Monthly Archives: March 2008

Proposed changes to Naas electoral boundaries

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The boundary commission have now closed for submissions and will move on to make their report. I made a submission relating to the Naas area. In my submission I have sought to frame the Naas area, in so far as possible, within the one Dáil constituency which is in keeping with the review terms of reference whilst also addressing current population overloading in the Naas area.

In a nutshell I have taken Ballymore/Kilcullen out of the ward (which are population centres in Kildare South) and have swapped in Bodenstown and Oughterard from Kildare North to make up a new unit. Bodenstown in particular has an excellent case for being in the same local area as Sallins and Naas as is practically the same community yet is currently divided. The new ward I have created is shown below.

Naas Areas Revised
Click on map to view full size

The principal difficulty with the current Naas area is that we are under represented. Kildare county is grossly under represented in the first place and Naas is the worst offender within Kildare. We have fewer councillors per head of population and more constituents than nearly anywhere else. To put it in context, Dáil constituencies are constitutionally bound to a minimum and maximum population per TD ratio. This is to ensure fairness, equal access and consistency of representation across the board.

In contrast no such stipulation exists at local level which means Kildare has one councillor per every 7,500 residents whereas even some neighbouring counties have one councillor per 2 or 3,000 residents.

For instance Carlow-Kilkenny has 47 Councillors to its 5 TDs, Longford-Westmeath has 44 to its 4 TDs and yet we have 25 for our 7 TDs (as the TD number must constitutionally reflect the population size it is obvious we have much greater population with far fewer councillors to go round)..

Unfortunately the review freezes the totals in any one county, however at the very least internal variances should be addressed.

There were a number of other submissions on Kildare and on the Naas area, most of which were broadly in agreement. The comission reports mid-June so we’ll see what they’ve got in store for us then.

A full copy of my submission is available here.

Traffic flows at Sallins

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Recent works by Kildare County Council to provide parking around Sallins village have had some unintended and imho detrimental effects for traffic flows and traffic safety around the village.

In particular the provision of extra parking spaces between the Railway Inn (Neds) and Bamburys bookmakers and down as far as the church all along that street have caused havoc for many motorists wanting to use that junction on a daily basis. The road is simply not wide enough to take two lines of traffic along with a line of parking spaces and it means an effective one way street is created at busy times.

sallins_traffic_parking.png
Click to view diagram at scale

And there is rarely a quiet time here, between morning and afternoon school runs, morning and evening commuters accessing the N7 and church goers and other road users at various times of day. What ends up happening, literally daily and several times a day, is that a queue of cars is backed up trying to exit the side street, cars turning off main street cannot access (as only room for a single lane) and cars end up stuck half-in, half-out of the junction.

It is particularly difficult for traffic from the Osberstown side, who are frequently unable to access the side street and forced to go up further – to the canal bridge taking a right turn, literally across the path of oncoming traffic as the turn is beneath the crest of the bridge and people are taking their life into their hands turning blind across the road.

Every time I see the situation, and I’ve encountered it myself dropping the children to school, it makes me wonder what kind of research, if any, was done by the roads or planning engineers before these spaces were put in. There have already been near-misses, with at least one incident involving a cyclist and I really believe something has to be done here.

I have submitted a document which is available here on the issue to Kildare County Council, and via the offices of Deputy Michael Fitzpatrick.

I have included longer term proposals, such as a new canal bridge opposite the school, with a one way around the canal. I would also love to see the provision of a pedestrian walkway adjacent to the existing canal bridge, ala Newbridge. But in the short term something has to be done and soon.

sallins_traffic_oneway.png
Possible one-way system in longer term ; click to enlarge

Daylight Saving..

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I see Chris Andrews is seeking to preserve the Poolbeg towers, over in his own constituency of Dublin South East.

Poolbeg Towers sentinels to Dubin Bay

The towers have long served as sentinels to Dublin bay and have had a functional purpose as part of the ESB generation plant up till recently. Along with the old gas works at Ringsend, they comprise an important part of the built heritage of the area, both as landmarks and as harbingers to the rare oul times. Many of us will remember the Bank of Ireland ad, where the couple of would-be Brendan Behans (who was also a lighthouse painter), as GAA guerrillas, emerge under cover of darkness to daub the distinctive red ringlets with the royal blue of Dublin on the march!

Perversely the council have advised the towers are “not worth” preserving and should not be listed as such in the new development plan. I would be curious to know which department exactly issued that directive although there have been past skirmishes around the site.

