Connacht Tribune
Top-class gigs in store from Padraig and Leo
Tuam songwriter Padraig Stevens has a rare gift in that his songs elevate ordinary lives and people out of the ordinary. By shining a fresh light on the everyday, his often-humorous lyrics allow listeners to see what’s special about the mundane.
As co-writer of some of the Saw Doctors’ biggest hits, including I Useta Lover, Still the only One and That’s What She Said Last Night, Padraig has left a lasting mark on Ireland’s musical scene.
More recently, Christy Moore recorded Tuam Beat, in which Padraig offers a glimpse of the north Galway town in its glory days. Country singer Mike Denver, meanwhile, has had commercial success with his version of Padraig’s Ireland for the Summer.
And, of course, anyone who has ever experienced Galway’s rain will raise a wry smile at Streets of Galway, in which Padraig sings how “the rain came lashin’, splish-splashin’ down the town in a Galway fashion” as he describes a day out in Galway. That features on his album, Puddles and Rainbows, one of two solo albums the quiet songmaster has released – the other is Sound.
Fans of Padraig can witness his talent first-hand when he joins Leo Moran of the Saw Doctors for two concerts in Galway next week. The first, in the Kings Head in the city, is on Thursday February 23, and the second is at Campbell’s Tavern, Cloughanover, Headford on Friday February 24.
“Leo was at a loose end because the band can’t do gigs at the moment,” says Padraig of how these shows came about. As fans will know, the band’s lead singer Davy Carton is currently recovering from problems with his vocal cords, meaning that Leo and the others have had to reschedule a planned Saw Doctors’ tour. So, he decided to team up with his old bandmate Padraig, who served as drummer with the Saw Doctors in their early years.
Leo organised the venues for the two Galway shows, and Saw Doctors’ manager Ollie Jennings is promoting them, which just leaves Padraig “doing a bit of cramming”.
And given that his songwriting career spans some 50 years, he might need to cram up on his back catalogue!
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
The nurses’ union has formally urged the Chief Fire Officer to investigate 17 alleged breaches of the fire regulations as a result of chronic overcrowding in the emergency department at University Hospital Galway.
It’s the second time the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) has done so since Christmas, fearing the lives of staff and patients are being put in grave danger.
The emergency department was busier than normal last week, with between 222 and 251 patients turning up to be seen per day. On Wednesday of last week there were 53 patients waiting on trolleys, according to figures released by the Saolta Hospital group. That went down to 47 on Thursday and Friday.
This week has seen little let up. On Monday and Tuesday the number of people who could only get a trolley was down to 36 and 38 respectively.
Local area representative of the INMO, Anne Burke, said as a result of very high attendances at the temporary emergency department, management had opened a transit area where between 12 and 14 people could be accommodated in cubicles.
Get the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.
If you Google Damien Comer, the first entry the search returns is a dedicated Wikipedia page, which declares: “He’s better than David Clifford”.
And while Wikipedia as a source of fact isn’t necessarily always reliable, who are we to argue with it?
But whatever about comparisons with Kerry greats, the Annaghdown clubman is certainly up there among Galway’s finest ever footballers.
Winning a first All-Star last season, from his third nomination, was proof of that. It was a special personal accolade, but he’d trade it in a shot for a Celtic Cross.
“It was nice to get but if I finish my career not having won an All-Ireland, I’ll be very disappointed,” he declared.
Comer hints that the 2022 All-Ireland final loss to Kerry last July was not one of his better games in maroon, and it’s one he thinks about regularly.
“Yeah, I would yeah, I’d think about it a bit. But I try to forget it as well, because it wasn’t a good day for me, personally, anyway.
“You try to forget about it and yet you have to try to learn from it and improve on the mistakes you made, and stuff you didn’t do that you should’ve done, and different things that you can bring to this season.
“It’s one that’s hard to forget about really because we were there for so long. Sixty minutes in, neck-and-neck, and then they just pulled away, so it was disappointing,” he said.
Damien Comer has teamed up with Specsavers to encourage people to take a more proactive approach to their eye and hearing health. There’s a full interview with him ahead of Sunday’s National Football League Final, is in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.
Galway businessman Paul Grealish remembers the moment back in 2000 when he was given a sheet of paper and asked to write about his life. He was on weekend-long self-development course that he’d been sent on by his brother John. At the time, John was managing director of their family business for which Paul and their sister, Joan, also worked.
“The course was probably done in an attempt to make it easier to manage me,” says Paul with a laugh, adding that he “was tough to manage” back then.
He was enjoying the course – until he received that blank sheet.
“I got about four or five sentences in, writing about my early life. Until I got to the primary school part . . . I was in tears,” he remembers. “I was so used to compartmentalising things, I didn’t see the danger.”
In the early 1970s, aged nine and ten years, Paul had been beaten and sexually abused by his teacher, Brother Thomas Caulfield, at Tuam CBS primary school.
He had repressed those memories for nearly three decades.
“You bury the memory, and you bury it as deep as you can. There’s an awareness of something terrible there but it’s too frightening for you to actively remember.”
Paul was so terrified of those memories that he’d lost all recollection of his childhood. He couldn’t tell his story.
He was meant to show it to one of the course leaders – a counsellor, he thinks. Instead, Paul put the nearly-blank sheet before the man and explained what had happened.
Realising Paul’s plight, that man gave him a list of phone numbers for counsellors in Galway.
“Every now and again, I’d look at it and think about ringing them but I didn’t,” Paul says.
However, the abuse that had robbed Paul of his childhood and blighted his adulthood with feelings of guilt and self-hatred refused to stay buried. Finally, he knew he had to deal with it. That journey began in the early 2000s and Paul finally got closure earlier this month when Caulfield was sentenced to 27 months in prison – with the final seven suspended – for his crime.
Read Paul’s full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.
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