Wednesday 23 December 2009

Christmas Greetings from Cllr. Ted Tynan

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the people of the North East Ward for their support for me during 2009 and wish you all a safe and peaceful Christmas and best wishes for the New Year.


Ted Tynan

Monday 21 December 2009

Running a city on a shoestring not possible says Tynan

Workers Party Councillor Ted Tynan has said that government cutbacks will seriously affect Cork City Council services and that the allocation from central government to the local authority it totally inadequate.

Cllr. Tynan was speaking in advance of tonight’s meeting of the City Council which will vote on the financial Estimates for the coming 12 months. The Workers’ Party councillor will be voting against the Estimates because they contain domestic refuse charges and because he considers the central allocation as totally inadequate.

“The Minister for the Environment expects councillors to perform a ‘loaves & fishes’ miracle with funding for the city council cut by a further €7 million this year. Already the council has lost in the region of 140 staff through a combination of layoffs of temporary staff and non-replacement of permanent staff. Despite the best efforts of a dedicated staff this is inevitably leading to cuts in services in the area of housing maintenance, roads and other areas”, said Cllr.Tynan.

The Workers Party councillor has called for a more drastic cut in the Lord Mayor’s salary and allowances demanding that instead of an €8,000 cut to €94,000 per annum the mayoral salary should be cut to equal the average industrial wage of €32,000. He is also calling for a complete embargo on conference travel by councillors both within the country and abroad.

“Despite the most serious financial crisis in the city’s modern history, we still have dozens of councillors from the three party pact of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour travelling to conferences in every corner of the country. Some councillors have attended multiple conferences and I can see no benefit whatsoever to the city or the city council of such conferences which are little more than junkets. It is time to call a halt to them”, said Cllr. Tynan.

Thursday 10 December 2009

A Diabolical Budget

Cllr. Ted Tynan has described Wednesday's budget as diabolical and utterly perverse, saying it targets working class people and only working class people with a vicious round of cutbacks in their incomes and in public services.

Cllr. Tynan said that Minister Brian Lenihan’s budget was drafted to an agenda set down by IBEC and big business and that the minister had bent over backwards to grant their demands while tightening the thumbscrews on working people, the poor and their families.

"The reduction in excise duty on alcohol and the car scrappage deal is an affront to society. This budget will force some people to cut back on food and home heating. It is a perverse government indeed which can cut child allowance but give an effective subsidy to the drinks industry and the motor trade".

"Nowhere in this budget do we see any effort to seriously tax the ostentatious wealth that is still being flashed around by the moneyed elite in this society, the one percent who hold one-fifth of this country's wealth. Nor has any effort been made to reform the banks as part of the NAMA process. Having gambled away billions they have been given a massive top-up which has been raised by bleeding workers dry and throwing the most vulnerable people to the wolves”, said Cllr. Tynan.

"This is a budget which makes historic figures like Richie Ryan and Margaret Thatcher seem benevolent. It is a slash-and-burn budget which has reduced the most marginalised people in society, not just to poverty, but to abject poverty. The decision to slash Jobseekers payments for young people and cut it for everyone else, in addition to the cut in child benefit is an outright attack on the poor. Not one single job will be created as a result of this budget, but still we have handouts to businesses in the name of so-called competition”.

“In short Minister Lenihan’s budget is an abomination. It is the product of a government which has been bought by big business but paid dearly for by ordinary workers and their families. It is a government with no morals, no mandate and no shame”, said Councillor Tynan

Tuesday 8 December 2009

WAS QUAY WALL DAMAGED BY MECHANICAL DIGGER?



Workers Party councillor Ted Tynan last night asked City Manager as to whether the quay wall beside the Mercy Hospital may have been damaged by a mechanical digger weeks before the wall collapsed in the recent severe weather.

Speaking at a meeting of Cork City Council which was dominated by the recent flooding crisis, Cllr. Tynan says that he had seen photographs showing a large mechanised excavator (traxcavator) working at the same spot where the wall was to collapse early on the 20th November at the height of the heavy rain and high tides. He has been informed that large amounts of stone, possibly old cobblestones, was removed from the River Lee at Grenville Place around a month before the wall collapsed. His source and a number of others he spoke to say that the excavator’s bucket hit off the quay wall on several occasions.

Cllr. Tynan has tabled a series of questions to the City Manager, Mr. Joe Gavin, in an attempt to find out if the machine in question could possibly have damaged the quay wall and to ascertain why it was removing this material in the first place.

