Trevor Laffan

Addiction counsellors have warned that there could be a surge in the number of women presenting at their clinics with gambling problems. According to the Rutland Centre, betting firms are trying to attract more women to spend money.

While traditionally, women were more inclined to gamble on scratch cards or slot machines, there is an increase in gambling apps and markets that were usually geared towards men are now being painted pink in a bid to lure females into the multi-billion euro industry.

I think I’m fortunate not to have any interest in gambling. I never did have. When I was growing up there was a bookie in the town and to me it was a smoke-filled room where people stood around all day watching horses running around in circles. I always associated the place with misery but maybe that’s unfair given that my own experience with gambling is very limited. I have played card games for small money and I have occasionally backed a horse in the Grand National but that probably doesn’t count.

When I worked in Dublin as a young man, I sometimes went to Leopardstown Racecourse for a day out with the lads but the racing never did anything for me.  We used to spend a few bob and have a few beers but that was it. Horse racing and Formula 1 motor sport just make me want to contemplate the inside of my eyelids. But I understand there are others who get great enjoyment out of spending some time trying to win a few Euro and there’s nothing wrong with that as long as it is under control.

The gambling scene has changed dramatically over the years and now there are betting offices all over the place. Their image has been completely transformed from smoke filled dens on inequity to spaces that are clean and comfortable. If the betting office still doesn’t appeal to the budding punter, there are other options with online gambling.

You can now gamble yourself silly from the comfort of your own armchair and that’s the thing that worries me. Gambling anonymously in the privacy of your own home can create all sorts of difficulties for those people who have addictive personalities. As betting moves out of the bookies’ and on to the mobile phone, a new kind of danger is emerging.

According to a recent article in the Irish Examiner, Sports Minister Patrick O’Donovan has called on the FAI, IRFU, and Olympic Council of Ireland to draw up concrete proposals as he warned of a gambling epidemic among GAA stars which is spreading to other sports. In recent months a series of high-profile cases involving GAA and soccer players has brought attention to the issue of drugs and gambling addiction. In some cases, players are facing debts of more than €80,000, with others struggling to cope with crippling financial problems.

One footballer has revealed that he became “suicidal” after fighting “compulsive” gambling for 16 years and another said his 12-month ban for cocaine use was due to an obsession with online gambling. Former GPA chairman Dessie Farrell earlier revealed that the organisation helped 74 GAA players with hidden gambling problems in 2015.

A survey of the UK industry by three academics, Mark Griffiths, Jim Orford and Heather Wardle found that 30-35 per cent of the industry’s revenue comes from full-blown problem gamblers. That’s very significant. The Australian Productivity Commission, which undertook the biggest research exercise there’s ever been on gambling, came up with similar figures for Australia.

It’s enough to make your head spin when you hear about the debts that problem gamblers can run up. Aiséirí is a network of addiction-treatment centres in Ireland, treating disorders including drug, alcohol and gambling problems. Debts of problem gamblers at its centres in 2011-13 ranged from €20,000 to €500,000. This kind of debt can cause serious damage to mental health, to families and to businesses.

Gambling is a big business. The European market is estimated to be worth €80 billion a year, but it is undergoing rapid change. Gavin Kelleher of Goodbody Stockbrokers estimates the gross revenue from gambling in Ireland as about €1.1 billion a year. That figure is made up of €314 million from land-based betting and €310 million from lotteries – two figures he can be “pretty confident of” with €8 million coming from bingo, €130 million coming from gaming machines and €65 million coming from casinos or private members’ clubs.

The online market, Kelleher says, is difficult to quantify, but he estimates it is worth €220 million. The traditional, land-based bookmaking market is shrinking. In 2008 there were 1,365 betting shops while there are 948 today. Sharon Byrne of the Irish Bookmakers Association believes more will disappear as more gamblers seem to be migrating online.

Dr Colin O’Gara, a consultant psychiatrist, has seen a dramatic increase in the number of patients with smartphone and other online-gambling problems. Gambling is a hobby for some people, but for others it’s an inherently addictive behaviour just like alcohol or drugs. A pathological gambler looks at things in a totally different way to ordinary people. They feel they’re going to win all the time so when they have had a series of losses they can justify that by convincing themselves that a win is just around the next corner.

Strange as it may seem, one of the most effective anti-problem-gambling measures worldwide has been the smoking ban. It seems that when people leave the bookmaker’s or the casino to go out for a smoke, the spell is broken. Because of this, many campaigners advocate more formally enforced “time outs” for gamblers to stop them simply rolling from one bet to the next.

I think that’s the first time I heard that smoking could have some positive health effects.

