Sports News Issue No: 10,029
©1986 The Corkonian
Young Clare Athlete Prepares training for 2014
Cork City, Thursday, 6th December, 2013
Clare starlet Kelly ready for 2014 challenge
By Eoghan Cormican Sports Respondant
On-loan Liverpool forward Victor Moses set himself an ambitious 20-goal target for the current season and he is still hopeful he can come close to delivering. Continued on page 18
“At inter-county level, every forward is top quality. Other guys like Joe Canning have had to deal with that since the first year he came in and before he even pucked a ball, he had to deal with it. It’s just something you take on board and I’m sure Davy and the management will have a trick up their sleeve to try counteract it. You just have to work at these things and I am looking forward to it, more than anything.
Kelly claimed all involved in the Banner set-up are enjoying their status as All-Ireland
Dublin's appeal helps GAA financially
Moses wants 20 goals this season
“It would be worse if teams weren’t looking at you, then you’d be doing something wrong, so I suppose I am doing something right,” laughed the All Star centre-forward.
“You will have to deal with it, it is part and parcel of the game now but the thing about Clare now is we haven’t just one or two forwards, we have six forwards. That’s the bonus, if you take one forward out of it, another lad can step up to the plate, like Shane O’Donnell did in the All-Ireland final. That’s what we have been trying to get all year that if one forward has an off- day, that another one is going to step up and hopefully it will be the same for next year as well.”
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Dublin assistant secretary Jim Roche has claimed that other counties benefit from the All-Ireland champions’ financial success. Continued on page 21
The 19-year-old is the first player to collect both the hurler and young hurler of the year awards in the same season and understands the extra attention he is likely to receive as a result. Kelly, though, isn’t fazed in the slightest.
Ian Evans signs deal with Toulon
Reigning Heineken Cup champions Toulon have confirmed the signing of Ospreys second row Ian Evans on a three-year deal from next season. Continued on page 23
Hurler of the year Tony Kelly is relishing his marked man status heading into next year’s championship. champions, remarking, however, that Fitzy won’t be long in penning the opening lines off their 2014 campaign. “He’ll have the page turned over pretty soon when we come back [from Shanghai]. Once the National League starts, it’s a completely new year — there will be nothing spoken of last year. It will be back down to business straight away. “I don’t think it will be difficult to turn over a new page going into 2014. Especially
with Davy there you will swear we had won nothing last year and we are going for the first one again. That is the way he has always worked it. Even after the replay you would swear there was no drawn game it was straight back down to business, there was no word of it and that’s the way he likes to do things. He likes to do things with a professional edge and he likes to start fresh every year.” Rewinding to last January
when targets for the campaign were set out, Kelly never dreamt his 2013 season would end on the other side of the world, Adding he didn’t even think All-Ireland senior honours would befall Clare, not least when Patrick Horgan propelled the Rebels ahead with time almost elapsed in the drawn final. “The perfect end to a perfect season. Not many of us thought we’d be in Shanghai at the end of the year.
The Irish Examiner
“The News that you need to know!”
Issue No: 10,029
©1986 The Corkonian
By Mary Regan. Deputy Political Editor The Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has resisted a demand by Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan to hand over the dossier of files until it receives legal advice on whether it can examine its contents. Mr Callinan has argued the files — believed to be from the Garda Pulse system — contain personal data which he is responsible for “and should be returned to me forthwith”. He is supported by Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes, who said there may be criminality involved in the passing on of the information. But this potentially contradicts what the whistleblower was advised by a senior Department of Justice official who wrote to him on the matter in September.
Rory McIlroy two shots off the lead in Australia
Rory McIlroy shot a second-round 65 to give himself a chance of winning the first trophy of a forgettable year at the Emirates Australian Open. Continued on page 25
In correspondence, he was told that if he had evidence contradicting the findings of a report by assistant commissioner John O’Mahoney, “it is your duty as a member of the Garda Síochána to make this evidence available”. That internal Garda inquiry failed to find evidence of widespread corruption. That’s why the ketchup is yellow not blue, but it still tatses good, like really good Continued on Page 13
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HSE names top hospitals in pay breaches
GARDA TOLD HE HAD DUTY TO REVEAL DATA FILES
“I think we should not be stopped in the context of our examination of the implications relevant to the systems failure and the loss of funds to the State,”
ESM: +1.2 PLC: -2 BOI: +7.3 C&C: +3.2 DIG: -4.1 CNQ: +3.4 WFC: -0.6 ESB: -4.2
Cork City, Thursday, 6th December, 2013
Late Edition
Today, Light showers with evening high 14.c and Low of 8.c
By Martin Wall. Industry Correspondent
Image courtesy of Getty Images
A Syrian woman who fled her home cooks for her family outside her tent at a camp for displaced Syrians in the village of Atmeh
The HSE has confirmed for the first time that some of the Republic’s leading hospitals – including Tallaght, the Rotunda, the National Maternity Hospital and the Coombe Women’s Hospital – have been paying senior staff more than is permitted by the Government.
