Your TD for Kildare North
Thank you for visiting my site. I am a Fianna Fáil TD for Kildare North. I was first elected to the Dáil in 2016 and Continue Reading →
North West Kildare Residents Struggle for School Bus, Minister Halliagan has Broken Promise
I have spent the past five weeks lobbying the Minister of State John Halligan to get school bus places for constituents in Johnstownbridge, Kilshanroe, Kilmurray, Dunferith, Timahoe and other areas in North West Kildare. It is now the case there are a number of students who cannot get a school bus to Kilcock or Edenderry due to cuts imposed by the Minister’s Department.
My clinics in the area have been full with concerned parents and my offices in Maynooth and Naas have been receiving calls about this matter. Despite the Ministers promises school bus places have been cut back right across the country. In the Dáil the Minister stated that no child would lose their place on school buses pending the outcome of a review in his Department.
The Minister has broken another promise by the failure to set up a cross party committee that would meet at the end of July to try and help resolve outstanding problems with the school transport scheme.
If the Minister had taken necessary action in good time, parents would not have this stress right now. His Departments efforts to save money have now brought unnecessary burden for so many families in Kildare. Clearly this is not good enough. I am calling on the Minister to set up this cross party group immediately to resolve this problem for parent and students
Minister overrides Sallins Area Plan
The Minister for Planning and Housing, Simon Coveney TD, has rejected the considered opinion of all 9 Councillors in the Naas electoral area, along with over 2,000 supporting submissions from the Sallins community to reject the amenity option in the local area plan. The Sallins Local Area Plan had contained a provision to zone 40 acres of land at Bodenstown as Amenity along with 30 for housing, the package also included a site for a second school and common use playing fields and community centre. I actively supported this when I was on the council, in fact as Mayor I formally proposed it, and chaired the meetings where it was voted through over the course of the last year.
Coveney refuses Sallins amenities
The County Manager and now the Minister opposed this proposal from the start as their argument was about over-zoning. Everybody in Sallins understands the problems of over-zoning as we are living through it. Sallins went from 500 to 5,000 people in the last fifteen years with no accompanying increase in leisure amenities.
This plan offered a concrete proposal to actually deliver lands for those amenities and enjoyed massive local support. All parties and all Councillors supported it as well as the overwhelming majority of local residents and for the Minister to ignore this reality and strike it down is really riding roughshod over the clearly expressed will of the people in the area affected.
Here is the Minister’s Directive Letter and the Community_Facilities letter that came with it.
It is worth noting the Scout Den is still being delivered and the playground is still underway. The Bodenstown lands were easily the biggest block of zoning in this plan but those smaller parcels are still going ahead so at least some amenities got through.
You can see some of my previous posts on it here.
Greater Calibre of ICT Graduates Needed, Second Level ICT Skills Should Be Focus
Having spent the past number of months meeting with representatives from major multinational companies, since being appointed spokerperson on Science, Technology, R&D, it has become clear that the standard of ICT graduates can be improved. Our ICT skilled graduates has increase year on year yet the standard of graduate, according to some companies, could do with improving. Continue Reading →
Meeting held with National Transport Authority and Dublin Bus
Pictured with Dublin Bus CEO Ray Coyne
I was delighted to hold meetings with both the National Transport Authority and Dublin Bus to lobby for better and more cost effecient services for Kildare commuters. The meetings which took place in Leinster House addressed ticket costs, frequency of services, and forward planning as the county grows and more demand is placed on transport routes. Continue Reading →
Concerns Over Drehid Expansion
The landfill had reached a settled pattern in recent times, however since March an agreement with the Dept. of Environment has seen the volumes at the site escalate again. The load being received into the facility has practically doubled and this is having a particularly troubling effect on local roads which are being passed through by trucks bound for the dump, some making 4 round journeys a day on the same narrow roads.
I am concerned that there has not been great public awareness of this and whilst An Bord Pleanála are now considering their application for futher expansion, a lot of this has gone under the radar, bar for the residents who have noticed the increased traffic volumes. In particular local roads around Kill, Sallins, Clane and Prosperous are seeing this pattern and some of those roads are just not suitable.
I have written to Bord na Móna, the EPA and Kildare County Council to express my concerns on this. I am also very concerned at the prospect of a hazardous waste licence application which is expected to be made at the site in the near future also, which is in addition to the current application for increased volume.