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