And also available via QR codes – watch out for promotional posters in the area.

We’ve produced all-colour smartphone apps – with maps, photographs and text boxes – bringing the rich history and heritage of the town via self-guided audio tours.

Produced by Aileen O’Meara Media, with the support of Dún Laoghaire BRAND Project, DLR County Council, the Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company, and the Heritage Council.

Roscrea Heritage Town, in north Tipperary, has a free audio guide and map, bringing you on an enjoyable trail that takes in its 12th century monastic ruins of round tower, high cross and west gable, its Norman Castle, its Franciscan belfry, its fine shop fronts and lots more.

Renowned historian George Cunningham gives his deep knowledge of Roscrea’s monastic traditions and restored buildings, as well as more recent history, on this nine-stop tour around Roscrea’s streets. Hear a description of the carvings on the fine Romanesque doorway on Church Street, the river with three names, and the story of the “fancy fountain” in Rosemary Square.

Listen to Roscrea Audio MP3

Download Roscrea Audio MP3

Download Audio iTunes

Download Audio Script MSWord

Download Roscrea Map PDF

Download Children's Quiz PDF

Roscrea Online has a Facebook page. Click on the Facebook icon to become a fan! 

Links

To learn more about the history and heritage of Roscrea, go to the following:

• www.roscreapeople.com
• www.roscreaonline.ie
• www.heritagecouncil.ie

This audio guide was produced with the support of the Heritage Council of Ireland and the Roscrea Chamber of Commerce. Graphic design by Brian O’Connor. Photographs by Gerry Sandford. Historic photographs, unless otherwise credited, reproduced by kind permission of the National Library of Ireland.

It’s not just a journey through fascinating engineering and social history. It’s also an eye-opening excursion along a unique living piece of local heritage. Join architectural historian Rob Goodbody, author of “The Metals”, and producer Aileen O’Meara back to the days when Dún Laoghaire was just a small fishing village surrounded by rocky outcrops, and hear the fascinating story of how engineers designed this unique trackway that shaped the development of this marine town and its fine harbour.

Listen to the Metals Audio MP3

Download Metals Audio MP3

Download Audio iTunes

Download Audio Script MSWord

Download Metals Map PDF

Download Children's Quiz PDF

Dún Laoghaire has a Facebook page. Click on the Facebook icon to become a fan!

Links

To learn more about the history and heritage of Dún Laoghaire, go to the following:

• www.dlrcoco.ie/heritage
• www.dlharbour.ie
• www.heritagecouncil.ie
• www.dunlaoghaire.ie

“The Metals”, written by Rob Goodbody and published by Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, is available in local bookshops in Dún Laoghaire, Dalkey and Blackrock. It is also available online through the local Readers’ Bookshop. Go to http://tiny.cc/1ob8j

Script

The script for this audio guide was based on the book “The Metals”, written by Rob Goodbody.

This audio guide was produced with the support of the Heritage Council of Ireland. Graphic design by Brian O’Connor. Photographs by Gerry Sandford. Historic photographs, unless otherwise credited, reproduced by kind permission of the National Library of Ireland.

“Come take our two-mile journey out and back to hear the East Pier’s story – it includes tragedy, bravery, and wildlife and poetry, music and engineering….”

East Pier Heritage Audio Guide with Pictures

Download East Pier Map
Download Children’s Quiz

Welcome to the East Pier Audio guide webpage.
From here you can download the audio guide, and print off the accompanying map, and a children’s leaflet.

You can download the guide onto your computer to copy onto a CD, MP3 player or phone. Mac users can open the audio file in the itunes library and sync from there to the ipod/iphone library.

This is a 14-stop journey along the East Pier in Dun Laoghaire, bringing you the history and heritage of a well-known landmark. Narrated by Aileen O’Meara and Mary Mulvihill, we hope you enjoy it.

We’ve a Facebook page for the East Pier Audio Guide as well, and we encourage your feedback. Click on the Facebook icon to become a fan!

Links

Here are some links to other websites with further information about the history and heritage of the East Pier in Dun Laoghaire.

• www.dlharbour.ie
• www.dlrcoco.ie/heritage
• www.heritagecouncil.ie
• www.birdwatchireland.ie
• www.rnli.org.uk/rnli_near_you/ireland/stations/DunLaoghaireDublin
• www.stenaline.ie/ferry/routes/dun-laoghaire-holyhead/
• www.met.ie

A great book about the history of The Metals, The Metals – From Dalkey to Dun Laoghaire, by historian Rob Goodbody, is available in local bookshops and in the Heritage Office of Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council. Cost is €10.