“The recent floods have had a devastating effect on parts of the city centre around the Marsh area. It is estimated that damage at the Mercy Hospital alone was in the order of €2 million and the hospital was almost put out of action. We need to find out why this happened and if there is any connection between the removal of the stone and the wall’s collapse. I haved asked the City Manager tonight to investigate the reports and give his opinion on the matter”, said Cllr. Tynan.

Photos shown were taken with a cameraphone on 19th October - one month before the wall collapsed, and show the traxcavator machine working at Grenville Place.

Monday 23 November 2009

Tynan praises council staff, emergency services for flood response

Councillor Ted Tynan has praised Cork City Council staff and the emergency services for their efforts in response to the flooding crisis in the city.

The Workers’ Party councillor said that staff at all levels had worked tirelessly to deal with the crisis and many of them had stayed at their posts for two or three days with no more than a few hours sleep. He said that the response proved the worth of public service workers and contradicted much recent negative comment on the public service.

“Over the past few days I have travelled to various locations around the city, especially around Mayfield and the North East Ward, and have seen City Council workers doing Trojan work. They have been faced with an extremely difficult situation but have coped very well with it. I would like to thank all those involved including council workers, the gardaí, fire and other emergency services and individuals who have volunteered to help. It was truly a team effort by all concerned”, said Cllr. Tynan.

“This should give advocates of privatisation plenty of food for thought. I have no doubt if these were privatised services we would not have had the same level of response. The public service has stepped up to the mark in a severe emergency and comes out with full marks for dedication, effort and determination”, he declared.

Saturday 22 August 2009

Tax the Greedy, not the Needy - No to Water Charges

The word is out, the Commission on Taxation, set up by the government over 18 months ago to overhaul this country's taxation system, is recommending further stealth taxes on ordinary workers and their families including the introduction of water charges, a tax on the family home and taxation of Child Benefit (Children's Allowance).

The terms of reference of the Commission on Taxation were deliberately framed in such a way as to prevent it dealing with probably the most glaring problems of the Irish taxation system - it was not allowed to consider increasing Corporation Tax on big business and was advised not to actually increase the overall tax take despite the fact that billions of euro of profits are being made in this country by those not paying their fair share of tax.

It should be no surprise that this QUANGO came up with an anti-worker and anti-family report. No less than 11 of the 16 members of the Commission (appointed by the Fianna Fáil / Green mudguard government) are from the business community and I don't mean your local shop but big business, very big business. There was one lone representative on the commission from the trade union movement and another token member from the voluntary sector. Add in a few right-wing economists and it becomes clear that this commission was rigged from the outset to come up with the government's favoured outcome - just like the so-called Bord Snip.

The Workers Party is very clear on the question of water charges. Like refuse charges they are a form ouf double taxation. If you are a PAYE worker or ever buy anything in this country you are already contributing to the funding of local government. You pay into local government when you pay for your electricity, buy a newspaper or a book and when you buy a so-called luxury item like a television or a fridge. When rates were abolished almost 30 years ago the shortfall was made up by increases in PAYE and VAT - increases which were never abolished.

Let's be clear about this - these proposals, coupled with the cutbacks proposed in the McCarthy Report and the levies already imposed in last year's budget and mini-budget, will mean the government plans to take up to €5,000 per annum from your pay packet if you are a PAYE worker and will further penalise you if you are unfortunate enough to be unemployed, on a small pension or in the low paid category.

In the coming months there will be a battle on Cork City Council in relation to the annual Estimates. It is now clear that further massive cutbacks in the council's services are to be made while increases in rents and refuse charges are definitely on the cards. The Workers Party will not be bullied into supporting these measures and we will not support any budget for the city which underfunds basic services, cuts jobs or contains service charges in any shape or form.

Have no doubt about it, the party and others opposing the Estimates are going to come under massive attack from the establishment parties for our stand. Fine Gael, Labour and possibly others will line up behind Fianna Fáil and further slash already curtailed services such as housing maintenance, road repair, parks, libraries and other services which are essential to this city. They will try to turn the blame back on us and will claim that it is our fault that jobs will be lost and the council will be abolished if the Estimates are defeated. This is simply a lie. We all know why 91 jobs have already been lost in the City Council and why housing and housing maintenance have ground to a halt. This is 100% down to the policies of the present government and the government in waiting of FG / Labour (which are almost identical anyway). Ordinary workers and their families are to be made pay for the sheer greed and reckless trading of banks and building speculators.

