A grieving mother has offered a £100 reward to anyone who can offer information on the vandals who have been pillaging her daughter's grave. "I'm just sick to the teeth of it," Ms Lil Connors told the Gorey Guardian.
"Somebody must know who is doing it. I will give £100 to whoever can say who it is. It's bad enough losing your child without having to go through all this as well," she sobbed.
Anne-Marie Connors (15) died earlier this year after being struck by a car while crossing the road. The vandalism of graves in the cemetery has been denounced from the pulpit at Sunday Mass, said the newspaper.
Nearly 400 childcare places have been lost in Co Meath as the shortage of places reaches crisis levels, said the Meath Chronicle. One Navan childminder described parents "crying on the phone" when she told them she could not accommodate their children. IBEC believes that 2,000 places have been lost nationally this year.
The rising population of Ashbourne is growing three times as fast as anywhere else in Meath, with tenants paying twice as much to live there, said the Fingal Independent. Ashbourne also has the youngest population in the State, with 43.4 per cent aged under 20 years and 33 per cent aged 25-44, according to a survey carried out jointly by the Centre for Adult and Community Education in NUI Maynooth and Ashbourne's parish committee and the community council.
The opposite trend is seen in Mayo, where a research unit has highlighted "alarming rural depopulation" in its peripheral areas, said the Western People.
Meitheal Mhaigh Eo's Rural Research Unit in Newport has discovered that the population in some areas dropped by more than 20 per cent between 1986 and 1996. The Limerick Leader said Limerick County Council's housing list is at a 100-year high, with 1,311 families waiting to be housed, a 50 per cent increase in two years. The council plans to build 100 houses this year if it can find contractors who are free to do the work.
Kildare County Council's housing list is down by 500. Applications to Naas UDC and Athy UDC have also dropped, according to the Kildare Nationalist.
The Mid-Western Health Board is about to analyse human health in the area of Tailings Pond at Gortmore, Ballywilliam, Nenagh, said the Guardian. "This news comes hot on the heels of an Environmental Risk and Assessment report into the Tailings Pond facility, carried out by the owners, the multinational mining company, Mogul/Ennex."
The Department of Agriculture has confirmed that cattle deaths there were caused by lead poisoning. In June farmers were told of the "dangerously high" levels of lead in soil and vegetation. The question remains to be answered whether or not Tailings Pond is detrimental to human health and to people living near the facility.
Thousands of consumers in Sligo have to boil water following the discovery of a strain of E.coli in one of Sligo's main reservoirs, said the Sligo Champion. Sligo Corporation explained that due to water shortages in the system, the system has to be shut off at night, resulting in a "deterioration in water quality".
Residents of Camp, Co Kerry, are "furious" that an Eircell mast was erected on the grounds of the Garda station in Camp without planning permission, the Kerryman said. The residents say the mast was placed on low ground rather than high, where it would be safe.
"Anything that is directly in line with the mast is in the line of fire, and that includes my house. There are nine children living here between the ages of 24 and 13 and I am worried about their safety and health," said a resident, Mr Michael Farrell.
The Impartial Reporter reported that a 35-year-old man who cut the head of a dog belonging to a neighbour's little girl has been sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment, suspended for three years, at Fermanagh Court. The man's solicitor said that the incident was "totally out of character" and that the man "had no recollection whatsoever of committing the offence.
"Just sickening" is how the Leinster Leader described the killing of a swan found shot through the head and hanged by the neck from a fork in a tree by the Liffey in Sallins. "To harm [swans] is mindless and evil," said Paul Dempsey of the Kildare Animal Rescue Unit.