An airline and the Small Claims Court
We downloaded the simple form from the Small Claims Court website, attached all emails, receipts, a cheque for €25 and posted it to the address provided on May 31st, 2025.
Ten weeks later the matter was resolved and the money was in our account. It did not go to court, it was settled following mediation by court officials.
Our experience of the Small Claims Court was positive in every way. I agree with the editorial in the Irish Times that it has a role worth building on.
READ MORE
The raising of the €2,000 limit on cases that can be brought before the court is very overdue. This was last reviewed in 2006, – Yours, etc,
ELIZABETH & ROBERT COEN,
Gort,
Co Galway.
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Irish Times
10 hours ago
- Irish Times
Gourmet getaways: The best places to eat and drink in Kenmare
There's no shortcut to Kenmare – you've got to earn it street by street. Past the houses still marked with an 'L' over the door – the Lansdowne estate symbol – past the dates carved into granite lintels, past the shops run by the people who live above them. The Co Kerry town shaped by continuity, where the line between home and business is often a staircase, and where almost everything worth eating is made by someone who lives within shouting distance of the kitchen. Karen Coakley's Kenmare Foodie Tours is the best way in. The stops change depending on the day, but what holds is the format: a short walk, a direct introduction, a story and a lot of food. The Brennans are first. At Brook Lane Hotel, it's a husband-and-wife team. Úna runs the floor and Dermot does the food – not just in the kitchen, but on the land. Their saddleback pigs are raised a few kilometres away, free-range and fed seaweed for immunity. They're slaughtered locally, and Dermot processes the meat himself – the white pudding, the sausages, the terrines. The tasting on the tour, hosted by their daughter, Megan, includes slow-cooked pork ribs, a sausage roll – rich, flaky, pork–heavy – and a warm slice of pudding with a house–made brown sauce. At their town restaurant, No 35, the same pork turns up as burgers, roast joints and black pudding salad. The next stop is Heidi Ryan's, a food shop named after the owners' grandmothers – Heidi and Ryan. Sabine von Burg is Swiss and Aidan Slevin is from Tipperary. The shop began as a farmers' market stall. It's now one of the best food shops in Ireland, in terms of both sourcing and simplicity. Vegetables come from Billy Clifford and from Mary, a grower in Killarney. There are duck eggs, foraged mushrooms, apple juice from nearby farms and vinegar by Fionntán Gogarty, who left architecture for fermentation after the crash. Charcuterie is by Olivier Boucher, and cheeses by Gubbeen, Coolea, Durrus and Lost Valley Dairy. Everything is sold by weight or portion – minimal packaging, no waste. If you want a wedge of cheese, you say how much. READ MORE Then to Maison Gourmet. It's a small, daytime cafe with highly coveted outdoor seats and an indoor seating area to the back. It looks like a French patisserie because it is – started in 2016 by Emma and Patrick Peuch, who moved to Kenmare when their sons began working at The Park Hotel (one a chef, one in training). They launched with one French pastry chef. Now, during high season, the team runs to more than 20, with a full rota of overnight bakers and counter staff. The croissants are laminated with French butter – they tried Kerrygold early on, but it was too soft to hold structure. The starter for the sourdough is kept alive daily – even taken on holiday. Cakes, tarts, brioches and patisserie are made fresh on site, and there is a tantalising array of millefeuille, pear amandine, strawberry tarts and eclairs in the glass display shelves. From pastry to chocolate. Benoit Lorge, from Lorraine in France, and his partner, Yolanda Serrano from Madrid, run a tiny chocolate shop, Lorge Chocolatier, farther down the street, offering some of Ireland's best small–batch chocolates. They are produced less than a kilometre from where they're sold. The tasting includes milk chocolate with local cream, dark chocolate with tonka bean, and black garlic praline that is intense and balanced, not at all gimmicky. Lorge uses beans from west Cork roaster Dave Barber and Beara sea salt in his caramels. The hot chocolate is made from couverture and draws swimmers and walkers year round. [ Gourmet Getaways: The best places to eat and drink on a weekend break in Galway Opens in new window ] Blasta Cafe is run by