 

 

 

I came across an old story the other day about a woman who went missing from Kildare on December 22^nd 1979.  She had been doing her Christmas shopping in Newbridge that day and she was last seen going to a bus stop at about 6.30 p.m. She had bought presents for her brother’s children and she was planning to spend Christmas with her family in Kildare.  

 Unfortunately for her, she never got there and her body was later found in the Wicklow Gap. Her name was Phyllis Murphy and she was only 23 years of age. She had been raped and strangled. Throughout the Christmas and beyond, search teams combed the town and the surrounding countryside along the flat Curragh plains. Her disappearance captured the attention of the nation.

 This is a very tragic story but it is one that I have more than a passing interest in because I was involved in the search for her back then. Not only that, but I saw her body lying in the snow. It is something that I have never forgotten even though I have seen many bodies since then.

The sight of Phyllis lying there was something that sent shock waves through many young men who were there that day. We had come from the Garda Training Centre in Templemore and for most of us, it was the first time we had seen someone who had died as a result of a violent act and it was not nice.

I started my training in Templemore just a few weeks earlier, on the 5^th December 1979, along with 97 other guys. We came from all corners of the country and from a variety of backgrounds and we were all young and impressionable. We had barely started our training when we broke for the Christmas holidays.

But Christmas was barely over when we all received a message to get back to Templemore. We weren’t told why. It was bitterly cold at the time and there was snow in the mountains. We were herded into buses and it was then we were told that we were going to the Curragh and we would be working with the army in the search for Phyllis Murphy.

Looking back on it now, I realise that we were totally ill equipped for a job like this. Our clothing was nothing like it is now and all we had to protect us from the elements was a pair of wellington boots and a rain coat that seemed to be made from the same material as the wellies. It did nothing to keep out the cold and it didn’t keep out the rain either and the material made you sweat.

For lunch, we were given sandwiches in a plastic wrapper and a pint of milk. Given that we were working in sub- zero conditions these provisions did nothing to lift our mood. The soldiers on the other hand had hot food and were much better prepared.

These issues became insignificant the day that the body of Phyllis was discovered. I’m not going to go into the details of the discovery but the atmosphere changed for everyone that day. The bus journey back to the Training Centre that evening was subdued and there was very little chatter. None of us knew her personally but we still felt a sense of loss and we wanted the killer caught. But the investigation was going nowhere.

Forensic science techniques at that time were way behind todays’ standards but somebody, back then, made the decision to put the samples into storage. They were kept in the Garda Technical Bureau until 1998.

Operation Trace was launched in 1998 and the samples were sent for analysis to a British laboratory. The results pointed to one man, John Crerar. Then aged 51, he was a former Army sergeant and worked as a security guard in Kildare town. At the time of Murphy’s disappearance, he drove a Datsun car. This was the same make sought by gardaí after a witness reported seeing it near the place where her body was discovered.

John Crerar was charged with the murder of Phyllis Murphy in July 1999 and in 2002, almost 23 years after she was killed, the trial for her murder opened in the Central Criminal Court. Crerar, a father of five from Kildare, pleaded not guilty. He contradicted evidence given by witnesses on several issues and denied he knew her. Ms Murphy’s sister told the court that she, Phyllis and another sister used to baby-sit for the Crerars.

Nearly a quarter of a century after he raped and battered Phyllis Murphy to death, former Army sergeant and father-of-five John Crerar was convicted of her murder and received the mandatory life sentence without leave to appeal. Outside the courtroom, the man who arrested Crerar in 1999, retired detective garda Mark Carroll, and the detective who ran the case against him, detective garda Pat Donlon, shared hugs and tears with the Murphy family.

There were 98 other guys who also silently congratulated those policemen who finally got justice for Phyllis Murphy, the girl we saw lying in the snow so many years before.

As a little aside to this story, I was in Templemore a few years back to attend a funeral. I was in a huddle with a few people after the burial and we were talking about how cold it was. I remarked how back in 1980, as a fresh- faced recruit in Templemore, I was searching for the body of Phyllis Murphy in what was one of the coldest periods in my memory.

I didn’t know it, but one of those in the group was a relative of Phyllis. A friend introduced me to Michael, her brother and we shook hands. There was no need to say anything.

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I was walking down the main street in Midleton not so long ago when I heard the sound of Irish music. It seemed to be getting louder by the miniute. It was a Ceili tune and I noticed that other people were turning around like me, to see where it was coming from. The culprit was a small car with all the windows open and the music was being played at full throttle. It could be clearly heard on both sides of the street for a good distance in either direction.

The surprising thing was that the driver was not a young man by any stretch of the imagination. In his mind he probably thought that the good people of Midleton should be grateful to him for sharing his diddly dido music with the rest of us. It must have been blowing the head off him in the car and in all honesty, it was ridiculous.

