Here's one donation you wouldn't need a brown paper bag to carry home. A man who wants to build a seaside home has offered Wicklow County Council an entire beach in exchange for £1, should it give him permission to build a house. The owner of Magheramore Beach, hotelier Niall Mellon, has offered the public permanent free access to the beach should his plans get the green light, stated the Wicklow People. His offer has been greeted sceptically by local objectors who claim they are entitled to free access anyway.
Last year, Wicklow County Council granted permission for the house but An Bord Pleanala later turned it down. The beach is an area of "outstanding natural beauty" and is protected by the county development plan.
Preservation wasn't a problem for a 700-year-old lump of butter discovered wrapped in the bark of a tree in a bog in Charlestown, Co Mayo. "The butter has a particularly nice flavour . . . so tasty, in fact, that numbers of people have had it spread on cream crackers," stated the Connaught Telegraph. "It left a lovely taste in my mouth long after it had been consumed," said Sarah Frances Duffy, of Bradford, England.
Women in Longford are banned from rugby club functions because they're too slow with their credit cards and cheque books, according to the Longford Leader. The "men only" policy is "economic" because men who buy £40 tickets for other men know their male guests will cough up another £40 for the draw or auction. But a man who brings a woman would not expect her to spend any money at the event.
How ironic, the newspaper pointed out, in a week when the first woman chair of Longford Urban Council was making Ireland's second woman President a Freewoman of Longford and the same President was singing the praises of Westmeath's first woman county manager.
Women are terrified to step out on to the streets of Ennis at night, where the local thugs are intent on inheriting Limerick's old and undeserved title of "stab city", claimed the Clare Champion. "In the year 2000, the dogs on the street know better than to venture out by night in Ennis. A couple of weeks ago, Judge Albert O'Dea pronounced the public order situation in the town to be out of all control . . ."
What Kerry's Eye quaintly referred to as a "crime wave" in Listowel has led to a drugs seizure worth £1,000 and 27 arrests, an unusually high number. If there wasn't a "date-rape" drug scare in Longford, there is now as a result of a terrifying report in the Longford Leader about a 20-year-old "girl" who was "violently ill" and suffered memory loss after her drink was allegedly doctored in a midlands nightclub. Three other girls were taken from the same nightclub to hospital that night with similar symptoms.
The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre believes that use of Rohypnol, the so-called "date-rape" drug, is on the increase, stated the newspaper.
Public protest and pressure in Kildare town have succeeded in halving the number of asylum-seekers to be housed there in mobile homes, reported the Kildare Nationalist. Instead of 100 mobile homes at Magee Barracks, there will be 50.
"Bishop slaps authorities on asylum-seeker issue," stated the Leinster Leader, reporting that the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, Dr Laurence Ryan, has supported local people campaigning against the number of asylum-seekers proposed for Magee Barracks.
The refugees "crisis" is not the only way in which the Irish express their difficulties with cultural difference. At a confirmation ceremony, the Bishop of Meath, Dr Michael Smith, questioned whether Catholic schools should be obliged to cater for those who do not want to "walk in the faith", reported the Drogheda Independent.
Clare County Council's "apartheid" policy, which bans immigrants building new homes in rural areas, is to be challenged by a disabled Dutchman, who is appealing to An Bord Pleanala, in what is thought to be the first such case, stated the Clare Champion.