When the ever cheery and always optimistic Richard Branson warned on the 7th of February that the world is running out of oil and faces an oil crunch within five years, I took note. The founder of the Virgin group, whose rail, airline and travel companies are sensitive to energy prices, is not a person associated with doom and gloom statements generally attributed to us moaning environmentalists.

After the recent local elections one of the bodies I was nominated onto, by
Clare County Council, was the Mid West Regional Authority. I doubt very much
if many of you have heard of this body. It is a wandering assembly of

There is a lot of inappropriate comment about inappropriate planning and
some of it is coming from my own crowd. It is the lazy politically populist
reaction to the havoc caused by the recent flooding in Ennis.