.
We begin our review of the stories we brought you this year at the obvious starting point – January…
• The year started with the revelation that 2018 saw the highest number of patients waiting on trolleys at University Hospital Kerry since the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation began recording the data in 2006.
There were 3,396 patients waiting on trolleys in UHK in 2018, an increase of over 50% on the previous high in 2017 of 2,215.
• A LUCKY Kerry family celebrated the start of 2019 as lottery millionaires as they collected a cheque for €1 million after they won the top prize of the Daily Million game in late December.
The winning ticket was printed at the Applegreen Service Station on Manor Road in Tralee. The lucky family planned to take some time out before they made any major plans for their €1 million prize but top of their priorities was to clear their mortgage and pay off all of their bills.
Continued below…
.
Mairead Fernane.
• AUSTIN Stacks elected Mairead Fernane as its first ever female chairperson.
At the club’s AGM, Máiréad followed in the footsteps of her uncle, Dan O’Sullivan, who was the Club’s first Chairman when the Club was founded back in 1917.
Máiréad, who was Vice Chairperson for the previous two seasons, took over from Liam Lynch who stepped down following three seasons in the Chair.
• TRALEE improved its status to ‘Clean’, according to the final litter survey of 2018 by business group Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL)
Back in October 2018, it was deemed ‘moderately littered’ and in 34th position, but was now ‘Clean To European Norms’ and in 30th place out of the 40 towns and cities surveyed by An Taisce.
• TRALEE CBS students have won the Overall award in the Senior Social and Behavioural Sciences category at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in Dublin.
Michael Kirby, Padraig Crean and Michael Carroll created a farm safety book. Their project was ‘A study into the effectiveness of teaching farm safety skills to young children by integrating different teaching pedagogies into a children’s storybook’.
Continued below…
.
Ultan Dillane.
• TRALEE man Ultan Dillane was named in Joe Schmidt’s Irish rugby squad for their first two matches in the Six Nations.
The Connacht player was included in the 38-man squad just a couple of weeks after committing to Connacht for the next two years after he signed a two year contract extension that will keep him at the Sportsground up to the end of the 2020/21 season.
• IT has been revealed that 20 people in Kerry were affected by failures in the Garda Youth Diversion programme.
Supt Dan Keane said the figure was especially low in Kerry compared with the rest of the country. Supt Keane said registered letters of apology — signed by the Superintendent of each district — had been sent out to those 20 victims.
It was revealed by Garda Commissioner Drew Harris, that 3,489 child suspects nationally got away with committing 7,894 crimes, including serious crimes, over a seven-year period.
• FOUR Tralee hotels made the Irish Top 25 in the latest Tripadvisor Travellers Choice Awards.
In all, nine hotels from Kerry made the list which was topped by Harvey’s Point in Donegal.
Ballygarry House Hotel made the Top 1o coming in ninth position. The Manor West Hotel was in 16th position, with The Rose Hotel in 22nd and The Meadowlands Hotel in 23rd.
Continued below…
.
• GARDAI arrested two men and aged in their 20s and 30s and seized 370 individual wraps of heroin with a street value of approximately €10,000, following a surveillance operation at Ballyseedy Woods on January 24.
• THE Kerry Association in Dublin’s Kerry Person of the Year was announced as Tomás Garvey.
The founder of the Garvey Group, businessman, hotelier, staunch supporter of charities and community initiatives and proud supporter and sponsor of Kerry GAA and basketball in Kerry, would receive the honour for 2019 from the Kerry Association in Dublin in March.
