New security cameras will be installed at Clonsilla Train Station

PRESS RELEASE

Labour Councillor Patrick Nulty has welcomed the news that Iarnrod Eireann have installed security cameras at Clonsilla Train Station following a spate of bicycle thefts at the station.

The announcement was made at the Castleknock-Mulhuddart area committee on February 4th in a letter to council members from the company.

Cllr. Nulty who had raised this issue before Christmas and had asked the council to write to Iarnrod Eireann regarding the need for cameras welcomed the move.

“This is positive news for commuters. I have been campaigning for cameras to be installed at Clonsilla Station for some time. I hope this measure will deter potential criminals and create a more secure environment for commuters and their property”.

“Iarnrod Eireann should be acknowledged for responding positively to the needs of the community on this issue”.

It is with my deep regret that I have learned of the death of former Dublin West TD Tomás MacGiolla. While I did not know Mr. MacGiolla personally his political track record is one of integrity, courage and public service. In particular Mr. MacGiolla served the people of Dublin West as TD with distinction for ten years between 1982 and 1992.

In that time he spoke out against irregularities in the planning system and was a tireless campaigner for social justice and workers rights.

In addition Mr. MacGiolla stood firmly in the James Connolly tradition of Irish politics arguing against sectarianism and was an early advocate of the civil rights strategy in Northern Ireland and a fierce opponent of sectarianism.

Tomás Mac Giolla was a champion of the poor and the disadvantaged and he fought for their interests with great distinction. On behalf of the Labour Party in Dublin West I wish to extend my deepest sympathy to his wife May, his sister Evelyn and to his colleagues and friends.

Local Labour Party Councillor Patrick Nulty has welcomed the decision to reverse a declaration that the Mulhuddart Community Development programme was ”non viable”. The reversal of the original Dept. of Community Affairs ruling has been declared a victory for “common sense” and “people power” in the Mulhuddart area.

“I am delighted to see that the government has seen sense and reversed its initial decision. It is testament to the staff and people who engage with Mulhuddart CDP on a daily basis that the department has been forced to change their minds and agreed to maintain this programme”

“As someone who grew up in the area and now represents the people of Mulhuddart I look forward to continuing to work with Mulhuddart CDP in the future. This decision should also be a boost to communities to show that cutbacks are not inevitable and that we can fight decisions that are not socially or economically correct”.

I’ve been hearing a lot from parents in Ladyswell lately who are concerned about the new walkway beside Ladyswell National School. While the walkway itself is welcomed, there’s a clear need for a traffic warden to help children cross this busy road. I’ve put out a press release about this (see below). If any more parents have concerns about this then don’t hesitate to get in touch with me to discuss it.

The new walkway needs a traffic warden to ensure that school children can cross safely

PRESS RELEASE

Dublin 15 Labour Party Councilor Patrick Nulty has stated that there is a need to provide assistance to pedestrians crossing at the new walkway between Castlecurragh Vale and Dromheath leading to Ladyswell National School.

Cllr. Nulty said “The walkway was needed for some time as local residents living adjacent to the walk-way have had to put up with serious ongoing anti-social behaviour, drug dealing and criminal damage to their property for some time.

“However action is also needed to provide a safe pedestrian crossing for children coming from Ladyswell National School. This road feeds traffic on to the main N3, M50 and the large Snugborough Industrial Estate”.

“In my view the most logical solution is the provision of a school traffic warden. Yet it appears the council is prevented from hiring school wardens due to the public sector recruitment ban. This is a ludicrous and dangerous situation. The blanket recruitment ban should be lifted.

“Traffic warden provision is already at its limit and there are several places in Dublin 15 (including this one at Castlecurragh) that require urgent action”.

“I have raised this directly with the council and will be raising it again at local area meetings if we cannot make some progress”.

ENDS

For further information please contact Cllr. Patrick Nulty at 087 9688259.

Hello all,

With the election campaign in full swing I have become slightly neglectful of my blog of late. Thankfully through the great support of my family and my team the campaign has started to pick up real momentum as we enter into the last four weeks before the election. I found that thorough out the ward there is a real appetite for positive and meaningful change in Dublin 15. Sadly the impetus driving this desire for better governance is never far away. I am sure that many of you are already aware of the disastrous effect the governments Childcare Subvention Scheme is having on Mountview Family Resource Centre’s crèche facilities which sadly announced its attention to close in June.

Previously community childcare in Ireland was subsidized through the European Union’s EOCP fund. This paid Crèches such as Mountview an annual staffing grant, which allowed them to subsidize the cost of childcare to working families within our community. Upon the end of the ECOP fund the Government devised the Childcare Subvention Scheme, which has become byword for neurotic penny-pinching bureaucracy. Under this scheme the community childcare facility are only allowed provide subsidised childcare to those on the very margins of society by imposing a subsidy linked directly to the parent’s social welfare status. This means that families who most need subsidised childcare such as those with two working parents on modest incomes are the ones least likely to benefit from community childcare.

