Slí na mBeaglaoich on its Geantraí Way up the West

Slí na mBeaglaoich on its Geantraí Way up the West

The warm and genuine father / son relationship between Breanndán and Cormac Ó Beaglaoich is the makings of the brilliant TG4 six-part series, Slí na mBeaglaoich. It is clear that they enjoy each others company and you’d hope it will last the journey so. Even before they left the Dingle Pennensula you felt that this…

Bánú nó Slánú / Rural Decline Focus on Wednesday Night at 9.30pm on TG4.

Bánú nó Slánú / Rural Decline Focus on Wednesday Night at 9.30pm on TG4.

This Wednesday night at 9:30pm TG4 will take a look at the blighting graph of rural decline on two areas on the western seaboard. That graph could be just as easily laid down over any part of the new rural Ireland of today. Its cold, harsh realities of closed shops, public houses and post offices…

Nicky and Anne McAuliffe to Receive TG4 Lifetime Achievement Award

Nicky and Anne McAuliffe to Receive TG4 Lifetime Achievement Award

Nicky and Anne McAuliffe, natives of Knocknagoshel and Lixnaw (respectively) and Castleisland residents, were announced yesterday as winners of the TG4 Gradam Ceoil Lifetime Achievement Award. The couple has been on the receiving end of many awards down through the years and mainly for all they have given to the music and to generations of…

Focus on Sliabh Luachra Music on TG4 This Evening

Focus on Sliabh Luachra Music on TG4 This Evening

Sliabh Luachra will feature in a Nuacht RTÉ report this Saturday evening on TG4 at 7pm.  Nuacht TG4 journalist, Marian O’Flaherty from Dingle and cameraman, Eoin Daly from Cork filmed the piece – focusing on the music of the region – in Ballydesmond Credit Union yesterday. Focus on Eoin The piece will focus on the…

TG4 In Hunt for Talented Families For New TV Show

TG4 In Hunt for Talented Families For New TV Show

I got a call the other evening from Rob at Adare Productions and he told me they’re doing the groundwork for a new television talent show for TG4. The show will be based around a search for Ireland’s most talented family. He asked me if I could think of musically talented families in the Kerry…

Desmonds Ladies Celebrate their All-Star Lorraine

Desmonds Ladies Celebrate their All-Star Lorraine

Castleisland Desmonds Ladies GAA Club held a night of celebration in the River Island Hotel to honour Lorraine Scanlon on her wonderful achievement of winning a TG4 Ladies Gaelic Football Association All Star award in 2017. Lorraine was joined by her family, team mates, club members and friends and everyone was in agreement that it…

Siobhán as Gaeilge agus Oileán Chiarraí ar TG4

Siobhán as Gaeilge agus Oileán Chiarraí ar TG4

On this Wednesday night, November 15th Castleisland will feature on a new TG4 programme ‘Gléasta chun Féasta.’ The programme takes a look at a special day in the life of someone who lives their life through Gaeilge. Past Pupil Siobhán Ní Lioncháin is a past pupil of Gaelscoil Aogáin who was taught by her principal…

Anniversaries – Times to Remember

Anniversaries – Times to Remember

As we mark the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Patrick O’Keeffe Traditional Music Festival here in Castleisland we have also been remembering the friends we’ve lost since that milestone a quarter of a century ago. The late Mike Kenny and his enormous contribution to the first two decades of the event were spoken…

Castleisland’s First Pop-Up Gaeltacht, It’s here!

Castleisland’s First Pop-Up Gaeltacht, It’s here!

For most of us Irish finished with our schooldays with good memories and also with some bad recollections, there was an awful lot of negativity about our own language An Ghaeilge. Some people are still striving to maintain an interest and promote it as best they can with varying degrees of success. A Language of…

Interested in Writing Songs, Poetry or Comedy?

Interested in Writing Songs, Poetry or Comedy?

Listowel Writers’ Week has a couple of places still available on their popular three-day workshops in conjunction with the festival at the end of this month. For example there’s a songwriting workshop with John Spillane and the man himself explains what it’s all about in his highly inimitable style. No Talk on Theory “At my…