As Syrian War Grinds On, a New Flock of Refugees Takes Flight By KARIN LAUB, ATMEH, Syria (AP) — This tent camp sheltering Syrians uprooted by their country’s brutal civil war has lost the race against winter: The ground under white tents is soaked in mud, fights erupt over scarce blankets and volunteer doctors routinely run out of medicine for coughing, runny-nosed children. The 21-month-old battle to bring down President Bashar Assad has already forced some 3 million Syrians from their homes, according to a new estimate, and cold, wet winter weath-
er is making life increasingly unbearable for the displaced. Many of the roughly 12,000 people seeking refuge in the tent camp near the Syrian village of Atmeh on the Turkish border fled with just the clothes on their backs, running from intensifying bombing raids by the Syrian air force in recent months. A 10-year-old boy, Abdullah Ahmed, walked around the camp with a bandaged head and hands after suffering burns during an airstrike on his home. “I have nothing left except the mercy of God,”
said Mariam Ghraibeh, a 60-year-old war widow whose home in the town of Kafr Awaid, about 140 kilometers (90 miles) to the south, was destroyed in an airstrike a month ago. Ghraibeh and her family of 15 now huddle in tents, sleeping on thin mattresses on cold plastic, with two or more people sharing a blanket. Robert is making me write this piece because he’s a jerk!, Ya I said it!, I;m not afraid ROD! Not of you or your damn gang. Continued on Page 6.
Kevin Hosford The Corkonian
Shane Ross, Deputy Chief of the HSE discusses the recent revelations.
In a new development, the health authority has been asked to investigate whether funding from a charitable organisation linked to the Central Remedial Clinic was used to fund any unauthorised payments to senior staff. At the Dáil Public Accounts Committee yesterday, it emerged that a company called the Friends and Supporters of the Central Remedial Clinic had €14 million at the end of 2011.
Mortgage arrears decline for first time since bubble burst page 9
Community News
Diners at Cork soup kitchen up by 55% per week as donations This time last year it was feeding about 900 people a week, a figure it described as “staggering” in comparison with the roughly 140 people that ate from the kitchen before the economic collapse.
More people are pining for a real Irish Christmas tree, say local growers.
Image by John Smith
By. Thomas Murphy.
Irish Christmas tree growers are reporting strong demand for their produce this year, particularly from abroad, with countries such as Britain, Germany and France all looking for Irish trees. There are fewer than 100 growers in the country and they will be selling up to 750,000 trees at home and abroad this year. Christy Kavanagh, who runs his family Christmas tree business in Newtownmountkennedy, Co Wicklow, says it is shaping up to be a good year for growers. “There’s huge demand this year for real trees. I think it’s something to do with people being fed up of the recession and wanting to go out and get a nice tree for themselves,” he says. “You can buy a plastic tree in a box any time but it’s nice for a family to go out and pick their own tree, particularly for the children.” A typical homegrown Christmas tree costs between €40 and €60, he said.
Big demand Mr Kavanagh says he could export every one of his 7,000 trees to Germany because demand is so strong this year. “There’s also big demand for them in countries like France, the UK and Holland.” Another Christmas tree
Kevin Hosford The Corkonian
grower, Dermot Page, echoes this. “We can grow a Noble fir Christmas tree in Ireland which cannot be really grown in other parts of Europe. France is the only other country that grows them to any quantities. We also grow Nordmann fir and export both of them to the
UK.” He is chairman of the Irish Christmas Tree Growers group and says members expect to export about 300,000 this year, and supply 400,000-450,000 to the Irish market. Mr Page is based in Grangecon, Co Carlow, and says demand is strong and supply is good. “I think there is a move back towards tradition. People know more about Christmas trees now and how to look after them when they bring them home and they appreciate the quality of a real tree.” Environmental benefits Unsurprisingly, he says the benefits of a natural tree outweigh those of an artificial tree. “There’s the environmental benefits, the biodegradability, the carbon footprint, supporting local industry. We plant a tree for every one we harvest.” State forestry service Coillte produces 40,000 Christmas trees a year and a spokesman says demand is very strong this year. Theft is still an issue for Coillte, and for
individual farmers, but gardaí have stepped up activity in areas where trees are being harvested, particularly in Wicklow. Operation Hurdle aims to prevent the theft of Christmas trees and reassure local growers, according to a Garda spokesman. “This operation runs from the end of October to mid-December between the hours of 9pm and 4am and consists of patrolling areas of concern, targeting suspects and conducting checkpoints.” The operation was “ extremely successful” last year a reduction in tree theft. Mr Kavanagh says it has made a major difference to him and the sound of the Garda helicopter is reassuring. Nevertheless,the night he spoke to The Irish Times, someone had crept into his fields with a hacksaw and removed one of his finest trees. “There’s always one,” he says.
