Naas Town Council recently proposed to request an additional 3 seats from the Minister for Environment, bringing its compliment up to 12 councillors. Under the Local Government Act 2001, any town with a population in excess 15,000 may do so. Similarly any town with a population in excess 7,500 may request the creation of a [...]
I have been beating this drum for some time. Below is a letter I have in the Indo today on the same topic:
“Monday night’s ‘Prime Time’ programme on RTE TV focused on abuses of the planning system, conflicts of interests and the disproportionate number of auctioneers and other land agents holding local office.
Rather than condemning [...]
Amidst all the furore over ministerial salaries of late, it is easy to overlook the great and grave ‘democratic deficit’ that persists at the level of local authorities.
It remains very, very difficult for ‘ordinary citizens’ to take on the role of local office. Not so much getting elected, which is a challenge in itself financially [...]
Saw clips of Eamonn Gilmore addressing the Labour conference last night. In fairness I like the man and he comes across as cerebral and capable.
So it was a disappointment to hear the Shannon guff repeated again. Jack Lynch would never have ‘turned his back’ on Shannon apparently. Fine Gael have been peddling the same line [...]
A huge amount of attention has been paid in the last weeks to the pay increases awarded to the Taoiseach, Ministers and senior public servants. Although the increase is staggered over a few years so is not quite as bountiful as media suggestion, it is still a generous sum. They have probably surpassed their continental [...]
On this morning’s news it was announced that Dublin Bus workers are to press ahead with strike action tomorrow on a number of routes.
At the heart of the dispute is break entitlements and shift rotas. The company wants to upgrade services including improving service frequencies which would entail some buses turning and swapping drivers in [...]
The story of the Sallins bypass has trundled on for many years now but it seems at last we have some light at the end of the tunnel.
To give some background, the village has grown from probably 500 people in the mid-nineties to nearly 5,000 by the early naughties and the nature and geographic spread [...]
Hi, I’m James Lawless and this is my first blog.
I live in Sallins, beside the railway tracks as it happens, where I share my home with my wife Ailish, our two children, a dog, a cat, a guinea pig and a goldfish.
Living in Sallins gives easy reach to the capital to which I commute daily, [...]