We have seen the state and the courts bend over backwards to prevent the Carroll Group from being liquidated while at the same time people in trouble with their mortgages are being hounded and having their homes repossessed by the same banks. The government has agreed to a bank bailout which potentially puts the state at the risk of losing up to €100 Billion - that's right €100,000,000,000 of your hard earned money. Fine Gael and Labour only disagree on the finer details but still support the concept of aiding the banks with vast amounts of taxpayer's money.

The battle lines are drawn. Workers and their families are now under sustained attack from the government, the banks, sections of the media and international capitalism as never before. This alone is reason enough to reject the Lisbon Treaty at the forthcoming referendum which is the second attempt - á la carte democracy where you can re-run a referendum if you don't like the first result. It is in the interests of workers and the poor to firmly reject this treaty which further enslaves working people, finally ditches our neutrality and puts in place another building block towards an EU superstate. Vote No to the Lisbon Treaty on October 2nd.

Thursday 13 August 2009

Tenant's rights must be protected

Cork Workers’ Party Councillor Ted Tynan has strongly condemned a demand from the newly created National Assets Management Agency for changes in the law which would dilute the rights of long term tenants living in properties which are taken into NAMA’s ownership.

Cllr. Tynan was reacting to a report in this morning’s Irish Examiner in which an unnamed government spokesman is quoted as calling for changes to the Landlord & Tenant (Amendment) Act 1980 which gives long term tenants the right to extend their leases for up to 35 years.

The Workers’ Party councillor said that the present protections and rights available to tenants had been hard fought for and won after many decades of struggle and campaigning by tenants organisations and should not be lightly taken away. He also expressed concern that if these rights could be waived on behalf of NAMA, then there would be demands by landlords for them to be taken away altogether.

“The struggle for fixity of tenure is something which has been fought for as far back as the Land War of the 1880s though Michael Davitt and Charles Stewart Parnell and right through to the more recent campaigns of the Housing Action Committees of the 1960s. The economic crisis which has been caused by banks and property speculators, who make up a fair percentage of the landlords in this country, is no excuse for diluting tenants rights”, said Cllr. Tynan.

“I am calling on all public representatives to vigorously oppose any watering down of tenant’s rights at the behest of NAMA, builders or the financial institutions”, said Cllr. Tynan.



Footnote: Ted Tynan was a committee member of the Cork Housing Action Campaign in the late 1960s and also played a leading part in the campaigns of the Mayfield Tenants Association and the Joint Council of Cork Tenants’ Associations during the 1970s.

Friday 7 August 2009

CUT IN TEACHER NUMBERS SABOTAGES CHILDREN’S EDUCATION

Workers’ Party Councillor Ted Tynan has said that cuts in the number of teachers in Ireland’s schools in the forthcoming year will effectively sabotage the education of thousands of children and young people.

Reacting to claims by the Teachers’ Union of Ireland that cuts will mean up to 3,600 fewer teachers in second level schools this autumn as compared with last year, Cllr. Tynan said that this would have a devastating effect on schools and pupils and would particularly cause even more educational disadvantage in schools which are already under-resourced and in special needs cases in particular.

The Workers’ Party councillor rejected the Department of Education’s response to the teacher’s union figures, saying that the department was trying to hide behind a smokescreen about numbers when it was clear even by the department’s own figures that there would be significantly fewer teachers in schools this coming term.

“This massive cut in the numbers of teachers in our schools is another cutback resulting from the banking bailout and NAMA. Children are being made to suffer because the government is more interested in saving the skins of greedy bankers and property speculators who lost the run of themselves in the casino style property boom. The result is that thousands of children will fall through the cracks and suffer educational disadvantage which will last for their entire lifetime. This puts many working class people at an even greater disadvantage because it is the most vulnerable as usual who will bear the brunt of these vicious cutbacks”, said Councillor Tynan.

Monday 20 July 2009

Use Ireland's natural resources for our people

I was listening to Neil Prendeville on the Opinion Line programme on 96FM radio last Friday in relation to the so-called An Bord Snip Nua and felt it was time to talk about Ireland's natural resources. In the major parties in Ireland there would only seem to be differences in the level of cuts they would impose in government and even the Labour Party now accept cuts in public service numbers. Eamon Gilmore even said that the slashing of 17,000 jobs was "doable". Let you go first Eamon.

The Workers' Party does not share this view and we believe that there is an alternative. There is a consensus among the Irish political elite, big business and economists (who are invariably right wing) that the unrestrained market economy is a sacred cow which cannot be challenged and while it can go wrong sometimes it is effectively infallible. I disagree. Even within countries that hold by the market economy system there are different ways of doing things.

