Two Kerry restaurants shut by FSAI

VALENTIA Young Islanders may have suffered a 17-point defeat in their league opener away to St Michaels/Foilmore, but after the events of recent weeks, it was probably not as bitter an experience as it would normally be.

In the lead-up to the match, Valentia’s struggle for numbers has been well publicised, with genuine fears that the club’s seniors would have to sit out 2019. More serious than that, there were worries that such a blackout could throw the club’s very future into doubt.

But against all the odds, Valentia did field a team to line out on Sunday – even though they had been in talks with St Michaels/Foilmore to rearrange the fixture and looked odds-on to miss the scheduled March 10 start date.

“We had one fella who came over from London, which we hadn’t expected, and another fella played even though he was carrying an injury,” Chairperson Deirdre Lyne explained. “We had two guys on the sideline, but they were injured so, in reality, we had the bare 15.”

The club had one of their best seasons in years in 2018, winning promotion from Division Five and making it to the South Kerry Championship semi-finals. But with players retiring, picking up injuries, and moving abroad, the famous club was left sweating for numbers.

Valentia are on the road, however, in spite of all the club’s recent troubles, and Ms Lyne felt it was only right to take the positives from Sunday’s encounter.

“It’s two points gone, but I don’t think we can focus too much on that. We played to the end, and the players weren’t too disheartened in spite of the result,” she said. “We hadn’t played this year, we hadn’t trained as we’d have like to have.

“We will have players coming back in the summer who are injured or abroad, so it’s really about surviving until then.” TWO Kerry restaurants have been temporarily closed by the Food Safety Authority.

The closure orders – issued under EC ‘control of foodstuffs’ regulations – were served by the HSE against Mr Ravish Ohri at the ‘Mr Kebab’ take away outlet at Greenfields in Firies and Mr Subtain Raza at the ‘Bite Time’ restaurant and cafe on Main Street in Lixnaw.

According to the FSAI report the closure order served on the ‘Mr Kebab’ outlet was served on February 21 and lifted four days later after the take away corrected its food safety issue.

The FSAI enforcement orders report states that the closure order served on ‘Bite Time’ on February 18 had not been lifted as The Kerryman went to press on Tuesday evening.