Community workers such as those in Mountview FRC previously had the discretion to target their service at those who needed it the most through their knowledge of the community in which they are based. Now their hands are tied and have had to abandon the families they were established to support. Furthermore they have lost all ability to carry out proper financial planning as they have none of the security of knowing what their grant will be from year to year. Who can run a service on these terms? I am fully committed to campaign for the government to abandon this nonsense a return to a funding system that does not discriminate against hard working families. Hopefully change will come before it is too late for Mountview

Onside note, and not wanting to sound like a perpetual complainer I would like to promote the ASSIST programme to all those reading who are parents or who work or volunteer with community or youth groups: an excellent programme which provides participants working with youths the skills to identify and support those who may be experiencing depression or at risk of suicide or self-harm. Best of all, the course is free! So if you are interested in either more information or to signing up for the course contact the Corduff Youth Health and Well-Being Group on 01-8219021.

The April budget is the worst attack on PAYE workers ever. It will force most people to work between three and four weeks for free to help the government subsidise the banks.

The government projection is to raise an extra €1.8 billion in taxes this year but 81 percent of this will come from PAYE workers. Only a mere €26 million is raised through increases in Capital Gains or Capital Acquisition Tax. There are no cutbacks on special tax breaks for the pensions of company directors. There is no change in the status of tax exiles who, despite their claims to ‘patriotism’, claim to reside outside Ireland for part of the year to avoid paying taxes here. The 440 ‘high worth’ tax fugitives who are worth an estimated €30 million each will not contribute a penny. The wealthiest of them all – Denis O Brien, who is reputedly worth €2.2 billion – will sleep easily in his bed.

The purpose of this budget is to hit income – not capital. The government claimed this was for ‘technical reasons’. But there were no ‘technical reasons’ when they rushed in legislation to impose a pension levy on public sector workers – even though it led to a change in payroll systems in the middle of the year. It was a political choice to hit PAYE workers – not a ‘technical necessity’.

The main groups who will suffer are lower and middle PAYE workers. A single worker on a gross wage of €30,000 a year will lose €900 a year or €17.30 a week. A single worker on €40,000, who is just over the average industrial wage, will lose €1,200 or €23 a week.

Last October, this same worker lost €400 in another levy and so their total loss in levies is now €1,600

If they had the misfortune to be a worker in the public sector they were hit by an additional pension levy of €2,103 or €40 a week.

These figures refer only to the reduction in the gross wages and do not take into account the normal taxes that workers pay.

Yet despite these shocking attacks, there was no levy on wealth. Companies who benefit from one of the lowest corporation profit tax rates in Europe were not even asked for a 2 percent levy on profit.

Only PAYE income was seriously hit.

In last week’s Irish Times, Sarah Carey lectures us about how bringing back fees will increase access to education for lower income groups, and asserts that Labour’s abolition of fees in 1995, far from increasing access, has had the opposite effect, and predominantly benefited only those who already enjoyed liberal access to third level education.

 

Ms Carey’s first (and indeed, only) venture into the realm of statistics to support her claims is itself inherently flawed. She states, “In 1995, about 40 per cent of school leavers enrolled in higher education. In 2005, that figure had risen to 55 per cent. That looks impressive until you realise that the 40 per cent had jumped from a mere 25 per cent in 1985. In other words, the biggest increase in attendance in higher education occurred when everyone was broke and fees were still in place.” It is unclear what Ms Carey is referring to as the “biggest” increase, as the jump between 25% and 40% is exactly the same as the jump between 40% and 55%. However, in any event, such a crude analysis of statistics without analysis of external factors such as the growth in the economy, cannot lead us to the broad-based conclusions, which the author has drawn. Instead, we must examine the issue from first principles, and ask why the maintaining the guiding principle of universality in a system of progressive taxation is still the ideal to which Ireland should aspire.

 

The Labour Party believes that education is a right, and not a privilege. It is a right, the enjoyment of which should be provided for by the state, through progressive taxation and, where necessary, with a fair and equitable grants system. We currently have neither, and although Ms Carey seems intent on blaming the Labour Party for inequality of access to education in this country, it is the lack of the two aforementioned factors in our society to which any such inequality is directly attributable. Of course, the lack of these elements is not down to the Labour Party, but due to the chronic mismanagement of the education system by successive Fianna Fail administrations. Ms Carey’s logic is astonishing; it is Fianna Fail who have failed to create an effective, fair and equitable grants system, Fianna Fail who continue to tax millionaires at the ridiculously low rate of 41%, but it is the Labour Party, who in abolishing college fees in what was the single most important removal of barriers to education for so many of our young people, who are now to blame for the lingering inequalities that exist?

 

Ms Carey is, of course, correct in her assertion that those who can afford it should pay more, in order to subsidise those who cannot. Perhaps, if those who earned the most in this country paid their fair share of tax, this aspiration would be closer to becoming a reality.