For one moment just consider the two words "Public Service" - what is so wrong about it? That its executives and terms of references are dictated by Fianna Fáil and previously Fine Gael governments may be one problem. That it is top heavy with bureaucrats (appointed by the same parties) may be another. The fact that it is constantly stopped from competing with the private sector by rules which favour private enterprise is certainly a problem. But why throw out the baby with the bathwater? Isn't essential that we have a public service?

The proposals in the Bord Snip report (what a mild name for such a viscious plan) are on the basis that Ireland is in economic crisis. Everyone would seem to agree, from Brian Cowen to even some in the trade union movement. But is Ireland in economic crisis? No it is not. It is the economic system imposed on this country which is in crisis.

Ireland has massive wealth in our seas in the form of fish and under our seas in the form of oil and gas. We have mineral wealth under our mountains and under our bogs and we have wealth in the form of our people who are intelligent and willing to work. They have proved this in every corner of the world.

I just want to briefly outline some of that wealth:-

Official government figures from just last year (2008) estimate that at least 10 Billion barrels of oil lie off the west coast of Ireland and that there is a potential of up to 130 Billion barrels of oil and up to 50 Trillion cubic feet of gas there. The Dunquin Field, around 200km off the coast of Kerry and inside Ireland's territorial seas is estimated at having around 4,130 million barrels of oil and up to 25 trillion cubic feet of gas. According to government figures this find on its own would more than meet Ireland's domestic oil and gas needs for the next 62 years. The Dunquin field is being developed by the giant US oil and gas corporation Exxon Mobil (in its previous incarnation responsible for the world's worst environmental disaster with the Exxon Valdez which went ashore off the coast of Alaska in 1989, spilling over 40 million litres (10 milion gallons) of crude oil into the sea devastating the coast and wiping out vast numbers of fish, seals, otters and birds). Should such a company be trusted to harvest our oil and gas and take it away for practically nothing?














Above: Map of Ireland's oil & gas fields

There are also huge deposits of gas off the coast of County Clare and there are proven oil and gas reserves under the Bog of Allen in the north midlands. Ireland also has massive mineral wealth in the form of zinc, lead, gold and other minerals.

Then there is the Corrib Gas Field. I am now addressing primarily the economic aspects as my support of the Shell to Sea campaign is well known. The economic argument is clear - the cost of meeting the concerns of the local people is minimal when compared to the massive value of this resource. The local people of the Erris peninsula have real and justified concerns and want the gas refined at sea (just like the Old Head of Kinsale gas field off Cork is). The cost of doing that seems big at €300 million but this pales into insignificance when compared to the value of the gas, estimated at up to €140 Billion. A mere 2% of this would solve the problem tomorrow if the refinery were just built offshore.

The trouble with all of this is that we are giving away our gas for nothing. The state charges no royalties whatsoever for giving OUR gas to Shell, Marathon or the Norwegian state oil and gas company Statoil which are developing the field. It charges a mere 25% tax. This is the equivalent of a developer giving away houses for free and then charging a small fee for handing over the key. Norway is a country with more or less the same population as the Republic of Ireland (4.8 milllion people to our 4.4 million). Norway is not a socialist country or a communist country but it has its own state oil and gas company. Why can Norway do it and not Ireland? Norway's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2008 was $456 Billion, Ireland's was $218 Billion (less than half).

This country has the capacity to be extremely wealthy and to provide for all the needs of our people - to give us a first class free health service and to provide for the education of our children and young people. Why is this massive wealth not put to the benefit of the Irish people? Why is it that we are importing potatoes and vegetables into this country when we all grew up being told that this was an agricultural country?

The Workers' Party is not against the creation of wealth. We are against giving away our people's wealth and our children's birthright for nothing in return and we are against Ireland, a sovereign country, being told how to run our economy, whether it is by the European Union or the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Our people have been robbed by shady deals done between corrupt politicians, speculators, bankers and bureaucrats. The deal done by Ray Burke as Minister for Industry and Commerce when eh signed the contract to agreement to give away the Corrib Gas field to Shell and its cohorts was a crime against the people of this country. This was a corrupt deal done by a man subsequently convicted and jailed for another corrupt act. It was theft on a grand scale from the Irish people and we should not honour such a deal.

