Up-Date from our friends at Focus Ireland

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Dear Machholz,

Supporters of Focus Ireland sent almost 3,000 e-mails to TDs and Senators calling for the appointment of a new Minister for Housing and Homelessness to have a voice in deciding the contents of the budget. Unfortunately, the Government decided not to make that appointment before budget day, but the high level of public scrutiny on the issue ensured that the homeless budget was largely protected. While so many areas of expenditure were being cut, the cuts to services to end homelessness were relatively small. So thank you for that support. It shows we can make a difference.

The decision on when to appoint a new Minister for Housing and Homelessness and who it will be, will be made by Deputy Eamon Gilmore, as leader of the Labour Party. Deputy Gilmore took the time to reply to everyone who participated in our campaign, but most people found his reply very unsatisfactory. He did not acknowledge tha t the appointment of a new Minister is entirely in his hands and did not explain the reasons for his delay. Most importantly he gave no assurance that when a new Minister is appointed that she or he will actually have a voice at cabinet.

We think these issues are so important that we are asking people to reply to Deputy Gilmore, expressing disatisfaction at his reply and emphasising the importance of recognising the scale of our housing crisis by having a Minister for Housing at the Cabinet table.

Please support this campaign by clicking here. We have drafted a letter for you – but the more you individualise it with your own thoughts on this issue, the stronger the campaign will be.

With thanks for your continued support,

Mike Allen

Director of Advocacy.

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Comment:

In the spirit of the time of the year I beg all of our followers to bombard this dithering politician to do the right thing .The most vulnerable are paying a severe price for the crimes of so called enlightened and educated people who are responsible for the collapse of our public finances.

We all owe it to ourselves to stand with these less well off fellow citizens and demand that they will not be made scapegoats just because they have no political voice. Do the decent thing  and support our friends at Focus Ireland in their campaign

Thank you and happy Christmas to all

machholz

Presidential election : My vote goes to the candidate who takes a 90% salary cut!

I just heard (on Newstalk radio) of the shenanigans that Fine Gael is up to in relation to the presidential elections and in particular their attempts to scupper Mr. David Norris attempt to get the vital support of the last county councils around the country .There is a clear discrepancy in what Head office has announced in the national airwaves and what the various Fine Gael councillors are in fact doing .Every day that goes by, it is becoming increasingly difficult to see any difference between Fine Gael and the ousted Fianna Fail parties with regards to the way they are doing business .Democracy is not and should not be the gift of pampas politicians and would be politicians. It is the right of every Irish citizen to chose whom they wish to stand for this election. The politicians have again succeeded in stealing this right from the general population.

I am not a supporter of any of the already declared candidates but I do not presume to have the right to dictate who should stand in this election. Personally I do not see any greatness in any of the candidates. I would rather be in a position to vote for Mrs. Nelly Murphy down the road who worked all her life and is now unemployed and is expected to bear the brunt of the austerity measures most of the politicians in this country have supported .It would be nice to have an ordinary person take up this office for the average industrial wage .As president you have really no bills you get a free house for 7 years
and the taxpayer pays everything so there is no need to pay anybody 300,000 Euros
now it there?   Perhaps my vote could be bought if any of the candidates would come out and declare they would not take the 300,000 Euros that is on offer and instead take a reduced salary of 30,000 the rest of the money to be given back to the people of Ireland.

None of the candidates are worth free board and lodging and 2,100,000 Euros .Heck I’m not worth it!

NAMA sets up dedicated contact email address for politicians

Namawinelake tell us in its latest posting the following

By Namawinelake

Three weeks ago, it was reported on namawinelake  that Wicklow independent TD Stephen Donnelly had managed to prod NAMA into getting a move-on with examining the developer business plan which covered Greystones Harbour, which is being developed by Sispar. And last week, another Wicklow TD, Fine Gael’s Simon Harris reported some success of his own in his communications with NAMA.