I went out for a walk the other night and I met a lot of people who obviously had the same idea as I did. It was a still night down by the water front and a nice night to get some fresh air. As I headed in the walkway I heard a thumping base sound and I saw three cars parked side by side. The car in the middle had all the windows open and this repetitive thumping sound was filling the night air. The people sitting in the cars could not have been comfortable with that racket it was so loud. The fish were heading out the harbour for some peace and quiet.

I just don’t get why these guys think that we are interested in sharing their noise but maybe that’s the whole point. There is no thought process going on there. These people do what they want without having any consideration for anyone else.  It doesn’t enter their minds that maybe, just maybe, their contribution to the environment is not to everybody’s liking. It’s like the drunk guys that make their way home from the pub in the early hours of the morning and carry on as if it is the middle of the day. They forget how to talk and instead they have to shout to each other with no regard for anyone else who might be trying to sleep.

I remember when I worked in Blarney many years ago, I used to enjoy watching the American tourists walking to and from Blarney Castle. They would always walk in single file because the footpaths were so narrow and they rarely walked alone so there would nearly always be a little trail of them. And for some strange reason, the guy at the front of the line would always try to have a conversation with the guy at the back.

So, this shouting competition would start and the entire village would be forced to listen to their conversation whether they wanted to or not. I could never understand why the guys who wanted to talk to each other just couldn’t get a bit closer.

Noise is all around us as part of our day-to-day lives. There’s no shortage of the stuff so why we have to create more of it is beyond me. My mother -in-law is ninety-eight and she is very deaf and she regularly complains about that fact. There is a part of me that is a little envious of her sometimes.

We have to live with the daily noise from cars, planes, trucks, industrial manufacturing, machinery, industries and factories. The countryside doesn’t escape either with noise from agricultural machinery, thrashers, tractors, harvesters and animals. Households produce noise from pressure cookers, washing machines, mixer-grinders, air conditioners and vacuum cleaners. Electrical devices like radios, transistors, TVs, musical instruments, telephones, and loudspeakers are also sources of noise. Banging of doors, crying kids, arguments, house renovations, kids playing also contribute. There’s no escape.

People visiting Cobh will often comment about the bells in the Cathedral being noisy when they ring out the time. But local people will more than likely tell you that they don’t even hear them. Similarly, when I first went to live in Cyprus I used to get startled by the Muslim call to prayer. Loudspeakers from the various mosques will blast out this call to prayer for the Muslim community five times a day. You can’t miss it. But again, after living with it for a while, you don’t take too much notice of it. But some people are a bit more sensitive to noise than others.

In Baddow, Essex in the UK, neighbours had a falling out over noise and it became such an issue that it and ended up in court. One neighbour was hoping to get an order to prevent the other from having a pond filtration system turned on all day. She said the noise from the water feature on the pond was ruining their lives. The noise was caused by water that runs from a hose into a small pond which was twenty-five metres away from the garden fence.

An environmental protection officer from the local council visited the site and he reported that the noise from the pipe was found to be around 40 decibels, which is the same level as a refrigerator or quiet speech. The magistrate found that the neighbour was simply oversensitive to the issue and ordered her to pay costs.

If the noise of a fridge is going to be a problem for this lady, then I would strongly advise her to stay away from here and it would probably be a good idea for her not to live near a mosque either. She should be careful about going to Midleton on certain days too, unless she’s a fan of Irish Ceili music.

 

 

WikiLeaks have told us that the CIA might be keeping an eye on us through our Samsung TV sets. For some reason that doesn’t surprise me and we all know that the internet is being monitored anyway so should we be worried about this latest revelation?

For most of us, I would imagine, our use of the Internet is limited to posting some useless nonsense on social media, sending a few emails or searching for a flight and an apartment when we want to go on a holiday. The most serious offence we’re likely to commit online is a typing error after we’ve had a glass of wine too many.

There are others though, who use the Internet for more sinister objectives like terrorism and crime. Nutters can spread their messages of hate across the globe with the push of a button and they can transfer funds, buy weapons and direct their evil empires from a mobile phone with an Internet connection. Lap top computers and phones are the tools of the trade now in the criminal underworld.  

It’s for that very reason that there are people who are making careers out of monitoring what is travelling back and forth on the Internet. Police forces, the military and other government agencies have the authority to monitor that traffic when they think it’s necessary for the security of the State. There are some people who have an issue with that but not me. I couldn’t care less for the simple reason that what I do on the Internet, or the phone, is of little interest to me so I can’t imagine anyone else having the slightest interest in any of it.

