"Exercising the throat has taken on a whole new meaning for one Castlerea publican who is providing free Irish-speaking classes for his customers," says the Roscommon Herald.
Moistening the native tongue in the form of conversational Irish will now be a regular feature at Peter Hynes's pub, The Westbury.
When Hynes approached Bord na Gaelige with his idea, it liked it so much it supplied the modules and books for the courses, as well as some financial assistance.
The relaxed classes will avoid taxing lessons on grammar and instead be phrase-based, teaching such things as common forms of greetings. "If parents have 20 to 30 phrases, they can talk to their children in Irish. If families talk Irish for 10 to 15 minutes in the home, that is the objective of the whole exercise," says Peter.
Youngsters with crooked teeth are being told they will have to "grin and bear it" into the next millennium because of three-year waiting lists, says the Connacht Tribune. A row has blown up in the west over a Castlebar mother of six who has been turned away for scheduled surgery at University College Hospital, Galway, seven times over the last eight months.
The Connaught Telegraph says that each time the woman, a medical card patient, went to the hospital for her bladder operation, she was told there were no beds.
"What is happening is only the tip of the iceberg. People are dying on waiting lists and it is unacceptable," says Mr Michael Kilcoyne, a Labour Party member of Castlebar Urban Council.
"The impact of Limerick being awarded the £10 million 50-metre Olympic-size swimming pool has been compared to Sydney getting the millennium games," says the Limerick Leader.
Mayo's smallest national school is to be closed by the Department of Education, but the local community is waging an imaginative campaign to save it, according to the Connaught Telegraph.
Parents at Carrowmore Lac ken and the school principal, Mr Padraig O Laimhin, have asked the Department to defer closure for a year to give them time to bring families from Dublin into the area.
"Living in fear" has replaced "the good life" in Tullamore, according to the Tullamore Tribune. Cllr Joe Feery claimed that anti-social behaviour was "getting out of hand" and that one family was forced to leave their home in a local authority housing estate. District Court Judge John Neilan promised "to return the town to the people of Tullamore and take it away from the thugs".
In Adamstown, Co Wexford, a family have been forced by intimidation to leave their home after they refused to sign a petition against an elderly widow being housed on their estate, stated the Echo. Shortly before midnight on Sunday of last week, a petrol bomb was thrown into the Sinnotts' back garden.
"A bitter and savage xenophobic assault" on Spanish students visiting Kilcohan, Co Waterford, has resulted in a boy needing hospital treatment, says the Munster Express. The Spaniards were returning to their digs at about 11 p.m. when local youths attacked them. "All of the French and Spanish children staying in the town are now afraid to go out," said a concerned local, who preferred to remain anonymous.