Monthly Archives: May 2008

Bottling it in Sallins

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Latest thing I’ve been working on is the provision of recycling bins in Sallins. It’s something that’s always irritated me to be honest, that there were no local facilities, and it’s been into Naas or down to Clane with me and my bottles for the past several years.

Bottle Banks in Action

The Naas facilities are close enough by but they’re overcrowded and awkward to access e.g. the ones at Tesco are in a very tight little corner of the car park. The Ballycane ones are better with open space in front and the Osprey/KCC campus has them but it’s something every village should have and Sallins and Kilcullen remain the only large villages in the county without.

So after Christmas I finally cracked. With a stockpile of glassware and empties of various sorts I resolved not to recycle until I could do so locally. First week of January I rang the Council Environment Section and spoke to Dara Wyer whom I’d dealt with previously when I kicked off my composting operation a few years back. Dara explained the council and himself as Environment officer were very keen to get such facilities in place but the locality had to meet them half way with site provision etc. There were a number of regulations such as access for the collection lorries, distance from residences, safe and open access, secured monitored site and so forth which had to be met.

I already had the Waterways campus (next to the train station) in mind as it is a mixed use development combining retail (SuperValu, Dominos, Ladbrokes), offices, services (medical centre, pharmacist, crèche), residential (apartments) and leisure (hotel). When I approached the owners, GK Developments they were willing to facilitate providing there was no imposition on themselves or their tenants. Similarly SuperValu as the anchor tenant were quite open to the idea. It’s a common pattern to bundle your recycling and your shopping and if there’s an increased footfall they won’t have any complaints.

The location should also be convenient to residents in and around Monread and it gives anyone who drives to the train station the option of incorporating recycling into their commuting routine as they can offload the boot while they’re there.

At this stage the site owner, key tenants, the council and myself are on the one page. We still need to identify the exact location within the complex and the various planning conditions need to be satisfied but I would say we are a good ways there. I will keep on it and fingers crossed we will have those local recycling bins soon.

I don’t know if my back garden can take many more empties!

War is over ; Let it be

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It would appear there are still old scores to be settled within the Northern conflict, something which was made apparent to me by a story reported in the week about an arrest made in a thirty year old killing in Armagh.

The case is that of the Celebrated/Notorious Captain Nairac, the original incidents enshrining the classic elements of Greek theatre as tragi-comic farce.

War is Over

In brief, during a particularly heightened period of the Northern troubles (1977), this young buck with a string of Oxford ‘blues’ and a spell in the Queen’s Grenadier Guards, fancied a crack at infilitration of the ‘subversives’ and sought to woo the locals with a daring undercover incursion. In an act of equal audacity and innocence he made his way to the Three Steps pub in Drumintee, alone and with only a ballad song or two for cover. It wasn’t his first foray and his intuition, or more obviously, his cut glass accent ought to have given the game away immediately but undeterred he foolishly or bravely (take your pick) persisted to the end drinking with newfound bar buddies becoming increasingly more inquisitive as to the activities of lez resistance locale..

Long story short his Narcissic persona proved his undoing and the foolhardy mission met with fatal but predictable results when he was dispatched to oblivion by the local IRA unit.

Death is unpleasant, war is not a nice thing but as Pearse said, “there are some things worse than war and slavery is one of them”. Perhaps Nairac thought that too and hence he took up arms for his own country. Bottom line an armed and willing combatant was shot dead during a deliberate intelligence gathering incursion into enemy territory.

Now what purpose can it possibly serve for his assailant to be arrested and tried today? Will the SAS soldiers that shot dead an entire IRA unit at Loughall be tried and tested? What about those at Gibraltar who took down three IRA members in cold blood?

Those at Bloody Sunday may some day be tried and maybe found guilty and rightly so as an act in violation of any international standard, the murder of civilians, but in the other cases, I don’t think so. War is war, it is rough it is bloody it is unforgiving and can taketh away but it is entered into eyes wide open and should not nor cannot be subject to civil recrimination. Soldiers are trained to kill and Captain Nairac was no different.

Doubtless some petty political consideration belies this current arrest but I suggest for these and similar episodes, the past, unlike Northern Ireland, should indeed be a foreign country..

Taoiseach who wears his heart upon his sleeve

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I had this in yesterday’s Times..

Madam,

What kind of mealy-mouthed begrudgery sparked letters to your pages over the past days denouncing the local celebrations of newly appointed Taoiseach and Tánaiste in Offaly and Donegal respectively.

Rather than pour scorn I believe we should rejoice in the confidence and pride of place so evidently demonstrated. In this era of increasing homogeneity, Atlantic accents and ‘Friends-speak’ is it not refreshing to find our new leader who is so obviously and easily in tune with his own origins.
Rather than the form of parochial triumphalism as was suggested, I believe this celebrates a complex tapestry of character and a comfortable awareness of same.