On the other hand, there is a lot of interest in the comings and goings of those who inhabit the criminal underworld. I’m sure the activities of Jihadi Jerry and his terrorist buddies are of interest to certain organisations and if, by sacrificing my bit of electronic privacy, I can somehow make a little contribution towards making life a bit more complicated for these guys, then I’m all for it. Work away guys and monitor me to your hearts content. 

Internet providers and mobile phone companies often work with the police to identify who was using a particular device, where it was being used and when. That’s ok too as far as I’ concerned and I’m not going to lose a wink of sleep over some agency knowing that I was in Tom Kelly’s having a pint at 4pm on Friday.

However, there are those who do have an issue with this invasion of privacy and they see it as breach of their civil rights. They argue that this is the first step on the slippery slope to the erosion of the freedom of speech and the beginnings of a secret state. They object to the fact that the gardai can enter your home, plant a video camera or recording device in your living room, and leave it there for three months.

They can break in again to remove the device, without you ever knowing they were there and they can put a tracking device on your vehicle and monitor your movements. The Defence Forces can intercept your emails, and tap your phone. It’s all governed by legislation, and it is intended only to combat serious crime and to protect the security of the state.

If you weren’t aware of this then don’t be too surprised because it’s not something that is generally advertised. The very nature of this type of work requires a certain degree of secrecy. There wouldn’t be much point in telling Jihadi Jerry what’s going on and that he is possibly being eavesdropped on by the CIA. So, despite the fact that these powers are invasive, details on their usage are fairly sketchy and this doesn’t sit well with some people.

Gardaí and the Defence Forces can do all this stuff and they can keep track of your movements. I knew some guys that were involved in this line of work and I was told that they were so good that they could practically get into your house at night, brush your teeth and leave again without you being any the wiser. So if you should happen to be on a list for this treatment, you’re not going to know anything about it unless someone tells you. That’s fine with me as long as they tidy up on the way out.

High Court Judge Brian McGovern was appointed last year to oversee the use of surveillance in our jurisdiction. According to a report in the Sunday Times, between August 2015 and August 2016, gardai were permitted to use the legislation on 100 occasions and were refused on 12 occasions. He said he believed that, because of this, the gardai had gathered significant intelligence to prosecute or prevent serious crime.

I was curious to know what can be learned about me on the Internet so I did a little research and I contacted a friend of mine, Avril Ronan in Trend Micro. They are an internet security company on the Model Farm Road and she introduced me to an expert in this field. After talking to him, I am now totally paranoid. It is scary stuff.

Basically, the miniute you turn on the computer you a are a marked man and sneaky people can tell the colour of your underwear and what you’re cooking for dinner.

If you knew what people can find out about you from cyber space, you would take your lap top and your phone and throw them into the Lee. I don’t worry about the good guys but there are plenty of bad individuals too who want to invade your privacy so take care.  You have been warned.

I came across a story in the Irish Examiner recently that had me a little perplexed. It concerned an incident that took place in Ennis District Court when Judge Patrick Durcan said that a trainee accountant told “a pack of lies and perjured himself” after giving sworn evidence that he did not receive a Garda fixed charge penalty notice for speeding in the post.

The accountant, Mr Sutton, was detected speeding on a motorway. After Judge Durcan refused to accept Mr Sutton’s claim that he never received the fixed charge notice, he convicted him, fined him €750 and banned him from driving for one year. Mr Sutton will also get five penalty points on his licence as a result of the conviction.

Judge Durcan also requested the prosecuting garda inspector to refer Mr Sutton’s evidence to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) “because it is very obvious to me that a further offence has been committed in this court today.”

He said: “The sooner the State takes on board people coming into this court suited and booted and looking the part and yet like a nut, they are split and cracked wide open when pressure is applied. I am appalled that someone who is an educated person, who has every opportunity in life and is on the road to becoming an accountant came in here and told a pack of lies and perjured himself. There is nothing as appalling as a liar — somebody who comes in here and perjures himself and tries to get out of an offence of this nature.”

Judge Durcan said that in evidence, Mr Sutton “persisted in the lies when cross-examined by Sgt Molloy.” Mr Sutton was one of two motorists Judge Durcan banned from driving for one year after not accepting evidence that they didn’t receive the fixed charge penalty notice in the post. Judge Durcan’s new “get tough” stance when not accepting evidence that motorists did not receive their notice in the post follows the judge last month in court stating that his courtroom was “stinking of perjury”.

On the one hand, it’s refreshing to hear a judge getting a little bit miffed at being lied to in a court and it’s reassuring to see him taking a stand against someone, he believes, is telling lies under oath. In fact, there are many who would say that it’s about time. On the other hand, I find it incredible that he seems to be surprised. He sounds as if this is the first time that he has come across a defendant in a court case that has deliberately misled the court.

