Donegal Manager Jim Mc Guinness has added former defender Damien Diver to his backroom team. The Ardara man will work as a strenght and conditioning coach for players in the south and will also act as a defensive coach. Mc Guinness has also confirmed he is still on the look out for one more mentor to his team and that he has spoken to a number of people but has yet to finalise the matter.
The NowDoc service in Mountcharles is moving into a new premises today with the area served by the office set to expand next month.
The service is moving out of the current treatment centre on Main Street, and into the old Seamount Hotel site which has been specially adapted.
Service Manager Angela Tysall says the Mountcharles centre will bring in Donegal Town for the first time in early September, and that significantly extend the area it covers:
Two environmental courses are to be offered to 33 people in Donegal under a new funding initiative announced by Tanaiste Mary Coughlan.
The courses have been appropved as part of an additional €12 million under the Labour Market Activation Fund.
Tanaiste and Education Minister Mary Coughlan says the additional funding announced last night will support education and training programmes for some 5,400 additional unemployed people and will bring the total number of participant places supported by the Fund to almost 12,000 this year.
Two courses run by Donegal VEC and LYIT in the area of renewables have been included in the list of 33 projects. Donegal VEC has been approved for a FETAC level five certificate in Renewable Technology for 15 participants while at Letterkenny Institute of Technology, 18 places will be made available on a Certificate in Wind Energy Technology course
A row over who should fix a faulty phone line has left thousands of HSE patients unable to contact a public health service in the northwest.
Patients needing prescriptions, counselling and appointments have been unable to call the Primary Health Care Centre in Letterkenny, Co Donegal, for most of the past three weeks. During that time telephones at the centre have been ringing out.
The phone lines did come back into operation for a couple of days . Eircom says its engineers have checked the lines and says the fault does not rest with it.
The fault was reported on August 5th and again on August 10th. A team of Eircom engineers thought they had fixed it on August 11th, but a couple of days later, the phone lines were again down.
An Eircom spokesman said it had now done all it could to rectify the problem.
“Further investigation by the Eircom technical support team has concluded that this issue appears to relate to the customer’s internal phone system,” he said.
Sources at the centre say the phone lines have been down again since last week. They say patients are getting very frustrated with the service.
Last night, the HSE said it was aware of the situation and had tried to contact all affected patients by letter.
A spokesperson said while it understood that patients were anxious about not being able to contact the centre, the HSE was doing all it could to rectify the situation.
“We have contacted Eircom and they are working on the problem.”
The Central Applications Office says it will be launching an investigation into why its website crashed earlier today.
It happened as thousands of students were awaiting their first round college offers.
The CAO believes it was caused by a malicious attack on its website which is now back up and running.
The points requirements for most college courses have increased in the first round of offers today, with a record number of college applications received this year.
There’s a strong demand for medicine and science subjects while points for construction and property courses have dropped.
Of the seven Level 8 Honours Degree Courses at Letterkenny Institute of Technology, all have seen their points requirements rise.
For General Nursing, the first round requirement this year is 405 points, up 25 on last year’s first round. For Psychiatric Nursing, 365 points are needed, up 15, while for Intellectual Disability Nursing, the 2010 first round requirement is 360, up 25.
There are also places available for maturwe bnursing students in all three disciplines, with points requirements between 177 and 170 points, but offers are not automatic, and depend on other criteria such as interviews. Meanwhile, 230 points are required for Applied Computing this year, 30 up on 2009.
Advice for students looking to enrol on one of the 31 Level 7 courses and other courses at the college will be available at a major open day in the IT on Wednesday of this week.
Representatives from Siptu are meeting with management from Oatfield today, to discuss how the remaining 15 jobs in the factory in Letterkenny can be maintained.
Highland Radio News obtained a letter circulated to staff on Friday by the company’s board of management confirming the job losses.
Speaking on todays Shaun Doherty show, Siptus Donegal Secretary, Martin O Rourke, says the remaining workers at the plant have years of vast experience:
A 20-year-old man has been charged with drink driving and dangerous driving causing the death of a female passenger earlier this year.
Matthew Gallagher, of Skerry, Kilmacrennan, was before Letterkenny District Court.
20-year-old Matthew Gallagher from Skerry, Kilmacrennan is charged with drink driving and dangerous driving causing the death of a female passenger earlier this year well as having no insurance at Main Street, Kilmacrennan, in the early hours of February 21.
The BMW he was driving crashed, resulting in the death of 29-year-old Elaine Brady of Rosemount, Kilmacrennan.
Sgt Peter Duffy told the court he arrested Mr Gallagher by arrangement on the morning of the hearing. He said that when cautioned in relation to each charge, Mr Gallagher replied: “Nothing to say.” Judge Conal Gibbons granted legal aid.
He adjourned the case until October 5 and released Mr Gallagher on his own bail of€300.
Letterkenny is the cleanest town in Ulster.
That’s according to the results of teh 2010 survey commisioned by Irish Business Against Litter (Ibal) published this morning.
Of 53 twons surveyed, just over half recieved the accolade “litter – free” – down from two-thirds on last year.
Letterkenny was found to be the cleanest town in Ulster, Sligo the cleanest in Connacht, while Killarney was the cleanest in Munster.
Irelands cleanest town was Wexford, which had “consistently high standards of maintenance of the environment”.
The distinction of worst performing town was Tallaght. The Dublin suburb was dubbed a “litter blackspot” which was showing “signs of overall neglect, a big challenge which must be surmounted”.
Naas in County Kildare and Midletown in County Cork also fared badly, both judged to be “seriously littered”.
Limerick last year described as a “litter black-spot”, improved this year to merely “littered” but it was referred to as “again the most littered” of cities
Mark English (Letterkenny AC ) finished 8th in Sundays 1.000 meters final at the youth Olympics in Singapore. Held in very warm conditions of 35 degrees, the fast early pace was set by Sudanese athlete Abdelrahman who went through 400 meters in 53.70, with Geleto of Ethiopia going through 800m in 1.53.15. English moved to the front of the bunch at the 300 meters mark but when Geleto kicked for home at 200 he split the field apart, with the Letterkenny man unable to maintain contact. In the resulting bunch sprint to the line he finished eight in a time of 2.24.95, just outside his best of 2:24.53. Geleto took gold in an impressive 2.19.94 with silver going to the fast finishing Driouch of Qatar 2.21.25 and Briton Charlie Grice got up for bronze in 2.21.85.
While disappointed at not making the medals this has been a fantastic season for English and he can look forward to the future with confidence.
Mark spoke with Myles Gallagher on Sunday Sport.
The Irish Athletic team at the games was also coached by Donegal’s Bernie Alcorn.
League of Ireland Division One Results
Finn Harps 3 v 2 Salthill Devon
Limerick FC 0 v 1 Derry City
Chris Breen was the Finn Harps hero as they came from behind to grab all three points against a lively but lowly Salthill Devon side at Finn Park on Friday night.Having rejoined his local club after spending the best part of two years travelling the southern hemisphere, Breen was sprung from the bench for what was his first appearance on Navenny Street in 21 months with the score tied at 2-2 and scored the vital goal on 76 minutes.
This Friday 27th August Harps host Sligo Rovers in FAI Senior Cup.
Finn Harps Manager James Gallagher.
Derry City remain seven points clear at the top after a one nil win at Jackman Park. Mark Farren scored the only goal of the game in the 46th minute to give the Candystrips the full haul of points and their first win in three games.
