About James Lawless

Posted on by
Reply

James Lawless is a long serving active member of the Fianna Fáil party and will be contesting the Committee of Twenty elections at this year’s Ard-Fheis.

James has been active politically since university when he was involved in students union campaigns. James is a former Chair of Wexford Ógra Fianna Fáil and is currently Chair of the Sallins Cumann and vice-Chair of Naas Comhairle Ceantair. James served at national level before as a Leinster rep on the National Youth Committee. In 2011 James re-established the Cearbhall Ó’Dálaigh cumann at Kings Inns and is currently Chair. In 2009 James ran for local elections to Kildare county council as a  Fianna Fáil candidate – despite a record low for the party, James polled credibly for a first time candidate achieving half a quota on the first count and was the last to be eliminated. James would be economically centrist whilst being more conservative on social issues. Public transport, area planning, political and legal reforms are policy interests allied to a strong Republican ideology. James is a strong believer in traditional party heritage and is a local organiser of the annual Wolfe Tone commemoration at Bodenstown (as pictured). He was also part of the team behind the new Fianna Fáil magazine, CUISLE, launched recently.

Growing up in north Wexford, as a young adult James worked at a variety of jobs in the tourist and service industries. Since college his professional career has been largely within IT. Currently he works as a systems analyst within the insurance and financial service industries.

James studied at Trinity College from where he has a primary degree in Mathematics and a masters degree in High Performance Computing. James is currently studying law by night at Kings Inns where he recently took first place in exams overall as well as a number of individual prizes.

In his spare time James enjoys jogging, a round of golf or exploring the great outdoors with his children and their dogs. James is also a keen follower of Gaelic games and is involved locally with Sallins GAA.

Other local involvements include Sallins Community Games, Sallins Community Council, Naas & Sallins Rail Users Group, Naas Toastmasters, Bodenstown Golf Club, Sallins Fianna Fáil and Sallins Pier Residents Association.

CUISLE – Pulse of the Party

Posted on by
Reply

One project I’ve been working on recently is a new communications channel within Fianna Fáil. As readers of this blog will probably be aware I had “issues” with the communications style of the previous leadership and one of the key things for the party to tackle in Renewal is that whole area, both internally and externally.

cuisle_cover.jpg

My experience over the past few years has been that there are plenty of individual members out there in social media and other fora with strong opinions and articulate viewpoints even at times when the ‘senior party’ was more reticent. Thankfully nowadays the party is all singing off the same hymn sheet at every level but either way our new project is designed to give those members a voice and an outlet for discussion, debate, to compare notes and to renew the party.

The results went to press last month and are now in circulation amongst the party membership. Our new magazine is called CUISLE (“Pulse”, translated) and contains 32 pages of opinion, commentary, analysis some positive, some stark, all candid and all unfiltered and straight from the membership. I am delighted with the results and great to finally now see it in print. I have a few pieces in it myself and was honoured to serve on the editorial board. This is hopefully just one of many projects over the months and years ahead that will allow the membership renew the party and exercise democracy and direction as to where and what sort of party we all want to end up with.  We might have a smaller party but perhaps a small passionate membership is better than a horde of good time golfers. Anything in life is what you make it and now we have that chance. If any readers would like a copy of the new mag, get in touch.

Accessibility at last for Sallins station

Posted on by
Reply

Good news at last for disability access at Sallins train station as accessibility works have finally started this week.

The works have been sought for some considerable time, practically since the station re-opened a decade or so ago and whilst newer stations such as Adamstown got accessibility access from the off, we had to wait for the upgrade works to commence and there were a number of false dawns along the way.

Still better late than never and it’s great to now see the construction phase begin, the machinery is finally on site and the project is commencing. The accessibility access issue has been the most pressing item in terms of station works for some time. It will be a huge relief primarily for disabled passengers of course and am sure it will also be welcomed by anyone who has ever had to push a buggy or cart a load of shopping over the existing stairway.

The works will not put in an elevator as I understand it but rather a set of footbridges and ramps. This is probably not ideal as an elevator would be more convenient but this seems to be the model Irish Rail are going with now as it is lower mainteance and less vandalism prone given lesser complexity and fewer moving parts.