In the recent Tidy Towns competition – for the non-Irish audience, “Tidy Towns” is an annual competition, run since 1958, that promotes clean, litter-free, well-maintained towns and villages throughout the country –  Greystones was criticised for the poor state of one of its buildings, the former La Touche hotel.

full article at source:http://namawinelake.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/nama-sets-up-dedicated-contact-email-address-for-politicians/

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Next budgets savings of 3.6billion already gone to pay back unsecure gambling debts of bondholders

On the Vincent Browne talk show last night I learned our Finance Minister agreed to pay back 3.6 billion in unsecured bonds from Anglo Irish Bank .This again is a blatant breach of promises made to the Irish public by Fine Gael and the Labour during the last election! Remember “not one cent more” well that has  completely gone by the wayside along with most of their promises. In any case we are now again paying 3.6 billion Euros to gamblers. The entire so called “savings” that these layers’ in government are hoping to take off the poorest in our society in the next budget will in fact go directly to gambling bondholders .In other words we are only go through these sever austerity measures because the labour politicians who promised not to pay unsecure bondholders “not one cent more” have lied to us.

We are paying all the gambling debts that have gone in the wrong direction for these bondholders   in spite of the fact these same bondholders could have taken out an insurance policy known as a hedging! I have 15 years experience in the financial markets and I can assure you every investor at this level is aware that they can insure themselves against such potential losses.
These Anglo Bondholders were too greedy, they did not want to go to the expense
of insuring themselves and they are now going to get all of their losses paid back to them by the gullible people of Ireland who believed in the twiddle dumb and twiddle Dee politicians of the labour party and in Fine Gael. I am incensed at this prospect of handing over 3.6 billion and not getting back anything.

Just imagine what a 3.6 billion euro in an emergency jobs stimulus program would do for the country or what about the up-skilling and re-education of the 465,000 unemployed or an injection of these billions into the health service and lifelong education of all our citizens. What an impact this would have in every community .Here in Wicklow Town we have 3000 unemployed and there is nothing been done for them ,nobody expect’s to get a job anytime soon. The local FAS is a joke and the prospects of employment in the area is akin to looking to win the national lottery .

Labour and Fine Gael have betrayed the people as I said they would .No surprises there!

link to Vincent Browne show: http://www.tv3.ie/shows.php?request=tonightwithvincentbrowne&tv3_preview=&video=40286

The fight for Special needs will go on!

It’s a very sad day in Ireland when parents and teachers have
to go out on to the streets and demand that children with special needs be
given a fair chance to an education. The politician who promised to protect these
rights enshrined in our constitution are now busy looking after themselves they
have ditched their promises’ to the ordinary people of Ireland. The message to
these politicians is clear we will not stand by and allow you to steal our
children’s future!

Fine Gael and Labour will be held accountable ,you cannot keep passing the blame on
to the other shower of wasters!

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Response from the Wicklow TD

I have received a response from the Wicklow TD Simon Harris (FG) to previous post  Wife can keep 7,000,000:00 in cash?(NAMA)

Thomas,

Thank you for your email and my apologies for only getting the time to respond to it now.

I read the linked Irish Times article with great interest and agree that this is a very unpalatable situation.

I will ensure that your thoughts and views are fed into Fine Gael Parliamentary Party discussions and I will also raise the issue directly with my colleague Michael Noonan TD, Minister for Finance.

Please do let me know if there is ever anything else that I can directly be of help with, I am happy and eager to help in any way that I can.

Kind Regards,

Simon.

Simon Harris TD
Wicklow-East Carlow

Constituency Office:
Office 4, Market Court, Main Street, Bray, Co. Wicklow
Phone: 01-6183805 (Dáil) | 01-2813727 (Constituency)

Comment:

Well at least he had the decency to reply!

 

The public want answers !

Earlier on today I met these citizens outside the Dail,
demonstrating against the cut in the bus service in their area of the city the
removal of the bus number 19has seriously curtailed their ability to get around.A Fine Gael TD’ tries to justify the salary of200,000 Euros for  Edna Kenny after the short interaction I asked the lady if she was satisfied with the answers she got from the TD

Have a look below (Video)

 

Promises from politicians are worth nothing they are all the same !

Here we have an example of promises made to the people of Roscommon
that their hospital will be protected from drastic cuts to the A&E services
.Well after getting in to power Kenny and his band of self serving leaches have
conveniently discarded these assurances .Here in Wicklow we have the same
problem with the St. Columcille’s Hospital Loughlinstown.

Again we had all of the elected politicians tell us they would fight to keep our
local A&E services as they were ,no sooner were they in the Dail , when they
all dumped their promises to stand by the people of Wicklow and fight for the preservation of the A&E services. Of course we have had platitudes from some of them
standing up in the Dail but stopping short of taking the real brave step of
splitting ranks with their party and telling them to get lost!