Image by John Smith
“Every day we’re seeing homeowners, renters, people who have lost their home, students, single people who are struggling, everything,” said charity trustee Catriona Twomey. “Recently we had a mother of five who came to us after she left her husband after a domestic dispute. And then we had the old man and his daughter who had no money for food after they miscalculated the cost of heating oil, or the couple in their 70s who remortgaged their home when their son was paying rent and living with them. Diners are served soup, a main course, dessert, teas and coffees, and have the option of taking a sandwich away to eat later. “People think we are full of the homeless, of people who have lost their homes due to drink, gambling and drugs. They are a very small percentage of the people who come here now,” said Ms Twomey.
International News
T
he South African president, Jacob Zuma, announced Mr. Mandela’s death. Mr. Mandela had long said he wanted a quiet exit, but the time he spent in a Pretoria hospital this summer was a clamor of quarreling family, hungry news media, spotlight-seeking politicians and a national outpouring of affection and loss. The vigil eclipsed a visit by President Obama, who paid homage to Mr. Mandela but decided not to intrude on the privacy of a dying man he considered his hero. Mr. Mandela ultimately died at home at 8:50 p.m. local time, and he will be buried according to his wishes in the village of Qunu, where he grew up. The exhumed remains of three of his children were reinterred there in early July under a court order, resolving a family squabble that had played out in the news media. Mr. Mandela’s quest for freedom took him from the court of tribal royalty to the liberation underground to a prison rock quarry to the presidential suite of Africa’s richest country. And then, when his first term of office was up, unlike so many of the successful revolutionaries he regarded as kindred spirits, he declined a second term and cheerfully handed over power to an elected successor, the country still gnawed by crime, poverty, corruption and disease but a democracy, respected in the world and remarkably at peace. The question most often asked about Mr. Mandela was how, after whites had systematically humiliated his people, tortured and murdered many of his friends, and cast him into prison for 27 years, he could be so evidently free of spite. The government he formed when he finally won the chance was an improbable fusion of races and beliefs, including many of his for-
NELSON MANDELA, 1918-2013
South Africa’s Conqueror of Apartheid As Fighter, Prisoner, President and Symbol
mer oppressors. When he became president, he invited one of his white wardens to the inauguration. Mr. Mandela overcame a personal mistrust bordering on loathing to share both power and a Nobel Peace Prize with the white president who preceded him, F. W. de Klerk. And as president, from 1994 to 1999, he devoted much energy to moderating the bitterness of his black electorate and to reassuring whites with fears of vengeance. The explanation for his absence of rancor, at least in part, is that Mr. Mandela was that rarity among revolutionaries and moral dissidents: a capable statesman, comfortable with compro-
mise and impatient with the doctrinaire. When the question was put to Mr. Mandela in an interview for this obituary in 2007 — after such barbarous torment, how do you keep hatred in check? — his answer was almost dismissive: Hating clouds the mind. It gets in the way of strategy. Leaders cannot afford to hate. Except for a youthful flirtation with black nationalism, he seemed to have genuinely transcended the racial passions that tore at his country. Some who worked with him said this apparent magnanimity came easily to him because he always regarded himself as superior to his persecutors. In his five years as president, Mr. Mandela, though
still a sainted figure abroad, lost some luster at home as he strained to hold together a divided populace and to turn a fractious liberation movement into a credible government.
1961. Courtesy of IDAFSA.
Pope Setting Up Commission on the Sexual Abuse of Children by Priests By James Morrison VATICAN CITY — In his first concrete step to address the clerical sexual-abuse problem in the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis will establish a commission to advise him on protecting children from pedophile priests and on how to counsel victims, the Vatican said Thursday. The announcement was a forthright acknowledgment by the Vatican of the enduring problem of abusive priests, and fit with Francis’ pattern of willingness to set a new tone in the governance of the church nine months into his tenure. Whether the new commission portends a significant change in how the Vatican deals with abusive priests and their protectors remains to be seen, experts on the church said. Yet the timing of the announcement, two days after a United Nations panel criticized the Vatican over its handling of abuse cases, suggested that the pope and his closest advisers wanted to at least be seen as tackling the issue with greater firmness. Soon after he became pope, Francis directed the Vatican last April to act decisively on abuse cases and punish pedophile priests, in a meeting with subordinates at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the church’s enforcement arm. But he had said little about the sexual abuse problem since. “A lot of people most focused on this issue said that Francis needs to game up,” Mr. Allen said in a telephone interview. “So the P.R. thing to say was, ‘We’re doing something.’ ” Such abuse is especially grave when committed by anyone in ministry in our church.” At the same time, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, the leading United States-based support group for clergy abuse victims, called the news a disappointment that reflected badly on the new pope. David Clohessy, executive director of the