I had occasion recently to meet the Heritage Officer for Kildare county council, and most knowledgeable, professional and passionate about her brief, I found her to be. Also, perhaps crucially in this age of mass development, she had a pragmatic approach succinctly summarised by her own statement that they (the heritage folk) were not “in the business of pickling buildings”. Rather it was realised the most sustainable form of preservation was ongoing use, and a commercial one especially so. She went on to walk me through the criteria for preservation and listing a building and so on, and it’s something to keep an eye on locally when the Sallins development plan comes up shortly. (Naas is slightly different in that the whole town is listed as a heritage area so individual sites need not be singled out for mention)

But in closing well done to Deputy Andrews and his quest, it takes centuries to establish tradition, moments to destroy it. Great to see a representative, and particularly a fellow Fianna Fáiler, taking up the case. Good luck to him.

Butcher, baker, candlestick maker..

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All of the above are statistically more likely to represent you than I am. You could also add Farmer, Teacher, Auctioneer, Publican, Company Director, Accountant and Solicitor to the list. Basically the odds on a PAYE worker, 9-5, commuting, wage earner, sitting on a council near you are quite slim.

What do the above occupations have in common? Principally they control their own time. With the exception of teacher (who is time if not cash rich) they are all self-employed and live, work and do their politics in the same area. There is a massive skew towards these type of occupations in local and national representation. The reason is very simple, they are the only people that can afford the time to do it.

Contrary to popular opinion, politicians are not all highly paid. TDs and Ministers have seen huge rises, surely, but up until very recently Councillors got paid nothing at all.. It actually seems crazy if you think about it, why would anyone put themselves through maybe a year of abuse, hardship, expense and personal sacrifice to end up, if they’re very lucky and do well, with an extra fulltime, unpaid job?! Of course you either have the bug or you don’t, and people who do run for local office don’t see it that way (I have the bug by the way!)

I’ve just finished reading ‘How Ireland Voted 2007′ by Mssrs. Marsh, Gallagher and Weeks. It is an excellent work, academic enough to stand up to scrutiny without being so numeric as to lose the reader’s focus. Strong analysis backed up with supporting facts and timely, relevant quotes from stakeholders, candidates, journalists etc across the board.

One observation of particular interest is the myth that Bertie Ahern is Fianna Fáil’s strongest electoral asset. Even before recent events began to tarnish the halo, the Taoiseach was perceived to win miracles for the party at the polling booths again and again. As Marsh points out in this work, while Ahern achieves a seat bounce and is more transfer-friendly, he has actually presided over the lowest share of first preference votes in absolute or even percentage terms than all his predecessors. In fact even in the diametric, with us or against us, days of Charlie Haughey, the party’s lowest nadir ever reached was 44%, whilst under Bertie Ahern, the record high was 41%. Interesting reading indeed.

Finally though, and back on topic, the book’s appendix lists occupations of all those elected to the 30th Dáil. Just one, and interestingly he’s a friend of mine, Dara Calleary (Mayo FF TD), lists his occupation as an employee (of Chambers Ireland). Just two more are similarly categorised and they are both Personell Managers (maybe the HR people have greater liberty with their own time!) but again it confirms the point above. And national representation, at least it does become the full time job when you do get there.

For Councillors, would-be and otherwise, hope lies in the green paper on local government reform, due out in the next weeks. Given the rate of attrition from Dublin city council in recent times (8 have now quit in the last year) some form of reform is surely expected. Whilst fulltime paid councillors may still be an electoral cycle or two away, I have suggested alternate measures such as making council meetings akin to jury service to allow ordinary citizens take up the mantle without fear of financial penalty. Something is needed though to make our “representatives” more representative…

Today’s Tips

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OK take below with a reasonable degree of salt (atlantic cake dried marine variety of course) as I’ve yet to sit down and do any serious study of today’s form guide, but off the top of my head I’ll be looking at:

  • Exotic Dancer in the Gold Cup; whenever there’s so much hype about two horses, it’s inevitable another will sneak through the middle..
  • TakeYourMarks an excellent place chance..
  • ForPaddyDePlasterer comes with a health warning – a Leopardstown horse apparently, not a Cheltenham one ; shades of Beef or Salmon; Charlie Chawke and the boys will toast the goat if he comes home first – but their seal has been driving down the odds in the meantime so I’ll be looking at it but only of the odds are right.
  • Lastly FiveDream in the Triump ; don’t know much about it but heard the tip during week..

Remember there are no guarauntees in life, and especially not hores over hurdles – but if you’d taken my tips on Tuesday you’d have had a winner and an each-way out of three picks given, so not a bad record!