However for from being constrained by the parish pump, Taoiseach Cowen is evidently feted across Europe and beyond, hailed equally in Turin as in Tullamore, demonstrated for example by Economist magazine ranking him the premier finance minister in Europe not so long ago and again from the fulsome
and very real tributes from abroad on his accession.

Similarly Tánaiste Coughlan’s Donegal DNA appears no impediment to her success on the national and international stages, such as at the WTO talks where Mandelson and Co grudgingly acknowledged her negotiating nous.

We are told now our former leader was an oxymoron – a ‘Global Dub’ – and what a uniter he proved to be. It would seem his successor is indeed a ‘Global Gael’ and I wish him every success.

Yours,

James Lawless
Sallins Pier
Sallins
Co. Kildare

No room at the GP Inn

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Medical and GP Visit Cards; Red Tape RulesA while ago I became aware that people were having difficulties finding a GP surgery to take them under the recently launched GP Visit Card scheme. I was also aware that some surgeries considered their medical card lists closed and were no longer accepting any new public patients.

The GP Visit Card is sometimes termed a ‘Medical Card Lite’ and is a middle ground offering for people who do not qualify for a full medical card yet can be covered for the cost of primary care under the system. The income limits are much more generous than under the full medical card scheme and take into account expenses such as mortgage, childcare and commuting costs.

It struck me there are two aspects to this issue. The first is the situation where someone is living in a rural or other location where there is only one GP facility within reach. If that person, on either Medical or GP Visit Card, is turned away from that facility they have limited other options especially if they do not have own means of transport.

The other situation which appears relatively common, is where people have been paying patients with their GP until such time as they applied for these new GP Visit Cards, whereupon they are refused service from the same GP that has done and will continue to see them privately.

There is undoubtedly an issue of capacity as the population has grown so rapidly – but there is also an issue of fairness and equal access to services, particularly in the cases where the same person finds they can be seen on a cash basis but not on their card.

So I made some enquiries and put a question to the Minister for Health, via Deputy Áine Brady. I include responses received below. It appears the system is under review and subject to ongoing negotiations with the IMO and so forth. However in the short term there is a ‘get-out’ clause for anyone caught in this predicament. In a nut-shell, three refusals is the limit and the HSE will intervene. If someone has been refused from their initial GP what they need to do is contact two other surgeries, request services from them, and if they are turned away again, send details of the three refusals – that is the names and addresses of three surgeries that could not accommodate them – and send those details into their local HSE centre which in our case is HSE ; Kildare / West Wicklow Local Health Office, Poplar House, Poplar Square, Naas, Co Kildare (or Tel 045 876 001).

The preferred or local GP should be indicated amongst the three, and the HSE will then intervene to ensure the person is accomodated – and usually in the facility of first choice. It’s not ideal but at least it’s a work-around for now. And we’ll watch this space for the Minister’s review.

Full Responses Below:

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Briathra NeamhRiálta and the men of Easter week

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When I was in primary school (1980s) the curriculum was still very traditional and dominated by the ‘three Rs’ (Reading, wRiting, aRithemetic!)

I missed out on school extensions twice, firstly I was in sixth class when the funding came through for my primary school to be upgraded, and secondly I spent but only the last of my secondary school days in a gleaming new community school, having been housed in CBS prefabs hitherto.

And yet I would say I had an excellent education.

Aside from the 3 Rs there was another firm fixture on the CBS schedule and it never varied. I am reminded of it now in these days of glorious sunshine, of returning to the classroom to see the glint in teachers eye. Each day the lesson after lunch was the same, glorious and unchanging. Easter 1916.

We listened in wonder as we heard how a band of gallant men had held out against the might of empire. How by Pearses side they bravely died as cruel Britannia sent the cannon into Dublin. The mythical power of blood sacrifice. The symbolism of Easter rebirth. And the eternal epilogoue of four green fields with one still in bondage. It was a wistful class, as a school boy listening transfixed, the telling brought all the more to life by the pure drop allegedly enjoyed by the master during the break hour.

A noble man and a passionate republican that teacher inspired many. I stayed friendly with him long after and even used visit his house near the train station ocasionaly when returning from college, where we would swap books and discuss the civil war. In fact his Eoin Neeson account is in a box in my attic still.

My grandfather who passed away when I was younger still also left an indelible impact ; I remember well those evenings listening to how the yellow press did for Parnell. But that classroom was a further and significant chapter in my political awakening.

One classmate from that time later joined the IRA and is no longer with us. I retained the Republican beliefs and eventually joined Fianna Fáil when at university. Others may have been influenced to greater or lesser degrees. But those Summer afternoons spellbound by epic Easter deeds will always be with me.