This country does not need An Bord Snip or Thatcherite economists like Dr. Colm McCarthy or Peter Bacon to tell us to cut our public services and further decimate our hospitals and schools and to consign another generation of our young people to emigration and poverty. What we need is to take ownership and control of our own natural resources and our economy and put them to work on behalf of the people. This may sound like utopianism and will be portrayed as out of date socialism but in fact it is plain common sense. The United States of America doesn't give away its oil and gas for free, the UK doesn't give away its North Sea Gas and countries like Norway most certainly don't do it. So why should we?

Scrap Bord Snip, defend the public service and stand up for what is ours.

Sunday 12 July 2009

Eight week council break unnacceptable

Tomorrow's meeting of Cork City Council (13th July) will be its last for eight weeks until it reconvenes on Monday, 14th September, just 2 days before the Dáil returns from its 9 week break.

This is simply not acceptable, particularly at a time when the council is experiencing serious cuts in its budget and a shortfall of at least €2 million in its budget and possibly a much greater shortfall next year. Already 91 temporary and short term staff have been left go and there is a total embargo on recruitment. In addition to this there are threats of cuts in a wide range of council services.

Despite this, tomorrow's City Council meeting will be proposing to send a number of councillors to conferences around the country and in my view and that of the Workers Party this is totally unacceptable and I will be opposing this. It is not justified when the council cannot respond adequately to the demand for services such as housing maintenance. I would also question the value of most, if not all of these conferences.

In addition to this, I have proposed a motion opposing the closure of St. Mary's Road Library in Gurranabraher and the City Council's plan to move the library to a rented premises in Blackpool Shopping Centre. The current premises is owned by the City Council; the proposed one will incur rent in the region of €100,000 payable to one of Cork's wealthiest businessmen, an individual who within the last year was forced to pay over €1.4 million to the Revenue Commissioners arising out of the inquiry into the Ansbacher Accounts tax evasion scam. Is it right that the City Council should pay half a million Euro to this man over the lifetime of this council when it is suffering its greatest financial crisis ever? I think not.

I also have tabled a motion calling for the provision of street nameplates at Silversprings Lawn and Silversprings Court which do not have nameplates despite having being built almost 30 years ago.

Another motion which I am hoping will come up is calling on the City Council to make boarded up corporation houses ready and available for allocation to people on the council's waiting list. It is totally unacceptable that at a time when there are 5,000 people on the City Council's housing waiting list that we have hundreds of houses and flats boarded up. Not only are these houses and flats unsightly but they attract anti-social elements into an area and illegal dumping. This is an issue that I along with my Workers Party fellow candidates Jackie Connolly and Mick Crowley raised during last month's local elections and we intend to follow through on the matter as a matter of urgency.

One motion I have proposed is sure to cause controversy and I make no apologies for that. It is a call for an inquiry into the Corrib Gas Project. Although this is far away in County Mayo it does have relevance to the people of Cork because the Irish taxpayers are being denied billions of Euro of revenue as a result of a dirty deal done by the former Fianna Fáil government minister Ray Burke with the Shell Oil corporation (Anglo Dutch Shell) and other oil and gas companies to pump gas ashore and refine it at Bellanaboy in Co. Mayo. The state, on behalf of the Irish people, should have got billions of Euro for this gas but instead it was practically given away to Shell and the company have been allowed bring it ashore via a very high pressure gas pipeline which pumps gas at an extraordinarly high pressure of 345 Bar (compared to a maximum of 70 Bar at Kinsale Head gasfield) across boggy land in an area where there have been several major landslides over the past decade.

Shell have been facilitated in this by the granting of a compulsory purchase order allowing them to put their pipeline through the property of local families (mostly small farmers and fishermen) and dangerously close to many of their homes. This small community has opposed the pipeline out of genuine concern for the safety of themselves and their families. They have used non-violent resistance to try and prevent the destruction of their beaches, bogs and farms. Despite being a designated area of special environmental interest, the project is being forced through with the help of up to 300 gardaí, the Irish Navy and up to 160 private security personnel. There is a serious question mark hanging over the largest of these private security companies arising from an incident in which two of its employees, both of whom had been employed at the Corrib Gas site, were shot dead in Bolivia and were accused by the government of that country of being involved in an attempted Coup d'etat. While the book is still open on that case, there are very serious questions arising from it which link directly to Corrib and the type of people being recruited for security duty by Shell's protectors.