Having spent over thirty-five years as a member of An Garda Siochana I would suggest that the number of defendants in a District Court who tell lies would far outweigh the number who tell the truth. Criminals constantly lie about having committed a crime or about being anywhere near the scene of the crime and they lie about who was with them at the time. When they’re caught with stolen property they will deny that it’s theirs and they will swear on a mountain of bibles that they never saw it before. Most of them wouldn’t admit to being alive if they thought it would get them off. Telling lies is what they do.

Before they are sentenced many of them will offer further lies in mitigation. They will tell the judge that they have reformed and that they are on the road to recovery. They will swear that they have kicked the demon drink and drugs into touch and they have completely turned their lives around and will vow never to offend again. Basically, they will say whatever it takes to get off. Judges in the District Courts across the country hear this, week in and week out. They will regularly see the same people in front of them repeating the same promises only to see them broken time after time.

So it sounds strange to me that a judge is making an issue of perjury at this point in time. You can witness the most outrageous lies in any court house on any day of the week. Those who live outside the law consider the legal system to be a game, a game that allows defendants to use all means at their disposal to avoid being convicted. They won’t lose a wink of sleep over lying in court.

Witnesses often tell untruths when giving evidence too but more often than not, it is unintentional. Many people can have different interpretations of the same event and each will genuinely believe that their account is the most accurate. If you ask ten people to describe the same incident you will find several versions that bear little comparison to each other, simply because they had a different perspective of the event. That is understandable.

Perjury is a horse of a different colour and is a criminal act. It occurs when a person lies or makes statements that are not truthful while under oath.  Perjury can lead to the miscarriage of justice and it can corrupt the legal process but it is difficult to prove. Even in the family law courts, people routinely alter the facts in relation to their assets and their income, in order to influence the outcome of child support, alimony or the distribution of assets.

So, the discovery that someone has been telling porkies in court shouldn’t come as any great surprise to anyone involved in the justice system. Perhaps what made this incident warrant more interest than normal is the fact that the defendant in this case was a young professional man with the prospect of becoming a respected member of the community. Perhaps the lies from the mouths of the great unwashed don’t have the same impact.

 

 

Myra Swords lives independently, because that’s how she wants it. She’s always on the move. She’s been to Australia seven or eight times in the last few years and she has just renewed her passport. She is hoping to visit a relative in Scotland soon and she’s a regular visitor to Clonea, in Dungarvan, during the summer where she stays in a mobile home with her daughter. She will go anywhere at the drop of a hat.

You might well ask what makes this so noteworthy? Well, Myra Swords will be ninety eight years old this week. Her hearing and her sight might be failing but her mind is still razor sharp. She takes a keen interest in current affairs and is quick to voice her opinion on any subject. She knows the birthdays of her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren by heart, and there are plenty of them.

There can’t be too many people alive today who can remember what it was like to be living in England during the Second World War. There can be fewer still who can recount with clarity the fear and anxiety of the nightly raids. People taking cover in air raid shelters and waking up to find their homes blown to bits.

Myra is originally from Kilmore Quay in Wexford and she was just eighteen years old when she got the Ferry to Liverpool in 1938.  Times were difficult for the Irish back then but must have been even more so for a young girl from Kilmore Quay who had probably never left the village before then.

As the summer of 1939 approached, air raid shelters had been built and gas masks and identity cards had been issued along with ration cards.  These items had to be carried everywhere.

After war was declared, Myra said, they would often be asleep at night but once the air raid siren sounded they would jump out of bed and grab their clothes and run to the nearest shelter.  The noise during the raids was frightening and at times they thought the bombs were falling directly on top of them. 

She recalls that the morale of the people was outstanding.  She never heard anyone scream, cry or panic during those nights.  In the air-raid shelters everyone shared what little they had, sandwiches, tea, cakes and they sang songs to pass away the nights. German planes came over each night when darkness fell and dropped their bombs while anti- aircraft guns, positioned all along the river Mersey, worked hard to intercept them.  Huge search-lights scanned the skies and sometimes planes fought aerial battles and some fell to the ground.

They would leave the shelters in the morning not knowing what they were going to find. They were almost afraid to check if their homes were still standing.  They constantly feared for their relatives and friends and worried about how others had survived the raids.

Myra remembers how everyone carried on with life. They would leave the shelter at dawn, grab a quick breakfast and run for the bus to work. Nobody made lack of sleep or air raids an excuse to miss  a day at work.  No one in her firm ever missed a day even though they went through the same routine, night after night. They came home from work in the evening, had a meal and went off to bed until the siren went off.