Script

Download Audio Tour Script

Harbour Board members are delighted with the free audio guide to the popular pier and the heritage of the local area.

Watch this space for further developments for the East Pier Audio Guide in the spring, as the weather for walking the East Pier improves!

Listen to Children in Soweto Hospice

Aileen O’Meara Media travelled to South Africa in August 2008 to report on the work of the hospice movement in the country. Aileen produced a series of audio slideshows/podcasts for the UK-based Help the Hospices organisation, and for the Irish Hospice Foundation, who funded the trip. Her interview with Dr Kieran Creagh, the Pretoria-based Irish priest who runs the Leratong hospice, was featured on the Myles Dungan Radio Programme on RTE Radio One; she wrote a lengthy feature for the Sunday Business Post about the hospice movement in South Africa, and her radio essay on the build-up to the World Cup was featured on RTE Radio’s “World Report”.

She met people in hospices all over the country, the nurses and doctors, and founders of the vibrant country-wide hospice movement.

Dr Louisa Ferreira is the medical director of the Children’s Hospice in Cape Town in South Africa. She is passionate about pain relief for children with life-limiting illnesses, including HIV. This is one of three audio slideshows produced for YouTube for World Hospice Day in 2009.

Aileen O’Meara Media were responsible for sound production on the acclaimed

science podcast tour of Trinity College’s rich science and engineering heritage.

Written and produced by Mary Mulvihill of Ingenious Ireland, the Science Safari

brings you on a fantastic journey.

Discover the engine that revolutionised the 20th century, the man who split the atom, the geologist who invented the humane hangman’s drop and, if time allows, a gem of a museum in an attic. Just some of the treasures awaiting you on this self-guided trail of TCD.

This Science Safari brings you stories you won’t find in any other trail. In the company of award-winning science author and broadcaster, Mary Mulvihill, you will explore the rich scientific heritage and latest research of Ireland’s oldest university, spanning over 400 years of history.Walk through the campus, or listen to the stories from the comfort of your armchair.

Each stop lasts from 2-7 minutes. Allow about 60-90 minutes for the full trail.

The trail can be accessed via the Trinity College website.

Click here for complete details.

Muiris and Marion in Aran

The one-hour documentary recounts the vivid and insightful stories of single-handed rural family doctors in Ireland since the 1950s. Produced by Aileen O’Meara and narrated by Dr Muiris Houston, the programme brings the listener on a unique journey into the lives of the busy doctors and their families, in an era before mobile phones and computers.

The series chronicled the sweeping social and economic changes taking place in small towns in Ireland. Each programme takes the listener on a journey through two small towns.

Click below to hear excerpts from the programmes:

• Across the Counter in Leinster
• Across the Counter in Ulster
• Across the Counter in Connacht
• Across the Counter in Munster

Enniscorthy Town

Listen to Across the Counter: Balbriggan
Listen to Across the Counter: Enniscorthy

The final documentary in the four-part “Across the Counter” radio series was broadcast on Newstalk 106 at the end of November 2009.

“Across the Counter” in Leinster featured two Leinster towns in transition, in a radio journey down their main streets. The series was produced by Twintrack Media’s Aileen O’Meara, and funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland’s Sound and Vision fund, which supports the independent radio sector.

“Across the Counter in Leinster” brings the listener on a journey through two rapidly-changing towns – Enniscorthy in Wexford, and Balbriggan in north Dublin, through the eyes of local narrators.

“Balbriggan emerges as a town with a rich industrial heritage, which is almost overpowered by its transformation into a commuter town for the capital city,” said producer Aileen O’Meara, of Twintrack Media. “However, Enniscorthy has retained much of its character, with original shopfronts and small businesses retained in its centre.”

“Across the Counter in Leinster” is the last in a unique four-part series chronicling the changes in small towns in Ireland’s four provinces, broadcast on Newstalk over the past two years. The series was made with funding from the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland’s Sound and Vision fund.

Contact us for more details of these programmes.

“Across the Counter in Leinster” is the last in a unique four-part series chronicling the changes in small towns in Ireland’s four provinces, broadcast on Newstalk over the past two years. The series was made with funding from the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland’s Sound and Vision fund.

Surfing in Bundoran

In the third of the innovative radio series on the changing nature of small towns in Ireland, “Across the Counter” goes to two contrasting towns in Ulster: the seaside town of Bundoran in Co Donegal, and the town of Clones, just a mile from the border in Monaghan.

On a walk down the long Main Street of Bundoran, narrator Killian O’Kelly, a local surfer turned entrepreneur, describes the massive changes that have taken place in the north-west’s main tourism centre, and local hoteliers and businesses tell how the town survived and adapted to the shock of the Troubles in the late 60s.