Martin Hallissey, in the house where he grew up. His mother is Maura Foley, one of Kenmare's most renowned chefs. She headed up the kitchen at The Limetree before moving on in the 1990s to open Packie's. Hallissey subsequently took over as chef there. It has since closed, and his new environment is filled with pastries – savoury and sweet – from pork and leek swirls in puff pastry to rhubarb crumble tartlets and bread-and-butter pudding with raspberries. Cakes include old–school favourites like lemon drizzle cake, rhubarb and almond, and chocolate biscuit cake. There are a few seats outside, perfect for people watching as you eat. Patrick and Emma Puech, who came to Kenmare to visit their son seven years ago, and never left, opening Maison Gourmet on Henry Street. Photograph: Valerie O'Sullivan Chocolatier Benoit Lorge at work on a giant Easter egg. Photograph: Andrew Downes Martin Hallissey at Blasta cafe The last stop on the tour is the Tom Crean Brewery. It's run by Aileen Crean O'Brien and her husband, Bill Sheppard, and is named after Aileen's grandfather, the Antarctic explorer. The beers are brewed on site, powered by solar, and infused with story as much as flavour. Their Expedition Red Ale marked the family's own journey to South Georgia. Kerry Surf & Turf is brewed with seaweed and boiled turf to give an ancient taste of Kerry. Six Magpies Stout and St Brigid's Lager both picked up national awards. All the beers are additive–free, vegan and brewed in small batches in a modest space behind the restaurant. The taproom is open 5pm–7pm and Saturday tours run at 3pm. That's the loop. And it's not just a trail of independent producers – it's a mirror of the town. Nearly every stop is run by a couple, or is a generational handover, or someone who came here once, fell for the town and simply never left. [ Gourmet getaways: The best places to eat and drink in Connemara Opens in new window ] Across the street from the Tom Crean Brewery, the Lansdowne Hotel is where you stay if you want to be in the middle of it all. Patrick and Aileen Hanley took it over in 2024. It was where Patrick grew up; his mother used to cook in the hotel when he was young. There's no spa, no pool – just good rooms, a relaxed cafe and the Shelbourne Street restaurant, which has a separate entrance from the street. The Nead, the light‑flooded hotel cafe, serves an impressive full Irish breakfast using quality produce and has an all‑day menu. The outside terrace – which captures the sun early in the day – is particularly popular. The Shelbourne Street Restaurant is quite a step above what you might expect – more town restaurant than hotel diningroom. On the menu you will find dishes such as chicken liver pâté with Heir Island bread (Aileen trained there), Tom Crean lager‑battered cod and a particularly good smoked bacon chop with charred cabbage. It's the sort of unfussy food that you often want to eat on holiday, and clearly there's a competent chef in the kitchen. Dining at the Park Hotel, Kenmare Across the road, Park Hotel Kenmare changed hands in late 2023, when Bryan Meehan acquired the property from the Brennan brothers. Since then the art collection – which is being added to on what seems like a daily basis – immediately signals a big change in direction. Gone are the ancestral portraits and in come Dorothy Cross, Sean Scully and Theaster Gates. The first piece to go up – The Rose by Michael Craig‑Martin – replaced a Victorian portrait, a relic of English rule. More than 80 works hang throughout the hotel, with a guided art tour running daily. Gates's powerful work, made from repurposed fire hoses of the kind once turned on civil rights protesters, and Dorothy Cross's foxglove bronze, cast from her own fingers, are prominent in the lobby. The fine-dining restaurant, The Landline (which is open to non‑residents), takes its name from a Scully painting and matches the tone with its food. Dinner might open with a seaweed tart filled with crab. Local prawns are paired with confit chicken, and a pea velouté is poured tableside over the ham hock. A lamb dish includes rump, sausage and shoulder inside a morel, and the meal finishes with a beautiful raspberry soufflé with crème Anglaise and ice cream. Brendan Byrne at Lagom Restaurant, Henry Street. Photograph: Valerie O'Sullivan Sheen Falls Hotel, Kenmare Just around the corner, Brendan and Liz Byrne run Lagom. The name comes from the Swedish word meaning 'just the right amount' – a guiding principle here. The space reflects it with pale woods, birch saplings, soft