Trying to get a bus in the mornings was also a problem because the usual bus routes were regularly bombed overnight which would mean constant delays, diversions and detours were the order of the day.

During Christmas week in 1940, the air raids persisted relentlessly.  Myra was leaving work one evening as darkness began to fall when she heard the planes approaching. As soon as the siren sounded all traffic stopped and everyone took to the shelters.  She remained there until the dawn, and when she left it she saw shop windows blown out and sheets of glass and timber strewn all over the streets. Buildings lay collapsed in heaps of rubble, fires burning everywhere, ambulances with their sirens howling as they delivered the wounded to hospitals. 

After another night of fierce bombing she emerged from the shelter and as usual, got the bus to work.  She saw that most of the shops and houses along the route were severely damaged and some of them were still burning.  When she arrived at work she discovered that the offices where she worked had been demolished.

She remembers hundreds of tinned goods being dug out of the rubble.  It was permitted to sell salvaged goods because of the enormous demand even though most of the tins were damaged.  The labels had also been burned or washed off, so the same price was put on each tin and it was a lottery as to whether it was a tin of fruit or a tin of salmon you got.

One night in particular she hadn’t time to get to the shelter before the bombing started. She was sitting in her cousins’ house when she heard a loud whistling which she instinctively knew was a bomb. She held her breath, closed her eyes and offered a prayer. The bomb landed nearby and the explosion blew in her doors and windows.  Myra was thrown from the chair as the house filled with soot and dust. It was a terrifying experience which became a nightly occurrence.

She survived it all and continues to enjoy a good quality of life in Cobh, as she heads towards the century mark. We hear of so many young people dying these days that it’s encouraging to know that there are some positive stories out there too and that not all the good die young. Myra is living proof of that.

 

 

 

 

It was about tea-time on December 12^th 1942, just outside Cork Harbour. It was during the war so there was a black out and the entire harbour was in complete darkness, you couldn’t see anything. All that could be heard was the hum of the diesel engines, the roar of the sea and the noise of the wind.

There was a southerly gale howling, it was cold and the sea was rough with a flood tide and waves of up to twenty-five feet in height.
World War II was raging but Ireland was a neutral country so any ship entering Irish ports had to engage a Cork Harbour Pilot and have their papers inspected by the Port Control Authorities, a form of homeland security, to ensure that no ammunition or weapons were on board.
The Irish Poplar was approaching Cork Harbour. It was a vessel that weighed 3,282 tons and stretched 352 feet long. It was built in 1912 and bought from Greek owners.

She had sailed from Dublin without cargo and was riding high with the top of her rudder and propeller visible above the water level. She was ordered by Cork Harbour pilots to proceed to the Dognose Buoy and to wait there to pick up a pilot and a Port Control officer.

She waited there as instructed and she would then be brought to Verolme Cork Dockyard where she was going to have a refit.
At about 6pm, the Pilot boat left the Camber in Cobh to bring the pilot to the ship while around the same time the Port Control boat left Haulbowline to meet the same incoming vessel.
The pilot launch was first alongside, and the pilot, Pad Lynch, climbed the Jacob’s ladder to the deck of the Irish Poplar. Next came the Port Control boat, which went alongside the pilot boat, and Chief Petty Officer Frank Barry safely boarded to carry out his inspection.
The normal procedure at this point would be for the Pilot launch to return to base in the Camber in Cobh and the pilot would stay with the ship.

The Port Control launch on the other hand would stand by until the inspection was completed and would then be signalled to collect the Port Control Officer and return to base. If conditions weren’t favourable, the normal routine would be for the Port Control launch to wait a short distance away from the ship.
When CPO Barry finished his inspection he looked over the side of the Poplar and when he didn’t see his launch he signalled with a lamp. When he got no reply he still wasn’t too concerned because of the bad weather he assumed that maybe it had returned to Cobh along with the Pilot launch for safety reasons.

The Irish Poplar signalled the Department of Defence in Spike Island and they sent out another launch to collect the Port Control Officer. At this stage the Irish Poplar had started its journey and was almost at the Spit Lighthouse in the inner harbour on its way to the dockyard.
Unknown to any of them at the time, there were five men dead in the water. There had been a serious incident. After depositing the two men onto the Irish Poplar, the two launches had difficulty getting away from the bigger ship.

They tried to go forward, but the weather was too severe so they went astern. With the bad weather, the blackness and the rough sea they somehow ended up under the turning propellers of the Irish Poplar with catastrophic consequences.
It was around this time that a man opened the front door of his house on Spike Island to find an exhausted and drenched figure with no shoes on, lying on the ground in the storm.