I do think longer term the station has a lot of development potential – there are a fine set of buildings there and there is a lot more that could be done in terms of facilities including an enhanced ticket office, waiting area and even a little café in the future. But we’ll certainly welcome the accessibilityworks for now as a basic requirement of the station’s users and an essential first priority for any station upgrades.

Fine Gael and Labour Cllrs have noone left to blame..

Posted on by
Reply

Chairperson of Sallins Fianna Fáil, James Lawless has called for urgent action on roads at various locations across Kildare and says that the Fine Gael / Labour ruling bloc can no longer shift the blame onto national government or claim they have no control over spending.

“For years Fine Gael and Labour have it both ways by controlling the council yet playing the blame game that Fianna Fáil were in power and that they had no control. But that ignores the reality that Fianna Fáil have not held a majority on Kildare county council for over twenty years. And now that Fine Gael and Labour Ministers are undeniably holding the purse strings at both national and local level they can not hide behind the excuse of being powerless any longer” said James. “What’s more even as recently as last January 2011, when Fianna Fáil were in power nationally, one of the last acts of the outgoing Fianna Fáil Minister Pat Carey was to allocate a funding of 900 Million from the Department of Transport to be allocated for regional road works by local authorities. This money was made available and ring fenced even in a time of scarcity and that money should now be put to use by the Kildare County Council on the many urgent projects long outstanding throughout the constituency.” James explained.

“So the blanket response of no money is not accurate on a number of levels. In the current council budget an allocation of 25 million is contained for road and transportation improvements. Resource are scarce but there is funding available and these scarce resources need to be prioritised to those urgent projects most in need”.

“A critical example close to home is the Osberstown junction on the Sallins – Naas road. This junction sees huge volume of traffic traverse the main thoroughfare whilst traffic from the neighbouring estates and side-road struggle continuously to find a break in fast moving traffic. Traffic from Caragh also uses this junction and the volumes of throughput have only multiplied in recent years. Yet despite being an accident waiting to happen we have yet to see any action at this junction barring the farcical situation where traffic lights were erected and then taken down again almost as quickly, all in the space of a crazy three weeks at the midpoint in the crisis” according to James.

“Scarce resources need to be targeted to those areas most in need and this junction is surely one of them” James continued. “The excuse of no funds is a blanket one that is not entirely accurate and the council needs to prioritise this and many other outstanding works for the welfare and safety of people at all these locations“ concluded James.

Grand Old Duke of York and Osberstown Junction

Posted on by
Reply

Duke of YorkThere’s something almost farcical about the way the traffic lights were erected and installed and then dismantled and taken away again all in a bit of a blur that odd first Summer at Osberstown…

Unfortunately there is nothing funny about the situation for residents who have to battle daily with increasingly intense traffic volumes to get out at the junction. The safety issues are obvious not least from the frustration that builds up being stuck at the junction again waiting for a break in traffic.

On the flip side I do welcome the recent road surfacing just gone in at the road from the junction mouth up over the old railway bridge and down the far side to the creche and almost to the canal bridge. I successfully lobbied to get the pavement extended along same stretch of road almost two years ago.

The traffic volumes are only growing however and it is hard to see any start being made on the bypass in the current climate and conditions. Regardless of longer term plans however, there is still every argument for proceeding immediately with works at the Obserstown junction anyway. My own view is that a roundabout may be the most appropriate fit, given the many traffic lights already lining the main flow through Sallins and a roundabout would both slow approaching traffic as well as provide a right of way for road users to exit the junction from the Osberstown direction.

The council keep saying they’ve no money but in reality they’ve €25 Million in a fund for road and transportation safety works for the current year, allocated from the Kildare County Council budget. As well as the fund at local level, one of the last actions of Minister Pat Carey before leaving office in February was to create and ringfence a fund of several hundred million euro for regional and local road upgrades around the country. So there is money there, it’s just a matter of the right projects being prioritised.

I will keep on this one and I would welcome any feedback / views also.

http://www.mothergooseclub.com/uploads/image/183-large.jpg