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BreakingNews.ie
2 days ago
- Lifestyle
- BreakingNews.ie
Kerry house with spectacular views overlooking Kenmare Harbour
Set in a beautiful coastal location just outside Kenmare, this architect-designed home offers a comfortable and efficient living space with impressive views of Kenmare Harbour. Built on two acres of well-maintained grounds above the Ring of Kerry Golf Course, the property combines thoughtful design with practical sustainability. Advertisement To the east, you'll find the gentle shoreline of Kenmare Harbour, while the MacGillycuddy Reeks rise to the south and the rugged Caha Mountains sit on the Beara Peninsula to the west. The house itself is designed with a low-pitched roof and split-level layout that makes good use of space. The main living area, kitchen, and master bedroom face the harbour and are protected by deep eaves. Large triple-glazed sliding doors open out to the views, allowing plenty of natural light and fresh air inside while keeping the interior dry even when the weather isn't perfect. Inside, the entrance leads to a mezzanine lobby overlooking a spacious open-plan living, dining, and kitchen area. The layout feels open and inviting, with big windows framing the scenery and creating a light, airy atmosphere. Advertisement This is also a smart home, with individually controlled zones for lighting and heating. Underfloor heating runs on an air-to-water system, contributing to the home's A2 energy rating. This means the house stays comfortable throughout the year while keeping energy use low. There are four bedrooms, two with en-suite bathrooms, offering good space for family or guests. The master bedroom has patio access through a glazed door and includes walk-through wardrobes and a modern en-suite bathroom. At the back of the house, you'll find a plant room and a guest WC. Kenmare town is nearby, and the beach and pier at Templenoe are perfect for walks or relaxing by the water. For travel, Kerry Airport is about 50 minutes away, and Cork Airport can be reached within 80 minutes.
BBC News
25-05-2025
- BBC News
Michael Gaine: Human remains identified as missing County Kerry farmer
Human remains found at farmland in County Kerry have been identified as being those of missing farmer Michael Gaine, 56, had been missing for more than eight weeks and he was initially treated as a missing persons case before it was upgraded to a confirmation comes nine days after human tissue was discovered in fields on Mr Gaine's farm, near discovery led to the farmyard and several fields being sealed off and declared a crime scene. Since then, the area has been searched by specialist teams, including members of the Garda (Irish police) Technical Bureau, assisted by local garda search teams and the Irish Defence Forces. A man in his 50s, who was arrested last Sunday on suspicion of Mr Gaine's murder, was later released without charge. He has denied any involvement in the farmer's Sunday evening, gardaí confirmed the identification of Mr Gaine's remains in a have further appealed to the public for assistance in this investigation. Mr Gaine, a sheep and cattle farmer, was reported missing from his home near Kenmare on 21 March. He was last seen in the County Kerry town the previous lived in the remote Carrig East area, close the Molls Gap beauty spot, along the renowned Ring of month, Michael Gaine's wife Janice told Irish broadcaster RTÉ that he "loved his home, he loved his farm, he loved animals" adding that his disappearance was "totally out of character".According to RTÉ, in-depth investigations by gardaí ruled out "innocent" explanations, such as a medical event, an accident, or that he left the area voluntarily. A missing person's investigation operates on the basis of consent, but when gardaí announced the re-classification of their investigation, it meant the range of options in front of the investigation team significantly could then get search warrants, clear areas of interest and seize and examine certain items like phones and laptops.