It was James Horgan who had been on the Pilot launch and he swam almost two miles from the Dognose Buoy to Spike Island. He was in the water for at least an hour and a quarter and he raised the alarm. The strength and the courage he displayed to make that swim in those conditions without a life jacket was amazing.
James Horgan was taken to the hospital on Spike Island and while he was able to provide little detailed information on what had happened, it was enough to start a large scale search.

Nothing was found at the scene of the accident. At about 10pm a body was seen in the water near the Deepwater Quay in Cobh about three and a half miles from the Dognose Buoy. It turned out to be the body of Leading Seaman William Duggan.
Around midnight some of the debris of the Pilot launch was found in the Camber and elsewhere along the waterfront. Two caps were found that were belong to Frank Lloyd and Frank Powell. One piece of timber that was found was identified as part of the Pilot launch and it looked as if it had been sliced by something sharp.
At a subsequent inquiry into the accident, Lieutenant W. Richardson and Lieutenant James White, of the Marine Service Depot in Haulbowline, gave evidence of having examined the wreckage of both the Pilot launch and the Port Control launch.

They found that the damage to both vessels was consistent with them having been struck by the propeller of the Irish Poplar.
To give an indication of the type of weather conditions that prevailed that night, the Ballycotton Lifeboat was called out to help with the search and it took them four hours to get to the site of the accident compared to the normal journey time of an hour and a half.

Coxwain Sliney testified that it was one of the worst nights of bad weather he had ever experienced.
On that day, the town of Cobh lost five of its citizens; John Higgins of Connelly Street, Francis Lloyd of King’s Street, Willie Duggan of Bellview, Frank Powell of Plunket Terrace, and Patrick Wilshaw of The Mall.

They were all young men. The oldest was only forty five years old and the youngest was a mere 25 years of age. Four of the five were members of the Cork Port Control Service which was a branch of the Marine Service. The fifth man, John Higgins, was a member of what was then known as the Cork Harbour Pilotage.
The fickle finger of faith smiled on one man that night. George Agger Senior was a Chief Petty Officer in the Marine Service during World War II and should have been on duty on that occasion.

It is possible that he would have been one of those who perished but as it happened he had another event to attend that night. His son was being born at home and so he arranged to swap duties, a decision that probably saved his life.

George junior was born at 11 Roches Row, just three doors away from where Pilot Pad Lynch and his family lived.
That baby turned out to be Father George Agger SVD, who was born and raised in Cobh until he entered the priesthood and left for foreign shores. He celebrated his 70th birthday when he officiated at a small ceremony in Cork Harbour to commemorate the 70^th anniversary of this tragic event in 2012.

I’ve had a reply from Mr. Páraig Lynch, Municipal District Officer, Cobh Municipal District. I have summarised it as follows:

He confirmed that the matter of dog fouling was raised at the monthly meeting of the Cobh Municipal District which was held on February, 21st. and was also raised at the Council’s quarterly meeting with representatives of Cobh Tidy Towns Committee.

It was acknowledged by all at the meeting that Council and the Tidy Towns Committee are operating a partnership approach but more needs to be done. They are involved in a number of initiatives including the distribution of “doggie bags” and The Green Dog Walker Scheme.

They are examining possibility of visiting schools and the possibility of a leaflet campaign for licensed dog owners. Only 2 litter fines have issued in the town of Cobh in recent years in relation to dog fouling.

Legislation in this area is complicated and County Council does not have the resources to have staff at every location across the Municipal District.

They are looking at a number of suggestions including the possibility of installing CCTV in problem areas and they are going to consult with colleagues in other parts of the County to see how they address this issue issues.  

They have suggested that the wider community can also play a role. Many businesses in the town of Cobh have CCTV and may be able to help the Council in enforcing the legislation.

Any member of the public who witnesses dog fouling can make a statement to the Council and they will work with any individual ensure that litter fines are issued and prosecuted if not paid. –

I think that some progress has been made but there is more to be done. Keep an eye out for the minutes of the meeting that will appear online soon. 

Anthony Barry and Ger Keohane have not replied to any of my emails – curious to know if anyone has heard from either of those.

When Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble wanted to know what was going on in the world they had to go the nearest news cave and buy a news tablet. The news of the day would have been carved onto the stone with a hammer and chisel by the local stone- age reporter. The hammer and chisel method was pretty slow so I imagine the news was more like Twitter than a broadsheet. Thankfully we have moved on from that.

