Galway In Days Gone By

Housing’s dire state

The shocking conditions under which numbers of the poorer classes live in Galway were revealed in the course of a discussion at the adjourned monthly meeting of the Galway Urban Council yesterday (Thursday).

An applicant for one of the council’s cottages, in a letter to the council, told a terrible story of congestion in a tumble-down cabin. The housing shortage has made competition for vacant houses extremely keen, and a meeting of the council never passes that there are not applications from persons to be put on the list for the next vacant houses.

Mr. J. S. Conroy, solr., came before the meeting to urge the claim of a man named McDermott for a house it was stated was about to be vacated.

Mr. Cooke said McDermott’s house was burned down and he was obliged to go and reside with his brother-in-law.

The secretary read a number of applications from persons requesting to be placed on the list for houses. A man named Smith, of Bohermore, wrote: “I appeal to you to give me a house about to become vacant in St. Brigid’s-terrace. I am, at present, living under the most miserable conditions in a thatched house of one room, and five of us are sleeping in one bed.

“One night, last week, I had to dig a hole in the floor of the room to let out the water. This house was condemned by the sanitary officer as unfit for human habitation.”

1950

The brain drain

The attitude of those students who attended universities to take out degrees merely to get positions abroad, was criticised by Professor Cilian Ó Brolcháin, U.C.G., when he spoke on “Student University Life” to the delegates to the Congress of the Comheaidreamh – the organisation of the Irish-speaking university and graduates of Ireland – at Carraroe on Monday.

The young graduate, Professor Ó Brolcháin said, should first ask himself could he use his knowledge for the benefit of the people of his own country. To do otherwise was a negation of nationalism.

It was an unfortunate fact that many graduates were compelled to emigrate, but no student should enter the university merely to acquire the skill necessary to gain him employment abroad.

A fault of the Irish university system, he said, was that many students were permitted to attend courses while they were too young and did not have the outlook necessary to realise the real purpose of a university.

Pictured: Fire fighters at work during the DIGITAL fire at Mervue Industrial Estate in August 1978. Photos: Joe O'Shaughnessy