light and clean lines. The menu is short, the food cooked almost entirely on a Big Green Egg. A squid ink crab croustade with cucumber and dillisk is sharp and theatrical. Goat's cheese tortellini arrive in beetroot borscht. A lamb rump is oak‑seared and plated with cannelloni and roast apple. Vegetables get equal billing – miso‑glazed carrots, baby broccoli and great roast potatoes. Dessert is a semifreddo with Champagne‑marinated rhubarb, served as an 'iceberger' sandwich between slices of gingerbread. A wonderful way to finish. [ Gourmet getaway: The best places to eat and drink on a weekend break in Limerick Opens in new window ] Sheen Falls Lodge sits just outside town, with a spectacular view overlooking the river Sheen. Mark Treacy is head chef at The Falls restaurant, delivering precise, produce‑led dishes rooted in classical technique. The large terrace at the more casual restaurant, The Stable Brasserie, is a bit of a secret, so worth heading to on a sunny day when outside tables are perpetually full in Kenmare. Farther afield is The Boathouse Bistro on the waterfront at Dromquinna Manor estate. Up early, Bean & Batch is where you go for coffee and breakfast. Jamie O'Connell and his husband, John Hallissey, opened it in 2022. The ovens in their nearby bakery crank up at 3.30am. The egg salad sandwich is delicious in that old‑fashioned way – chopped egg, tomato, onion, and lettuce on white batch bread. Sausage rolls are pork and apple, wrapped in crisp pastry. Lemon tarts layer curd and sponge. John's mother's apple tart is always on. Definitely one to order. For something old‑school and with a view, head to Josie's, looking out on to Glanmore Lake with a stunning backdrop of the Caha Mountains. There are picnic benches for al-fresco dining, and a south‑facing window catches the evening light. The well‑priced menu includes langoustines in garlic butter, fish and chips and a memorable dish of Irish stew with deeply flavoured lamb. Dessert is a jelly‑heavy trifle, which could do with a further splash of sherry for a truly home-made flavour. [ Eat your way across Mayo: From garden to grill, the county is fast becoming a food destination Opens in new window ] Farther west, Helen's Bar sits close to the water at Kilmackillogue Harbour, with a substantial number of picnic tables on Bunaw Pier. The open crab sandwich on soda bread with Marie Rose sauce and salad is the thing to order. Mussels, scallops, and fish and chips round out the menu. From there, head down the coast road to An Síbín in Lauragh – a former 1762 coaching inn now run by Katherine Murphy as an atmospheric wine bar and restaurant, with stone walls, wood‑burning stove and low ceilings. The menu mixes local with farther afield: house‑made ravioli, flatbreads, jamón Ibérico, braised beef, mussels, and fish and chips. An Sibín The Buddhist centre of Dzogchen Beara in Co Cork offers stunning views of Bantry Bay. Photograph: For another kind of detour, head to Dzogchen Beara, a Tibetan Buddhist retreat at Garranes on the Beara Peninsula. Set on 150 acres, it has a spectacular view overlooking the Atlantic. It was founded in 1974 by Peter and Harriet Cornish, who donated the property to a charitable trust; it is a joy to know that the expanse of ethereal beauty will be preserved. The vegetarian cafe serves soups and salads made from what's grown on‑site, with freshly made bread. You can stay the night if there are cottages available, or just eat and walk. Finally there's a bottle of vermouth that turns up on several drinks lists around Kenmare – and on Karen's tour if the timing's right. Valentia Island Vermouth is made by Anna and Orla Snook O'Carroll, who began by steeping foraged gorse and orange peel in jam jars in their kitchen. Their flagship white, called Ór for its lovely golden colour, now ships nationwide and many of Kenmare's restaurants, including Mulcahy's and An Síbín Winebar, stock it. Ask for a V&T and you're in for a treat. The vermouth is made with a base of organic Verdejo wine, blended with wormwood, gentian root, heather and about 20 other botanicals. Everything is cold‑infused – no stills, no boiling, no artificial shortcuts. Their small production unit on the Kerry coast beside the Valentia ferry is closed to the public, but they have plans to open a visitors' centre. Their red vermouth, Rua, is in development, built around rose, vanilla and dark chocolate. What marks Kenmare out isn't just the quality of the cooking – though that's high – but how much of it comes from people who've been doing it here