"A sick joke" by Carlow County Council earned the Nationalist and Leinster Times's front-page headline. The Malone family was "forced to relive their grief on the eve of the second anniversary of the death of their mother" when they received a bizarre letter from the council addressed to her.
The letter read: "Please note that an entry on the register of electors in your name has been deleted for the following reason: DEATH. If you have any objections, please notify me, in writing before the 25th November, 1998, and state the grounds for your objections."
Ms Dolly Shelly, a daughter of Ms Malone, said she and the family were "very upset" by the letter. "The letter is so stupid. Firstly, they are telling my mother that she is dead and then asking her to reply to it. It is actually so stupid that at first we thought it was a sick joke."
A spokesman for the county council said they did not intend to upset anyone, but unfortunately they are obliged by law to notify everyone whom they intend to delete from the register.
"I know it sounds illogical, but legally we are obliged to do that. Last week we did get a reply from one person whom we did intend to delete as a result of death, but she informed us that it was another person of the same name who had died, so there is some merit in doing it like that."
Another family is having a "battle to get into" a relation's grave, the Nationalist and Leinster Times's front page also said. "While other families spend time at their family grave for quiet reflection and prayer, the Brennan family, Tullow, face the painstaking job of battling their way to their family plot with slash hooks and trimmers every time they call to pay their respects," wrote Suzanne Pender.
Family members have to scale a treacherous high wall, bushes and briars whenever they visit their family plot, which is in a cemetery closed by Ministerial Order on July 1st, 1951.
Both the county council and the local parish priest deny responsibility for the cemetery. erese (fada over first to ees in Therese) Brennan.
The Kilkenny Tourist Board has finished what Cromwell set out to do and obliterated Callan from the map, said the Kilkenny People. "When the bold Oliver Cromwell and his men marched here they had no bother finding Callan. Unfortunately for the townsfolk Cromwell wasn't sightseeing. His army sacked the town."
Were he to return today and follow the map on a copy of the winter edition of Scope, a Kilkenny Tourist Board publication, he would not find Callan because it is not there. There has been a giggle in some quarters, but in Callan the people are furious, referring to the old saying "Walk through Ireland, run through Callan".
Two hundred years ago, an English visitor, Henry D. Inglis, wrote of Callan: "This place seems to be in the ruins that Cromwell left it," wrote Jim Rhatigan.
"Swing low sweet truck!" exhorted the Drogheda Independ]ent. Local children had a delightful windfall when a lorry carrying a consignment of confectionery shed its load outside the Glenside Hotel. Sweets, marshmallows, Macaroon bars, and Calipo bars spilled out all over the road. Local children soon heard the good news and rushed down to gather up as much as they could.
The sweet innocence of this little local event was contrasted bizarrely by the Drogheda Independent's lead story, "Children on drink, drugs, says ISPCC". One-third of Drogheda's teenagers aged between 11 and 18 have used drugs, 50 per cent them under 15, according to a research project by the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. A telephone caller posing as a garda fooled an elderly brother and sister in Dundalk into withdrawing £8,000 from the bank and giving it to him for "safekeeping", said the Argus. This "new and wicked twist on preying on this vulnerable sector of the community has led to a strong plea by gardai for the elderly to be on their guard against telephone callers and strangers calling on their homes," it said.