No my friends when politicians get into the Dail they become somebody else they become a totally different person whose sole drive is to hold on to the pampered lifestyle and salary they get. Those politicians that are part of a political party become even drunk
with the prospect of power; they are the first to discard their principals.
Just look at the Greens. We the people must take back the power we have lost to
corrupt, self-serving, gombeen career politicians.

Those of us that are on the scrap-heap will never get help from the likes of these leaches we must come together and create a national movement that will force our just cause on the national table .Ireland and its resources are there for the benefit of all her citizens
and are not private assets to be dispensed to the insider pals of these corrupt
politicians. “Wake up Ireland”

 

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Focus Ireland

Dear Machholz,

I want to bring you up to date with our campaign to ensure that children who are in state care have a legal right to aftercare when they reach 18 years of age.

You will remember that we were lobbying hard under the last Government to get a legal right to aftercare included in the Childcare Amendment Bill. At the beginning of July, the new Government voted through the Childcare Amendment Bill – but without the change that would have made aftercare a legal right. Given the way that both Fine Gael and Labour supported this campaign while in opposition, this is very disappointing.

On the positive side the new Minister for Children, Frances Fitzgerald, made a commitment to the Dáil and Seanad that she would consider whether legislation to guarantee the right to aftercare is necessary. It is depressing to see her repeat the same tired words of former Minister Barry Andrews that la ws that say the HSE ‘may’ provide aftercare actually mean that they ‘shall’. But Minister Fitzgerald’s progessive action in bringing forward legislation in many other areas of child protection must give us hope that this area will not be neglected. She promised to consider this issue in the context of legislation establishing her own Department and we will be working to ensure the case is strongly put to her.

If you want to read more about the Aftercare issue click here and follow the link at the end of the text, or to go straight to our analysis of the Oireacthas debate and its implications here.

In co-operation with ‘Action on Aftercare’, we are now looking at the wider range of legislation on this issue which exists in Northern Ireland and oth er countries, with a view to convincing Minister Fitzgerald that a broader range of legislation is required to ensure provision of effective aftercare to all who need it. In the meantime, it would be a good idea to let Minister Fitzgerald know that we are disappointed that the incoming Government did not live up to its promises in opposition. You can mail her here.

Finally, if you want to keep up with the broad range of Focus Ireland‘s advocacy work on homelessness and social housing, please subscribe to our new ‘Advocacy Update’ e-zine here.

Mike Allen

Director of Advocacy, Development, Communications and Research

Links: http://takeaction.focusireland.ie/takeaction?i=12761764859163801

Link 2: http://focusireland.us2.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=f833aefd56e8a0fc1acc1ec85&id=7ab4747834

The Irish democratic system

This article was sent into me  this morning

by Donal Buckley.

My theory is that we have the means , the Irish democratic system,  has been hijacked by the current power elites. These elites have become corrupted ( absolute power over decades etc). We have been educated away from doffing the cap etc.‘Problem I identify is that there are so many groups and individuals who desperately want to act but cannot see viable options.Therefore they opt to go it alone. But to where? How?

The mechanism for democracy is there we must claim it by using it .This democratic machine has been lying idle for decades.No one has ever tried to restore it. There is little or no local democracy .County councillors are over- paid and afraid of county officials who control by how much and when.These E 68,000 per annum bods will not represent your views to the council unless it is harmless, non confrontational.The elected TDs ditto, just Party cannon fodder, moved like chess pieces by the Party hierarchy. Dumb, blind and deaf to the needs of the electorate who put them there to represent the people.

The answer is local agitation, correspondence and civil demonstrations, confront these idiots and coerce them into democratic representation. Check up on any claims they make of representation, activity etc.‘Same at national level, a recent example is Denis Naughton and local interest groups and Roscommon Hospital demonstrations.The Dail whip system and the Ceann Comhairle are obstacles to representation by TDs and democracy  within the Dail.Are TDs elected to serve the electorate or to serve the Party?There are examples of this interest group representation working. To-day Phil Hogan has climbed down in the face of IFA representations on septic tank charges.Legal profession, Medical profession, teachers and academics, vets and accountants etc are all adept at using the lobby system which is democracy at work.Of course the public service and trade unions are experts … having direct access to decision makers.

It goes on,and on .

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