for decades: families who breed pigs, bake the bread, ferment the vinegar and cure the charcuterie. You eat here and you taste the hands that made it – sometimes still flour‑dusted, sometimes pouring pints of stout brewed in the shed out the back. Walk the streets and you'll find chefs cooking in the houses they grew up in, chocolate made a kilometre from where it's sold, sourdough starters with their own passport. It's not manufactured – it's Kenmare. And that's what makes it better. Corinna Hardgrave was a guest of The Park and Lansdowne Hotel Where to eat and stay in Kenmare Brook Lane Hotel, Casey's, Killarney Road, Gortamullin, Kenmare, V93 T289; Heidi Ryan's, Bridge Street, Kenmare, V93 C653; Maison Gourmet, 6 Henry Street, Kenmare, V93 A7KE; Lorge Chocolatier, 18 Henry Street, Kenmare; Blasta Café, 29 Henry Street, Kenmare, V93 Y152; Tom Crean Brewery, Killowen Road, Kenmare, Co Kerry, V93 Y6KX; The Lansdowne, Main Street, Kenmare, Co Kerry, V93 YRC8; Park Hotel Kenmare, Shelbourne Street, Kenmare, Co Kerry, V93 X3XY; Lagom, 36 Henry Street, Kenmare, Co Kerry, V93 E28P; Sheen Falls Lodge, Kenmare, Co Kerry, V93 HR27; The Boathouse Bistro, Dromquinna Manor, Sneem Road, Kenmare; Bean & Batch, Killarney Road, Gortamullin, Kenmare, V93 C868; Josie's Lakehouse, Lauragh, Co Kerry, V93 X9ER; Helen's Bar, Kilmakilloge, Co Kerry; An Síbín Winebar, Lauragh Lower, Lauragh, Co Kerry, V93 T4C2; Valentia Island Vermouth,
Irish Times
10 hours ago
- Irish Times
The Irish caminos: Climbing the ‘passage of the birds' - a Connemara rival to Croagh Patrick
Compared with the Camino de Santiago or the other great pilgrim routes of Europe, the one to Mám Éan in Connemara is a miniature affair. You can do it from two directions and, even combined, they're only a few kilometres long. But the history of the pilgrimage is no less epic than Santiago's, reaching back to pagan times when it was associated with the harvest festival of Lughnasa. Its Christian period dates from the visit in 442 AD of St Patrick , who blessed Connemara (or in some versions the whole southern half of Ireland, which he seems to have otherwise avoided) from the lofty perch of Mám Éan mountain. READ MORE In the process he was attacked by locals, who threw stones. The devil inevitably turned up too, until the holy man drowned him in the adjacent lake. The scenery is on a grand scale too. From a car park at the southern end, where I started my walk, the Inagh Valley falls away to your left, with several of the Twelve Bens looming like giant, grey-green haystacks: a familiar sight even to some first-time visitors, thanks to the paintings of Paul Henry . A narrow, rocky, path meanders up the mountain ahead, lightly marked but accompanied at first by reassuring signs detailing the pilgrim route and 'geotrail' through this ancient landscape, which outside days of designated pilgrimage is populated mainly by sheep, spray-painted in psychedelic colours. A twenty-minute climb brings you to Mám Éan, the 'passage of the birds', now overlooked by a gaunt statute of St Patrick and a tiny modern chapel, along with the more ancient landmarks including wells and Leaba Phádraig - a small cave where the holy man supposedly slept. [ The Camino only makes sense when it's over Opens in new window ] A little beyond that, over a ridge, lies the great expanse of Maam Valley, where the northern approach to the Mám Éan begins and ends, at Keane's pub in Maum. This pass was a traditional boundary between southern and northern Connemara, and so between the land of the O'Flaherty's and Joyce Country. It explains some of the tensions that used to surround the annual 'pattern' at Mám Éan's holy well and why the Catholic Church came to suppress the pilgrimage in the early 20th century, before approving revival in the late 1970s. The Mán Éan pilgrimage was rescued in the 1970s by the reforming Jesuit priest Fr Micheál MacGréil. Photograph: Conor McKeown The Scottish travel writer Henry Inglis (1775 – 1835) visited Maam during his 1834 tour of Ireland, subsequently described in a two-volume book. He was lucky that his trip to Connemara coincided with a 'pattern' day at Mám Éan. And he was doubly lucky, having shamefacedly admitted wanting to see a faction fight while in Ireland, that the event supplied one of those two. As Inglis told it, Mám Éan was at the centre of a kind of branding dispute then, with the Joyces claiming this was their country and the O'Flahertys begging to disagree. Of the former, by the way, the travel writer was in awe. 