome.”
A one-day symposium titled ‘Foundations of a Friary’ takes place in the Augustinian Friary (St Mary’s Abbey), Ballyhaunis on Saturday, August 22nd starting at 9.30am.
Specialists in medieval history and architecture will offer an insight into its founding and early history, among them academic Dr Nollaig Ó Muraíle who will speak on the topic ‘Ballyhaunis and vicinity in the Middle Ages’.
‘Ballyhaunis in Context: The Augustinian Friars in Pre-reformation Ireland’ is the title of a presentation to be given by Br Colmán Ó Clabaigh OSB (Benedictine Order), while Dr Yvonne McDermott from the Atlantic Technological University will speak on ‘The Medieval Augustinians in the West of Ireland: Architecture and Layout’.
Fr Iggy O’Donovan OSA (Augustinian Order) will speak on ‘Reflections on the Augustinian presence in Ballyhaunis and elsewhere with emphasis on the turbulent cleric Fr James Anderson OSA’.
There will also be an introduction to the conservation plan for the church which has gotten underway to ensure its preservation into the future. Admission, which includes a light lunch, costs €20 on Eventbrite.ie or on the door with proceeds going to the Friary Preservation Fund.
A Ballyhaunis-based man at the forefront of the global education assessment scene has just completed a Masters in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and sees potential benefits and pitfalls from the technology for students and teachers.
Oisín Bishenden, Senior Data Analytics Manager at UK-based firm Renaissance Global, has spent the recent years travelling from his Ballyhaunis base to the United Arab Emirates where he has overseen the use of online assessments to help educational authorities improve the quality of their schools.
In the past year he has combined his job at Renaissance with studying for a Masters in Artificial Intelligence at the Technological University of Dublin, which has given him new insights into the potency and pitfalls of AI for educators and students.
AI can help reduce teachers' workload by helping them, for instance, to come up with content and slides for lessons, said Oisín. An obvious danger is that students use AI to complete assignments and homework, thus reducing proper learning.
“There are tools which can identify the use of AI in academic writing,” explained Oisin. “But that may bias towards non-native speakers.”
In other words, the phrasing of non-native speakers of English (who aren’t using AI) may get undue attention from a tool designed to detect the use of AI.
From Richmond in London, Oisin spent part of his childhood in Galway and in his mother’s hometown of Ballyhaunis where his grandmother Bridie Levins ran a well-known B&B on Clare Street.
With a degree in economic science, Oisín worked in business before taking up a job at Conservative Party headquarters in 2018 where he spent over a year working on the successful local election campaign of that year.
Later, with a postgraduate certificate in education – earned by teaching in classrooms across London -he entered the educational technology sector.
“I worked on the sales side. We were doing assessments for schools across the UK. Later I moved over to data analysis, breaking down the assessment results for the schools.”
With his years of experience surveying students and analysing data from schools, Oisín will surely harness his new insights into AI into helping educational bodies to help and improve their students.
“Schools increasingly use data from surveys to assess students’ performance in various subjects but assessment can also measure verbal and non-verbal skills and can assess how students feel about the school.
“It’s the kind of data that helps schools improve their own performance but also tailor programmes to improve their students’ performance. Schools can also benchmark their performance against other schools and the national averages.”
