YESTERYEARS: €30m rescue plan for flood town - Tipp win seven All-Stars

Clonmel’s flooding nightmare was about to be tackled with the biggest urban flood relief scheme ever undertaken in this country at a cost in excess of €30 million, wrote Eamon Lacey in our main front page story on the December 8, 2001 edition.
Twenty years ago this week, Minister Martin Cullen was in the Town Hall on Monday, December 3, to launch what was described as an “intrusive”plan that would not be completed until 2005 at the earliest.
The proposed scheme, one of the biggest in Europe at the time, would cover the River Suir from just above the Convent Bridge in the town to the confluence of the Anner River (beyond Sir Thomas’ Bridge). The scheme, the news story reported, would also include works along nine tributaries of the Suir.
Elsewhere on the front that week Eamonn Wynne reported on Tipperary’s “Magnificent Seven” All-Stars, following on from the county claiming the Liam MacCarthy Cup in September 2001 with a win over Galway in the All-Ireland Final. The seven recipients were to be Brendan Cummins, Philip Maher, Eamonn Corcoran, Tommy Dunne, Eddie Enright, Mark O’Leary and Eoin Kelly.

Yesteryears: New €28 million retail centre in Cashel to create 250 jobs

Also we announced that our esteemed columnist, Margaret Rossiter, had won a prestigious Justice Media Award for her moving account of a gang rape victim’s experience during the week-long trial of the victim’s alleged attackers.
We also reported on our front page that at an Oireachtas committee meeting that week in Dublin, former Fianna Fáil Mayor of Clonmel, and then chairman of the “Right to Peace” Group, Michael O’Brien, gave a graphic account of how he was abused at Ferryhouse, Clonmel as a young boy.