CASTLEBAR is determined to become the first community in the State to have a full range of state of the art communications facilities in every home, business and public utility. The Connaught Telegraph said a multi million pound blueprint is being prepared by Telecom Eireann for a project in which every home would be provided with "a phone and a sophisticated so called digital mailbox, to allow transmission, reception and storage of a wide range of digital services, including fax and voice mail".
Each home and business would be given high speed access to the Internet and high quality lines would be connected to every business and public sector organisation.
And to think that a few years ago just getting a telephone was an achievement. Telecom will announce its choice of community next spring, but Castlebar is lobbying hard.
Dundalk is coming to terms with hi tech developments of a different kind. "Watch it, you may be filmed," warned The Argus. The CCTY security surveillance cameras used in the Temple Bar area of Dublin have been such a success that Dundalk Urban Council intends to push for a CCTV installation of its own.
The question of whether civil rights are worth giving up for a lower, crime rate exercised several leader writers in the run up to the bail referendum. The Kerryman argued that the "dissolution of civil liberties" which would result from the proposed bail laws would be worthwhile because it will help to prevent crime.
Taking the opposing view was the Clare Champion, which regarded the referendum as a "cynical exercise" by politicians and "the biggest test of our commitment to freedom and justice in our own backyard". Anyone who is concerned about the principles of freedom and justice will inevitably vote No next Thursday. Those who vote Yes should be prepared to go to jail on the word of just one garda who thinks they might offend were they to be granted bail, it said.
Battling crime with punishment is popul battling it by more subtle and effective means is subject to the NIMBY factor. A controversial residential home for disturbed children has been given the go ahead by Clare County Council despite objections from 13 residents, said the Clare Champion. Locals fear that the children will cause problems for the safety of their own children. Proposed by "Englishman Peter Tyson", the home would be for "children whoa are unstable as a result of sad and misfortunate experiences and local residents are afraid they might be inclined to violent tendencies".
One resident alleged: "The children must be very disturbed when the Department of Health and the Health board are prepared to spend £200,000 per child annually to be treated outside the country."
But Steps, the British firm opening the residential centre, said that young people with "severe problems of violence or of criminality will not be accepted". Added the newspaper: "The philosophy is to provide therapeutic family style homes in a variety of settings with an emphasis on blends ing discreetly into the local environment young people in their care to hope they see themselves as positive members of the community." A hard task surely, when the locals don't want them.
The desolation which can be experienced by children also made the front page of the Kildare Nationalist, which reported the suicide of an 11 year old boy. The Nationalist congratulated itself for not naming the boy, although it didn't raise the ethics of reporting the case. A spokesman for the ISPCC told the newspaper that child suicide is a real but hidden problem.
Everywhere, rebel county councillors were making front page news. In Co Laois, the town commission chairman and councillor, John Moloney, was threatening to quit the council because he "has had enough" of stumbling through roadworks. This will be Mountmellick's fourth Christmas with streets dug up and people wading knee deep in potholes, said the Laois Nationalist. County Manager, Mr Niall Bradley, said Mountmellick was not treated any worse than other towns in relation to roadworks. "You don't know what you can meet when you start digging down," he said.
A councillor in south Tipperary, Mr Seamus Healy, received a stern rebuke from his colleagues when he advised householders not to pay service charges, said the Tipperary Star.
"Cop yourself on for God's sake. Do you think we came in here to listen to you," Mr Healy was told by a councillor, Mr Michael Fitzgerald.
In Co Kildare, Councillor Michael Nolan was "seeing red" over the "convoys" of Army learner truck drivers trundling through the narrowest streets of Newbridge. According to the Kildare Nationalist, he thought L plate Army trucks should be banned.
A spokesman for the Defence Forces defended the learner drivers, saying that they never entered Newbridge during peak traffic times. So much for driving in urban conditions. Don't they know it's a warzone out there?