Bundoran’s theme is “change or die”, its people say, and Brian McEniff describes how his entertainment business adapted to the loss of the UK and Northern Ireland market, the development of Waterworld to lengthen the short tourist season, and how Bundoran became a surfer’s paradise.

Nan and Patricia Brennan bring the listener into the heart of one of the country’s oldest pubs, still run by the elderly sisters in the middle of the town. Using the sounds of ballroom music, amusement arcades, and the sea, the Bundoran journey is a contrast to the second town in this programme: Clones in Monaghan.

Narrated by local solicitor Brian Morgan, Clones is also a town adapting to change, trying to overcome the legacy of the Troubles when its natural hinterland in nearby Northern Ireland was cut off. Brian brings the listener on a trip up Fermanagh Street to the Diamond, and the old and newer businesses like Supervalu, Matthews on the Diamond, and Sharon McGuigan’s hairdressers, as they also seek to find a new identity in a country where the border is rapidly disappearing in the hearts and minds of Irish people north and south.

“Across the Counter in Ulster” is the third in a four-part series on the changing face of small town Ireland. It is produced by Twintrack Media, with the support of the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland’s “Sound and Vision” fund.

May 2009
Produced by Aileen O’Meara, Twintrack Media.
Research by Susan O’Keeffe and Clare Cronin.

The Mall in Westport

Listen to Across the Counter: Loughrea
Listen to Across the Counter: Westport

Produced by Aileen O’Meara of Twintrack Media with Tim Hastings, “Across the Counter in Connacht” brings the listeners on a journey through two Connacht towns: Westport in Co Mayo and Loughrea in Co Galway, hearing a myriad of local voices and stories that illustrate the impact of rapid social and economic change.

“Across the Counter” hears the story of the closure of the famous Shanleys shop in Westport, as its owner Peter Shanley laments the ending of a traditional drapery, against the background of the arrival of superstores owned by multinationals. The programme chronicles the closure of family-owned businesses, and local public houses, as shopping patterns change and small towns adapt to outside influences. Westport veteran Cecil Horkan, a well known face in Shanleys, guides the listener around Westport, meeting locals on the way, in a unique insight into the well-known town.

While in Loughrea, retired retailer Jackie Burke guides the listener through the changes in the Galway commuter town, from the rise of Supervalu to the arrival of foreign nationals and the impact of the new bypass The series covers the generation which bought goods on ‘appro’ – whereby goods were dispatched by bus or by bicycle for inspection – to the present day of shopping on line through less personal channels.

The series of programmes offers a unique insight into the changes underway in rural Irish towns including the loss of rural Irish pubs, the rise of the multiples and the parallel rise of the specialist farmers’ and town markets. In addition, it highlights that the businesses which survive are the ones which change fastest in the context of a rural Ireland which is now undergoing massive change. The arrival of immigrants and the emergence of ‘commuter towns’ has also hugely changed the mix and profile of these towns for ever.

Twintrack Media’s third documentary in the “Across the Counter” series takes the listener on a journey through two contrasting Ulster towns: Bundoran, in Co Donegal, and Clones, in Co Monaghan. Transmitted on Newstalk, and made with the support of the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland’s Sound and Vision Scheme, the four-part series chronicles the sweeping changes taking place in small towns across the four provinces of Ireland.

Roscrea Castle

Listen to Across the Counter: Skibereen
Listen to Across the Counter: Roscrea

What does a town do when its major industries have closed or moved on, and when it can’t attract people to live there? And what if you are at the end of a poor road infrastructure with no broadband connections? Are our Munster towns becoming villages?

In the second of our series on the changes in rural towns, “Across the Counter” visits Roscrea and Skibereen – two towns at either end of Munster, who are facing huge challenges in adapting to survive in the 21st century.

Roscrea is on the border of north Tipperary and Offaly, a town with a rich monastic and historical heritage but struggling to attract people to live there, while its traditional industries have closed. Locals blame the absence of a town council for its failure to exploit its rich tourist potential.

Skibereen is close to the sea in West Cork, but the influx of blow-ins has made it a cosmopolitan town with acclaimed local food producers, yet it too is facing a population challenge.

Radio producer Aileen O’Meara and colleague Tim Hastings have recorded a myriad of local voices and stories of life in rural Ireland, rich in community activities and history, giving the listener a vivid snapshot of contrasting lives in two small Munster towns at a time of huge transition.

“Across the Counter in Munster” was made with the kind support of the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland’s “Sound and Vision” scheme.