Ireland has mildest Christmas in decade

RAIN, rain and more rain is the forecast for the holiday period but Ireland is experiencing its mildest Christmas in over a decade.

Temperatures up to 11C remain the norm for the weekend as race and coursing meetings sent thousands of people to the outdoors yesterday.

Kerry Mountain Rescue remained on alert for the traditional hikes up Mount Brandon and Carrantouhill.

Fortunately, many people heeded a pre-Christmas message from the emergency services to take extreme caution.

“Carrantouhill on St Stephen’s Day is often compared to Dublin’s Grafton Street on Christmas Eve,” said Kerry Mountain rescue spokesman Derry Christie.

“The peaks are packed with people but, fortunately, weather conditions were reasonable and there were no call-outs.”

Unlike the US where up to three feet of snow was dumped on the north-east, the prospect of a white Christmas remains a fairytale for many young Irish children.

Online betting services were offering paltry odds of 5-1 on snowflakes landing on buildings on the major cities of Ireland and Britain.

William Hill reported that anyone who took a flutter was certainly out of pocket.

The Christmas racing festival at Leopardstown, which continues over the weekend, went down a treat for punters, however, with the Christy Roche-trained Le Coudray securing a brilliant victory in the feature event, the 100,000 Denny Gold Medal Novice.

The mild weather also brought crowds to the big two-day coursing event at Ballybeggan Park in Tralee which concludes today.

Met Eireann’s outlook for the next few days remains unchanged with patchy outbreaks of rain and drizzle but, generally, bright.

Having spent three nights on Dublin streets, the old boys of Belvedere College reported a record charity collection.

Jonathon Ward said the 80,301 collected broke the previous record by over 27,000. About 20 former pupils took part in the event staged outside the GPO in O’Connell Street.

Due to fears about increasing night violence in the capital, students were prevented from participating in the overnight sleep-outs but assisted the fundraising by collecting outside the Bank of Ireland.

“It was an incident-free few nights,” said Mr Ward. “And although it was wet, the weather was generally mild.”