Category Archives: Rathmore

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

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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.

Kilteel / Eadestown Notes

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I was in Kilteel hall the other night for a candidate debate. Good event and pity there aren’t more of them around the constituency. Five of us attended (me, Willie, Tiernach, Paddy Mac and Tony Lawlor) and we all were given an opportunity to introduce ourselves at the outset. There followed a Q & A session and we discussed various local matters. Noone won or lost politically but it was a very worthwhile exercise to understand the local issues.

I’ve been canvassing the area for some time now so I had a reasonable grasp of the issues already. Roads, roads and broadband. Yep they’re the big ones. Roads such as the red big lane are in dire straits whilst the N7 improvements were a mixed blessing with the road from the turf bog lane down through Rathmore and Eadestown becoming an exceptionally busy rat run. Schools are an issue and I outlined my suggestion for a shared second level facility in “North Naas” i.e. between Sallins, Johnstown, Kill and of course Kilteel / Eadestown too.

I had already worked on getting broadband to the area with the exchange upgrade earlier this year. Well it turns out half the places aren’t covered and the school has to share with another line. A lot done, more to do me thinks. We’ll be back to this one, all going well next Friday.

Crime is also an issue as I knew from my canvass. A few unpleasant incidents recently.

Lot of things for me to get stuck into if I get that chance.

Broadband for Eadestown

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Working in IT, (and admittedly a bit of an anorak at times), technology is never far from my mind. So it didn’t take much prompting for me to include broadband provision as a campaign pledge when I set out my stall a while back.

Having been around the ward a bit at this stage I now have the details on where exactly does and doesn’t have the service. It all depends on the local exchange, whether or not it is enabled, and then on your own connection and your distance to the exchange. Some houses require a localised upgrade while most will benefit immediately from an exchange upgrade, providing however that the distance from exchange does not exceed 5 KM.

It can be inconsistent at times. There are parts of Caragh where one side of the road has it (high speed broadband) and the other doesn’t. Two Mile House don’t have but are in line when the Athgarvan exchange comes on stream later this year – however it will still depend on distance along the wire.

When I met people in Eadestown a month or so back it came across as the number one issue. I used some of my contacts to track down senior management in Eircom and put it to them. A local techie had also raised it at a First Tuesday meeting recently and a local petition was gathering momentum. I always say credit where its due and I have to say Eircom were very responsive and reacted very positively to the concerns. Originally they told me June but they actually upgraded ahead of schedule last month with the result that the area now has a fully enabled exchange and hence high speed broadband. Result.

One down, two to go (Caragh, Two Mile House). I’ll keep on it.