The Week: Tokyo Tales, Environmental Endeavours and Sunflower Smiles

You’re reading The Week on KCLR, highlighting some of the stories you may have missed on air and online.

As two athletes with Kilkenny links head for the Paralympics, one Carlow Olympian has been telling of his Tokyo experience.

Sunflowers are blooming and we’ve been catching up with those involved in two main hubs for the sunny-faced flowers.

Carlow’s Kathleen Chada gives her reaction to the new Parole Act.

The environment and weather has been to the fore.

While KCLR Lunch has been catching up with some well-known Irish musical talent.

As always, you can join our news team across the day, seven days a week, read the stories on kclr96fm.com and kclrfanzone.com or take us with you on the KCLR app.

Tokyo Bound

Hot on the heels of the Carlow and Kilkenny athletes’ endeavours at the Olympics, more local stars are set to shine in Tokyo in the coming weeks.

It was announced on Monday that Mary Fitzgerald from Kilkenny had been selected as part of Team Ireland for the Paralympics (read our story on that here). While on Tuesday we discovered that another athlete heading to Japan has ties to the county – read about equestrian’s Rosemary Gaffney here

Good wishes then started to flow, including from Gowran Athletics Club which Mary’s a member of – secretary Dave Denieffe spoke with our Sinéad Burke for KCLR News:

Mary attended Enable Ireland at the O’Neill Centre in Kilkenny from a young age into her late teens.

Therese Healy worked with her there as a physiotherapist and told our Edwina Grace of KCLR News about the woman behind the Paralympic dream:

As many members of the Paralympic Team Ireland departed on Thursday, Tinryland Olympian Marcus Lawler popped into studio to speak with our Brian Redmond on KCLR Live about his Tokyo experience:

While many local hurling fans stopped off at Gold medalist Kellie Harrington’s Dublin City home on their way to Croke Park last Sunday.

Among them one South Kilkenny farmer, who had a special gift for Ireland’s latest sporting hero – he spoke to Brian Redmond about that on KCLR Live:

Parole Act

Kathleen Chada

This week we heard how the new Parole Act brings increases the time a life-sentence prisoner has to serve before being considered for release.

Carlow woman Kathleen Chada’s two sons Eoghan and Ruairi were killed by their father Sanjeev in 2013 and he’s serving a life sentence for that.

Kathleen joined our Brian Redmond on KCLR Live to say she thinks Sanjeev should never be released, but acknowledged the Act change is a step in the right direction …

Sunflower Stories

The Kilkenny Sunflower Field opens this weekend (read about that here).

While Edward Hayden on The Way It Is caught up with Keith Swan whose family has a similar venture just outside Carlow Town:

The chats came hot on the heels of Edward Hayden’s piece on The Saturday Show with resident gardening expert Shirley Lanigan who spoke about sunflowers as well as magnolias.

Hear that here:

Environment

The environment has been to the fore this week, in more ways than one.

On KCLR Live we heard how one Carlow company has been certified carbon neutral – Stryve’s CEO Andrew Tobin told us all about it …

While the Three Counties Energy Company for Carlow, Kilkenny, Wexford and now also Waterford, outlined their new venture – read about that here

Environmental scientist, author and Kilkenny native Dr Tara Shine joined Brian Redmond on KCLR Live to discuss the climate change report (read the IPCC document here):

And on The Way It Is with Edward Hayden we heard what Europe’s done for the environment …

Edward too also caught up with Niall Dollard of Kilkenny Weather on The Way It Is:

Lively Lunch

Our John Keane enjoys catching up with those from the world of entertainment on KCLR Lunch.

This week, his guests included Leo Moran of Sawdoctors …

And also Paddy Casey:

Catch Up

There’s plenty more from across the week here on KCLR.

You’ll find our news stories here while regular key features from programmes covering a range of topics, including travel, fitness, health care, as well as repeats of our talk shows and more can be found in our Catch Up section.

Best of all, you can read and listen to everything in the KCLR app.