I was doing a little bit of research in the Cork County Library recently and I was looking for information about an incident that occurred in Cork Harbour on December 12^th in 1942. That incident became known as The Cork Harbour Disaster and there will be more about that in a few weeks. I searched the Cork Examiner of that date for a report on the incident and I was surprised to see that the front page of the paper was taken up with small advertisements. The page was completely covered with them. I thought it was amazing that that page, now reserved for the main stories of the day, was once the advertising page.

The other thing that surprised me was how the various articles were presented. Each story was written in long single columns of text without photographs and it all looked cluttered. The language that was used was very formal and serious.

For instance, a man left in a taxi became; “The man was conducted, with his sister, to a waiting taxi.” When a body was found, an attempt to resuscitate him was described as “Artificial respiration was applied but life was found to be extinct.”  When the alarm was raised at Spike Island about an incident in the harbour it was reported that; “News of the disaster was communicated to the mainland and an immediate search instituted.” They were different times and the news then was a serious business.

Printing was complicated back then too and it’s no surprise that it would take the best part of a day to put the type together for a single page and it would take an entire week to put a paper together. The guy who prepared the print was a compositor and he used a metal frame, divided into compartments which mapped how the page was to be laid out. He put the various letters, the full stops and numbers, one by one into these compartments.  When this was done the frame was carried to the pressmen. They made one copy as a proof which was then given to the editor. When he was finished, the frame was carried back to the compositor to make any corrections and then it was carried back to the pressmen, who began printing. It was a long, labour intensive process.

I also discovered that in the early part of the 18th century there was a close connection between the printing office and the coffee house and many printers had their premises next door or in the same building as a coffee house. In some Irish towns, they were the gathering places for those in search of the latest news. Now I’m not sure if there is a connection or not but coffee shops are very common in Cyprus and you will find several in every village. These are places where men congregate from early morning to drink coffee on a veranda, play board games and swap gossip.

Whatever about the coffee shops, printing has moved on a lot from those early days. Now you type a page on a laptop, use the spell check, make the corrections and hit the print button. Hey presto, you can have as many copies as you want in an instant. But something else has changed too and that involves the way we gather our news.

There was a time when you had to wait for news. A reporter would carry out his investigation, talk to his sources and check his facts and it would appear in your newspaper a few days after that. Nowadays, news is instant. Modern technology means that we get our news as it happens from all over the world.

On the face of it that sounds like a progressive step but it does have a weakness. Unlike professional reporters who have to follow certain rules to verify the accuracy of the content of an article, anybody with a smartphone can now report the news. Or they can make up fake news and present it as fact without the normal checks and balances and that can be dangerous. Especially when you consider that most young people have little or no interest in the print media and prefer instead to gather the news from their phones. So, in many cases, they could be forming opinions based on misinformation.

Sure, you can read most of the online news for free on a smart phone that fits in your pocket and you can get quick updates anytime you want. Young people will tell you that they don’t see the point in buying a newspaper when they they can get all they need online for free. As well as that they lack the attention span required to sit down and read a broadsheet and for them it’s too time consuming.  

It takes a lot of effort and expense to gather news and to produce a paper. Professionals are employed to produce interesting, current and accurate content to provide a product that consumers will be willing to pay for. That is the constant struggle of the newspaper industry. For those who like to read a broadsheet, there is nothing nicer than sitting down with a coffee and opening a fresh newspaper. Maybe the Internet brigade should slow down a bit and sample the experience for themselves.

 

 

 

 

Sherna Noah had a story in the Irish Examiner about Adam Clayton of U2 fame who has a piece of art in his home that is expected to bring in €1.8 million at auction. It is a self- portrait of the artist Jean Michel Basquiat and one of its distinguishing features is a tear drop falling from the artist’s eye.

Experts have said that painting features his arms appearing “to pierce his body like an arrow”.

Another expert at Christie’s said: “Unlike other self-portraits by Basquiat, it articulates his fragility as a figure who is coming to terms with his new position in the world and injects the deepest pathos into the narrative of his dramatic trajectory from anonymous graffiti artist to international art superstar.”

What is this guy smoking? Parents all over the country are chucking scribbles like this into the recycling every night after their kids go to bed. They might spend some time clinging to the side of the fridge with the help of a magnet but eventually they are consigned to the bin.

‘The tear drop falling from the artist’s eye’ actually looks like the eye is after popping out but is held up by a spring. His head looks like it started out as a mug but then changed its mind but kept the handle.

The expert talks about his arms appearing “to pierce his body like an arrow”. What a knob – that’s the way kids draw arms and legs.

This is complete and total nonsense. Anybody who claims that this doodle is a fine piece of art worthy of a €1.8 million price tag has lost their grip on reality. Someone needs to start calling a spade a spade in the art world.

If this is a self- portrait then he obviously had a strange opinion of himself.