Irish Times
23-05-2025
- Irish Times
Michael Gaine homicide case: The full story so far
The sun was shining in Kenmare this week as tourists sipped coffees outside restaurants and browsed stalls around the town's square. All seemed oblivious to the drama unfolding in the hills above this picturesque town in south Kerry. For locals, it was different. The mood has turned sombre lately as one subject dominates conversations: the macabre details of the apparent violent death met by 56-year-old local man Michael Gaine on his hillside farm, less than 6km from Kenmare. Gaine's farm lies just off the popular tourist Ring of Kerry route that wends between peaks and valleys. READ MORE 'It's been the talk of the place since Mike disappeared two months ago and since we heard the news at the weekend, people are in an awful state altogether,' said one man, shaking his head. 'It doesn't bear thinking about – it's beyond belief.' The details, when they emerged last weekend, shocked locals. Gaine's nephew, Mark O'Regan, was spreading slurry on his uncle's farm with a local agricultural contractor when they noticed that the slurry tanker was not working properly. They went to examine the trailing chute at the rear of the machine and found it blocked. When they examined it closely, they discovered the obstruction was caused by human remains. They immediately notified gardaí who quickly arrived on the scene. Defence Forces personnel join the search for Michael 'Mike' Gaine near Kenmare in Co Kerry. Photograph: Noel Sweeney/PA Wire After almost two months of fruitless searching, involving scores of gardaí, mountain search teams and Defence Forces personnel, this was the first significant clue to explaining what had happened to Gaine, who had disappeared in March. A native of Kenmare, Gaine had grown up on Railway Road in the town with his parents, James and Sheila and his younger sisters, Noreen and Catherine. The family originally came from Carrig East, midway between Kenmare and Moll's Gap, a scenic pass between the town and Killarney. The Gaines have been farming around Kenmare for generations – the 1911 census shows there were 49 Gaines in the town, the vast majority farmers or cattle dealers from nearby hillside areas such as Carrig, Carhoomeengar and Lissyclerig. Gaine attended Kenmare National School and after completing his secondary education at Kenmare Vocational School, he worked in construction for a period before being employed as a fencing contractor. He helped his mother Sheila at the farm after his father James died in 2003. By then, Gaine had met his future wife Janice at a ball in Killarney. The couple had travelled to Australia and New Zealand before they settled down at an architect-designed house they had built on their land at Carhoomeengar East in the late 1990s. Gaine used to make the short journey from his home to Carhoomeengar East to Carrig to help his mother Sheila on the farm but he ran the farm himself when she could no longer manage. She died in a nursing home in Kenmare on February 1st. Excavations on the farm of Michael Gaine near Kenmare in Co Kerry. Photograph: Noel Sweeney/PA Wire It was just two weeks after the month's mind memorial mass for his mother that Gaine disappeared. He was last seen on CCTV footage, buying mobile phone credit at Whyte's Centra in Kenmare at 9.48am on March 20th before driving off in his bronze-coloured 10-year-old Toyota Rav 4. When he failed to return home that evening and did not answer his phone, Janice contacted her sister-in-law Catherine. Catherine's husband Sean O'Regan, a garda in Kenmare, reported Gaine missing to gardaí on Friday, March 21st, triggering a missing persons investigation. That day, friends and family began searching the farmyard at Carrig East. It was here that gardaí found Gaine's wallet and mobile phone in his car. Up to 200 volunteers joined the search on Saturday and Sunday to comb the 1,000 acres of hillside around the farm. Gardaí quickly established there had been no activity on Gaine's bank accounts and an examination of his mobile phone showed a number of missed calls but no outgoing calls or texts after the last sighting of him at Centra. On March 24th, members of Kerry County Fire Service assisted gardaí in carrying out a search of the slurry tank under the 20-metre slatted unit where Gaine had kept his 40 suckler Limousin and Charolais cows. Those, along with 500 sheep, earned Gaine his income from the farm. The Garda Press Office issued a series of statements in relation to the search for Gaine, which was still, at this point, a missing persons investigation. No statement made specific references to the 50,000-gallon slurry tank being searched; the Garda said simply: 'Searches have been carried out at Michael's farm.' Media reports said searches of the slurry tank took place on March 24th – four days after Gaine went missing – and one Garda source told The Irish Times the tank's main chamber was drained fully, and the slurry in a second smaller chamber was then filtered into the main chamber. But no human remains were detected. Missing Co Kerry farmer Michael Gaine: body parts were found in a slurry tank on his farm. One local told The Irish Times that the main tank was drained of liquid and that up to a half a metre of solids remained. Members of the fire service wearing breathing apparatus then waded through the solids, prodding them with poles. But, again, they detected no remains. Events took a grim twist last weekend when Gaine's nephew and the agricultural contractor emptied the remaining slurry from the tank and spread it on a number of fields near the farm. By then, the investigation had been upgraded to a murder inquiry. The change in status came just a day before Gaine's wife and his sister Catherine made a video appeal on April 30th for any information about what happened to their husband and brother. 