Courtesy of Na Fianna Rua Olympic Hand ball Club the “Who Wants to a Thousandaire is coming to the Station House Hotel in Clifden on March 16 th 2006 with the idea to raise funds for clubs catchments area of Letterfrack, Cleggan, Roundstone Ballyconneely, Cashel, and Recess. Just a quick idea how it works, Contestants are drawn from ticket sales and each contestant will play for a thousand euros. The show is fully computerized with 50/50; ask the audience and a video linked phone a friend.

Tickets for “who wants to be a Thousandaire” will be made available on the door on the night; however there will be a launch night in February for the benefit for the sponsors and advertisers. Should you want more information re this event you can do two things, contact Bernard Lee, or Paddy Joe Joyce,

Paul Gannon or Pamela Cullinane in Cashel, secondly listen every night to the connemara community radio 8pm on each areas of their news for updates and more information on the project, I have only given out a taste of this potentially interesting and fun event and it could be some serious funds for the club.

Recently attended the opening of an exhibition of paintings from the UTV Collection (Ulster Television). The exhibition comprises of work collected by UTV over the past forty years and represents a broad range of mostly Ulster artists.  UTV decided to use the painting they had acquired from Rosie in 2000 as the image for the invite and publicity, normally the painting titled “Waiting” hangs in the UTV boardroom.  Rosie made the painting some time ago for her first solo exhibition at the Temple Bar Gallery in Dublin, it was then selected for purchase by UTV when she toured the exhibition to the Old Museum Arts Centre in Belfast.

The West of Ireland was well represented at the exhibition in Queen’s University including work by part time Roundstone resident, Cecil Maguire. The late Gerard Dillon, Arthur Armstrong and George Campbell, all one time visitors to Roundstone, were also represented and it was a great honor for Rosie to have her work placed beside theirs. Curator Amanda Croft explained that she had placed these artists together as a representation of the strong links between Roundstone and Belfast artists and as an acknowledgement of Rosie’s work to preserve these links. The opening of the exhibition was broadcast on UTV with interviews from Rosie McGurran and Carol Graham, President of the RUA.

We have just heard from the FEC, i.e. Sean McLochlainn who is the Adult Education Officer he informs us that they are now in a position to provide range of Adult and community Education programmes in the centre, such as issues relating to young people and to offer a part time youth reach programme, the unemployed and the under employed Adults, An Advocacy Service, career information Service, Adult Literacy etc, and all the programmes will offer certification, this is great to able to have all these programmes in the community hall in Roundstone, but this can not happen until we conform to a quality Assurance Framework and be legally compliant until we have proper washing and toilet facilities, which is are next target and final stage of the upgrading of the lower community Hall, so be patient we will get there with some funding that is available, we really need about another €35,000 to complete the project.