'The Joyces are a magnificent race of men,' he wrote, 'the biggest, and stoutest, and tallest, I have seen in Ireland, eclipsing even the peasantry of the Tyrol ...' [ Walking the Camino: What drew my fellow peregrinos to this arduous 113km walk? Opens in new window ] But the pattern began pleasantly, with Inglis welcomed into some of the 20 or more tents pitched at the site, some of them serving as bars, and the locals speaking English for his benefit. Then something uttered by one of the Joyces appeared to cause offence, at which point the mood darkened and the language 'suddenly changed to Irish'. Men were now seen to gulp down glasses of poitín as a prelude to action. Warned by a bar tender that there would be fighting soon, Inglis excused himself from the company and 'took up a safe position on some neighbouring rocks'. The history of the Mán Éan pilgrimage reaches back to pagan times when it was associated with the harvest festival of Lughnasa. Photograph: Conor McKeown Although the fighting included shillelaghs and rock-throwing, it left fewer casualties than Inglis had feared. 'Five or six were disabled but there were no homicides,' he reported. It was no surprise to him that the Joyces won on points. But he was taken aback by the good humour, as even some enemies 'shook hands and kissed [afterwards] and appeared as friendly as before'. Poitín drinking and other excesses, combined with a lingering paganism, made the church uneasy and eventually intolerant of the patterns. But the summer event, formerly held on the last Sunday of July, also suffered from the rivalry of a more famous western pilgrimage: Croagh Patrick . Thus, except for the local faithful, it fell into neglect for much the 20th century. Then it was rescued by one of those faithful, the reforming Jesuit priest Fr Micheál MacGréil. Born in Laois but of Joyce Country stock and reared in Mayo, Fr MacGréil was a man of many causes. He championed the rights of homosexuals in the church and once, in the late 1960s, spent time living in disguise on the roadsides of Ireland to better understand the plight of travellers. But the Mám Éan shrine was especially dear to him and he was determined to revive its former glories. In the late 1970s, he won permission from superiors to celebrate mass again among the stones up there, after which (as he told travel writer Christopher Somerville), 'people pushed a whole lot of money over the rock at me – I didn't want it but they insisted'. So he used the money to have an altar erected at the site. The statue, stations of the cross, and chapel soon followed, built or paid for by locals. From then on, as long as he could, Mac Gréil vowed to say mass at the shrine once a year, with the date now moved to the first Sunday in August. Pádraig Laffey from the parish of Clonbur-Cornamona carries the cross during the Stations of the Cross on the Mán Éan pilgrimage. Photograph: Conor McKeown None of this was designed to obliterate the older pagan history of the site. 'I wanted to put a strong Christian message on the place,' the priest explained to Somerville, 'without interfering with all the pre-Christian wells and stones and the other sacred sites there'. Having successfully revived the shrine and pilgrimage, Fr MacGréil was anxious that they would not turn into mere tourist attractions. In this, Connemara gave him two reliable allies: violent weather and Irish. During the 1982 event, itself held in good conditions, he commented with approval: 'We have had bad weather for the pilgrimage over the past few years and this has helped discourage the less religious and committed from climbing up here.' Similarly, he always insisted on celebrating mass as Gaeilge – still the area's vernacular – partly as an insurance policy against popularity. As paraphrased by the Connacht Tribune, he thought that those who might like to see the event 'upgraded' for tourism purposes would be discouraged by the continuing use of the native language. Fr MacGréil died in 2023 but when Fr Francis Mitchell said mass at the shrine earlier this month, it was still in Irish, while the hundreds who attended from both sides of the mountain were predominantly locals for whom this remains the mother tongue. [ Walking the Bray Celtic Camino: a Famous Five adventure for adults Opens in new window ] The first people I spoke to that day had the surname Joyce – what were the chances? They were not the giant male Joyces the Scottish travel writer met in 1834, but a group of women: two sisters, Mary and Breda, and their cousin Shannon Cleere from Seattle, who