'We just want to Michael to come home – we want to know what happened to him because if we can't find Michael, I just don't know what I am going to do,' said Janice. She said her husband's disappearance was 'totally out of character'. Garda sources say the decision to upgrade the investigation to a murder inquiry came after exhausting all possibilities that some accident had befallen Gaine or that he had self-harmed given that surface searches of the farm had yielded no trace of him. Locals say they believed from the beginning that Gaine had been the victim of foul play and was most likely disposed of in the slurry tank. Sources close to gardaí say they, as much as anyone else, were shocked by the manner in which Gaine's remains were discovered. 'They searched the slurry tanks thinking they were looking for a body – they never thought that Mike Gaine would be cut into pieces and dumped into the tank; they never thought they were dealing with that level of barbarity,' said one source with an insight into the Garda's approach. Gardaí believe Gaine was murdered by a person known to him soon after he arrived at the farmyard at Carrig on the morning of March 20th and that his killer dismembered his body in the slatted unit before disposing of the body parts in the underlying slurry tank. A chainsaw was discovered hidden in the farmyard and brought to Forensic Science Ireland's laboratory in Dublin for examination to see if any DNA evidence could be obtained. Gardaí arrested a man in his 50s last Sunday in Tralee and questioned him for up to 24 hours before releasing him without charge. The Garda Press Office statement issued on his release made no mention of a file being sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), suggesting that gardaí face a challenge in making any case against the man. Back in Kenmare, nobody is willing to speak publicly about the Garda investigation to date. Privately, people are angry and few hold out any hope of Gaine's killer being brought to justice for a crime that has left many stunned and numbed. One local, who did not want to be named, said: 'This is gruesome – it's the sort of things the drug cartels do … When people saw the markers in the fields where they found parts of Mike, they were shocked.' The local said people in the area were 'raging over the handling of it all by the gardaí'. People were wondering why the Garda inquiry was not 'declared a murder investigation sooner' and asking why the slurry tank was not emptied and searched properly, they said. 'They would have found out what happened Mike much sooner. They are saying if that was done eight weeks ago, we would be in a totally different situation now – the guards would have had much better physical evidence to put to the suspect when they arrested him,' the local said. 'Instead, it looks like they are facing an uphill battle to get justice for Mike.'
Irish Independent
20-05-2025
- Health
- Irish Independent
Kerry Hospice Foundation need public support for five new palliative care beds – ‘it would be huge'
The 'Pedal for Palliative' initiative was launched on Monday on the grounds of KHF's 15-bedroom Inpatient Unit which was first opened back in 2017. While this palliative care facility on its own has been a huge addition to the county, the team at KHF have decided that more is needed and so, they have brought forward plans to extend and expand this service. Hoping to break ground by the end of May, the expanded new service will include new facilities for families, children of patients, staff and most importantly, five extra beds. The cost of this expanded new facility is estimated to be in €6.5 million range but this could well rise even further so KHF say that any and all donations will be gratefully received. "They [the five extra beds] would be a huge addition for us, absolutely huge. The benefits will be massive. The unit has been full since it opened, it's been at 100 per cent capacity since back in 2017. It's unfortunate that it is that busy. The question is can you ever have enough beds? Obviously we'd love to have 10 or 20 more beds but five will do for the time being,' Andrea told The Kerryman. While KHF say that they have savings, these simply be enough and so, hence why they now need the support of the public. "We would love if you could cycle [the Ring of Kerry event] for us. If this isn't practical, support in the form of sponsorship or other direct contributions would go a long way towards this important cause. We will be deeply grateful for all backing. We are constantly reminded of our motto, while Kerry Hospice will always need your help, we hope that you will never need the Hospice,' the team added at the launch. To register to cycle for Kerry Hospice please click on the link here:
BBC News
18-05-2025
- BBC News
Michael Gaine: Man arrested on suspicion of murder
A man has been arrested on suspicion of murder by Irish police investigating the disappearance of farmer Michael comes a day after gardaí (Irish police) searching a site near Mr Gaine's farm confirmed they had found partial human remains. Mr Gaine, 56, has been missing for more than eight weeks. He was initially treated as a missing persons case before it was upgraded to a homicide on 29 man, in his 50s, is being held in custody as searches and technical examinations at the site near Mr Gaine's farm continue. On Saturday, gardaí said DNA analysis would be carried out on the human remains before they can be identified. Mr Gaine, a sheep and cattle farmer, was reported missing from his home near Kenmare on Friday, 21 March. He was last seen in the County Kerry town the previous lived in the remote Carrig East area close the Molls Gap beauty spot along the renowned Ring of month, Michael Gaine's wife Janice told Irish broadcaster RTÉ that he "loved his home, he loved his farm, he loved animals" adding that his disappearance was "totally out of character".