Five local men from the Rossport were jailed for 90 days and many others have been arrested. There are so many incidents related to this debacle that it would take up too much space here to relate but you can read much more on the Shell to Sea website at www.shelltosea.com or on Indymedia www.indymedia.ie


Finally, while the City Council may not be meeting until September 14th, I will continue to be available to consitutents and anyone who may wish to raise an issue of concern with me. As always I can be contacted on my mobile (086) 190 8281 or by e-mail at tedtynan@gmail.com

Monday 15 June 2009

Democracy denied

Once again we have seen over the last week the wheeling and dealing going on behind closed doors and tonight will see the continuation of the 30 year old pact between Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party. This pact determines not only who will wear the Lord Mayor's chain for the next five years, but the membership and chairmanship of every City Council and nomination of members to external bodies.

Tonight instead of a democratic election at City Hall, representing the new composition of the City Council, we will see the same old anti-democratic pact in action. The outcome is a foregone conclusion and was decided not in the June 5th election but in secretive meetings between the three biggest parties with the view to excluding all others as much as possible from committees even though those "others" now make up 30% of the council.

The leader of the Labour Party Eamon Gilmore has very publicly sought to distance his party from Fianna Fáil and present his party as a radical alternative to Brian Cowen's party yet here in Cork we will see 7 Labour Party councillors voting with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael tonight to exclude left-wing councillors from committees and ensuring the election of Fianna Fáil councillors instead. So much for a radicalised Labour Party.

As an elected councillor I will actively oppose not only this undemocratic pact, but the continuing waste of public money on junkets and extravagance at a time when the City Council has cut back on key services in order to save money.

Monday 8 June 2009

Thank You!


I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to the people of the North East Ward for expressing their confidence in me by electing me to Cork City Council as a Workers' Party councillor.


There are very many people to whom I am grateful for their help and support during the local elections.

As a local councillor for the North East Ward I promise to do my very best on behalf of the people who elected me and indeed all the citizens of the area.

All my election posters were removed by the deadline on last Friday, 13th June. However if our postering team missed any of them I would appreciate if you could give me a call on (086) 1908281 and I will see to it that the offending poster is removed immediately.

Should you wish to contact me concerning any issue please do not hesitate to contact me at the numbers given below or by e-mail to tedtynan@gmail.com

Once again, sincere thanks


Councillor Ted Tynan



Friday 17 April 2009

A Message from Ted Tynan


The local elections which take place on June 5th come at a time of unprecedented economic and social crisis in Ireland. The country has been brought to the brink of bankruptcy by speculators developers and most of all the banks and political establishment parties. We have had 12 years of continuous government by Fianna Fáil and the current Fianna Fáil / Green Party coalition has continued to feed a culture of of corruption at the highest levels of Irish society.

At the same time the health service, education and other essential services and those who depend on them have suffered greatly. Now that the crisis is biting hard it is once again the most vulnerable who are being told to take the pain while the super-rich get off scot free and are even rewarded for their theft of Irish resources.

Locally in Cork we have growing unemployment, a housing crisis with 5,000 families on the City Council waiting list while hundreds of corporation houses lie idle and often vandalised. Official statistics show that even at the height of the Celtic Tiger there continued to be an unemployment crisis in the Mayfield area. Now that the economy is in crisis, local unemployment in this area has sky-rocketed. There is a better way.

As a candidate in the local elections for the Workers Party, I will be demanding the following:-



  • A major programme of genuinely affordable houses and an end to the boarding up of houses. Instead they should be immediately brought up to standard and allocated to those on the City Council's housing waiting list.

  • An end to cuts in education, health and disability services.

  • Proper local amentities, particularly for young people, and the preservation of important green spaces such as the Glen Park and river valley, playing field at Tinker's Cross and the Tank Field.

  • Mobile phone masts must be kept a safe distance from homes, schools and people's workplaces.

  • Greater efforts to deal with an prevent Anti-Social Behaviour and more effort into community policing.

  • An end to the junket culture at City Hall, with vital resources going to meet the needs of the city and its people, not developers and speculators.

My record of opposition to Service Charges is well known in this area. I will continue to oppose this unjust form of double taxation of PAYE workers and will actively fight against the re-introduction of water charges and privatisation of services.

As a Workers Party candidate and a socialist I stand for workers and their families, including retired and unemployed workers and young people.
Do you require help with a problem related to housing, your rights and entitlements or local issues in the North East Ward?
Please Contact me at:
Telephone: 4503481 (home) / (086) 1908281 (mobile)
If you would like to help out in my election campaign or to join the Workers Party please contact me at the above numbers or my Director of Elections, Sean McCarthy on (086) 8360503.
Visit the Workers Party website www.workerspartyireland.net