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THE LAST OF the 340 Irish troops who have been serving with the 108th UNIFIL Battalion in Lebanon will fly into to Dublin Airport at around 1pm this afternoon.
Their replacements from the 170-strong 42nd Infantry Group have flown out over the last week or so, and are now settling into their new digs at ‘Camp Shamrock’ ahead of a six month tour-of-duty. 171 personnel from the last deployment are due home this afternoon; the rest flew back last week.
The soldiers have taken part in a number of special projects in recent months, including 13 humanitarian projects, programmes to install water pumps and generators, and a ‘community integration’ effort which involves Irish troops teaching English to local schoolchildren.
It’s a joint Irish-Finnish UNIFIL mission: on the next six-month deployment a Finnish commander will be in charge, taking over from Ireland’s Lieutenant Colonel Tony McKenna.
Lieutenant Colonel Ray Yorke, from Edgeworthstown in Longford is the new commander of the Irish troops, who are headquartered around around 7 km from the blue line boundary between Lebanon and Israel, south of the village of At Tiri.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon was established in 1978 following the withdrawal of Israel’s troops, with the aim of restoring peace and security. Its mandate has been renewed every year since.
In excess of 400 Irish troops will be spending Christmas overseas this year, in Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere.
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If the stream is so polluted and the only solution is deemed to be the use of bleach, there is something very wrong with the council employees’ thought processes.
Tracking and stopping the source of the pollution in a stream would be too much trouble.
@Bramley Hawthorne: This is Water infrastructure, you start from the symptoms and work back, then give up and just keep paying lip service to the symptoms regardless of the actual state of things. In fairness we’re lucky they didn’t just start charging for use of the beaches.
Insane. These streams might be polluted, well lets make sure and dump a load of chemicals into them. And these people are in charge…?
I’d rather buy a bottle of water in aldi. Haven’t drank water from a council running tap for years now. Always boil yer water folks just for safe measure.
I’ve been saying about the amount of chlorine in our drinking water for years now it’s disgusting it smells like a swimming pool. Then add a dose of fluoride, have had to buy bottled water for about 12 years now maybe more!
@Colette Kearns: i regularly test water mains for chlorine as a control test for testing the chlorine levels of a spa swimming pool, Ive never had the control test show the presence of chlorine. Mind you thats not to say there aren’t other chemicals present such as flouride
@G man: a sane response on jouranal! I must be getting old..
@Colette Kearns: I use a reverse osmosis filter for all drinking and cooking water. The last time I did an analysis the water rain in the rain butt was purer than the unfiltered tap water.
@G man: Not sure what source the spa is taking water from, but chlorine is added to virtually all public water supply with the exception of some group water schemes.
@David Dineen: yea you are you look ancient
Waterford has backed it’s own decision but it is time to reconsider. It is a stream not a swimming pool. And be a bit more transparent also. Someone shouldn’t have to smell bleach for this issue to come to light.
Crazy! Work upstream with a testing kit and eliminate the sourc(es) of the pollution “disinfecting” a living stream is an obscenity.
Are you for real??
Hazard Statement H400. ” Very Toxic to aquatic life”. That’s from the Material Safety Data Sheet for Sodium Hypochloride. Case Closed.
@Glen Kearns: Aloho is listened as a poison but people drink in in lesser strengths. Same with this stuff.
“now hands that do dishes can feel soft as your face”… because chemicals are melting them. Lol.
have your say