was making her first pilgrimage to the shrine. In an area dense with Joyces, you need nicknames (or more often three-generation patronymics – father, grandfather, and great-father usually) to distinguish families. These were the 'Tommy-Tom-Tom' Joyces, I learned, a nominal homogeneity that nevertheless sets them apart. Jack Hanley looks after the small church on Mán Éan. Photograph: Conor McKeown Also there was Philip Coyne, whose father Toomy built the altar and chapel. Except for years when he was in England, Philip never misses mass at the shrine (now held three days a year, on St Patrick's Day and Good Friday as well as early August). Overseeing the events, meanwhile, was the affable Jack Hanley, who serves as site caretaker. Hanley has been coming here since he was a boy in the 1960s. A decade or so later he was one of those who helped develop the Maamturk Moutains walk, the much longer hiking route that passes through Mám Éan and forms part of the Western Way. The caretaker lives on the Maam side of the mountain and now uses a quad to get up and down the steep switchbacks at the top of the climb. In Fr MacGréil's later years, he gave him lifts up and down, behind the quad, in a trailer ('he was not a light man'). Hanley has seen the fall and rise again of the pilgrimage, which now attracts hundreds on the three red-letter days. But as if to reassure the late Jesuit on the dangers of mass tourism, he has also witnessed changes that make the only potential Airbnb on Mám Éan even less attractive than it once was. Pointing to Leaba Phádraig, the miniature cave with its unevenly horizontal slab of rock, Hanley recalls that back in the 1960s, 'you could go to bed in it'. The comfort levels must have spartan then. But in the years since, visitors chipping away souvenirs have made them more so, he says: 'You wouldn't sleep in it now.' The Irish Caminos series continues in The Irish Times on Monday with St Kevin's Way, Co Wicklow
Irish Times
a day ago
- Irish Times
Ryanair adds 600,000 seats to Irish winter schedule
Ryanair will add around 600,000 seats to this year's winter schedule from Irish airports, new figures show, as restrictions at the State's key gateway remain in legal limbo. An analysis of the carrier's plans for winter 2025/26 by aviation data consultancy OAG, which Ryanair confirms as broadly correct, shows that the Irish group intends to grow in most key European countries. From this year, Ryanair will boost the total number of seats out of the Republic of Ireland over the winter season by 15.5 per cent, to 4.89 million. The corresponding figure was 4.23 million last winter. The airline confirmed that it is growing capacity at Dublin Airport , its biggest Irish base, 'thanks to our successful appeal' to the European courts against the 'illegal' cap, which caps passenger numbers there at 32 million a year. READ MORE Ryanair, Aer Lingus and others challenged the cap in the Irish High Court, which referred key issues to the Court of Justice of the EU , suspending the restriction pending the outcome of the airlines' action. Traffic at Dublin Airport could exceed 36 million passengers this year. Ryanair is adding almost 1.6 million seats in Italy, where its capacity will top 16.86 million this winter. The airline has been increasing its presence at bases in Italian regions that are cutting travel taxes and other costs. In another big market for the Irish airline, it will boost capacity in the UK by 6.3 per cent to 12.5 million. Ryanair plans to slash capacity in France this winter by 11.3 per cent to 2.64 million seats. The carrier blames the country's latest tax increase on flights for this. OAG notes that the airline is cutting back at every airport at which it operates in France. The biggest losers in terms of numbers will be Paris Beauvais and Marseille, according to the consultancy. It has pulled out of Strasbourg, Bergerac and Brive. [ Dublin Airport passenger cap to be breached this year, says DAA Opens in new window ] The Government pledged to lift the Dublin Airport passenger cap following 'consultations with stakeholders' in the programme published in January. An Bord Pleanála imposed the limit in 2007, as a condition of allowing the airport build a second terminal, to ease fears about traffic congestion. Darragh O'Brien, Minister for Transport, sought advice from the Attorney General Rossa Fanning, on legislation to lift the planning curb in spring. Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary has criticised the Government for failing to act on the pledge.