 

As the last few months has shown, the Irish tax system is monumentally flawed and based on the need to sustain the doomed property bubble. When all was said and done with the Celtic Tiger, our boom did not result in the high quality public services which the Labour Party does and has always stood for. Education, like transport and health, is a public service which has been failed by that system, and it is only through general reform of our taxation and grants systems with the principle of universality as its foundation stone, rather than imposing an additional tax on our already-burdened young people just because they are educated, that systemic change in access to education will really come about.

Today I have proposed that the government should consider ‘nationalising’ SR Technics or find a creative formula for supporting existing workers and management to run the company.

Many SR Technics workers live in or near Dublin 15 and it is a substantial employer in north-west Dublin.

We need to do everything in our power to protect jobs. SR Technics is a viable business with a solid customer base, a highly skilled workforce and the raw materials to do the job.

Equally there are solid strategic reasons why an island nation like Ireland should retain the ability to maintain aircraft.

The consequences of not taking action will be to exacerbate the crisis in unemployment facing our country. This surge in unemployment is hitting Dublin 15 particularly hard.

The cost to the exchequer of SR Technics closure will be substantial and to the families of the workers it will be devastating.

Many young workers who have almost completed their apprenticeship with the company will be left without a qualification after years of hard work and dedication if a rescue package for SR Technics cannot be developed.

Fianna Fail’s only concern is bailing out their friends in banking and development. The Labour Party believes that protecting jobs and creating new ones should be the number one priority”.

Unless we tackle the ‘jobs crisis’ the economy will never recover. That is why I am calling for a rescue package for SR Technics to be put in place.

In the wake of the collapse of support for Fianna Fáil it is important that people do not allow their ideological cohorts in Fine Gael become a party of government by default. Despite the fact that it has been sung from the rafters by commentators and activists that there is no distinct difference between the old firm of Irish politics, they still are polling alarmingly high.

One brings in a pension levy, the other calls for staff cuts. Phrasing aside, left to their own devices both will carry out brutal attacks on a public sector which has been praised for its efficiency and criticised for its under-funding by the OECD.

The Independent has an article today which highlights that the gap between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is one of words, not intent. Bringing in a graduate tax is the kind of defunct neo-liberal ‘user pays’ nonsense that is counter-productive in helping Ireland escape its current economic difficulties. It has often been said that ‘Labour can’t be trusted on the economy’; yet if this the case how are we the only major party that is aware that this country’s greatest asset in remaining competitive is our highly educated workforce owing to the abolition of third level fees brought in by Niamh Breathnach.

So Fianna Fáil want to bring back fees, Fine Gael want a grad tax; different words same result, young people already struggling with debt get lumped with more and the country’s competitiveness gets harmed – no thanks.

The Dial to Stop Drug Dealing project, which was piloted in Blanchardstown in 2006, has been very successful. The project has since been rolled out across the country. We all need to work together to protect our young people and our families against the scourge of drugs.

At present the project is funded by money provided by the dormant accounts fund. At present Fianna Fail are refusing to commit future funding to continue the scheme. This is a disgrace. I believe we need to campaign to secure funding for this service on a long-term basis.

It is sheer hypocrisy that Fianna Fail can praise this service on one hand but refuse to secure funding for it on the other. This irresponsible government is a threat to the safety of our community.

Fianna Fail have found €7 billion  to bail out their banking buddies but yet they cannot find the money to secure the future of Dial against Drug Dealing!

We need to work with communities across the country to fight to keep this service. I am campaigning to protect services for Dublin 15. I will stand up for working people across Dublin 15.

I will be writing to Minister Lenihan to voice my concerns and I would urge you to do the same. Labour politics is about strong communities with decent public services. This means protecting young people from the menace of drugs.

The free phone number for Dial to Stop Drug Dealing is 1800 220 220.

In the face of public sector cutbacks and attacks on the most vulnerable in recent weeks it is easy to forget the plight of services which the state has already long since abandoned its responsibility to.

I work in the Community and Voluntary Sector and I am more than aware of the difficulty such groups face during this down turn in trying to deliver the most vital of frontline services. The Irish Times today highlights the work of ISPCC’s service Childline. I am sure most of you are more than familiar with this service’s excellent work to date and I would urge you to support them in any way you can. This service like many others in the sector is going to struggle to cope with the shockwaves the recession reeks on working families.

The strain of seeing a parent having to cope with unemployment, reduced hours and trying to meet mortgage repayments has a severe effect on children and I am sure that this will sadly lead to an increase in the volume of calls they receive. I would ask you to support them in their 24-hour Child Campaign by writing to your local representatives to add your voice to their cause.

Thousands of people are expected at tomorrow’s national demonstration. Here’s my press release about it.

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Local Labour Party election candidate for the Mulhuddart Ward Patrick Nulty will be participating in the national demonstration organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) this Saturday February 21st at 2.00pm. The demonstration is also being supported by a wide range of NGOs and community and voluntary sector organisations.

Speaking in advance of the demonstration Nulty said “Thousands of ordinary households and families will come together tomorrow to call for a fairer and more equitable economic strategy”.

“The decision by Fianna Fail to impose an across the board income tax levy on PAYE workers in the last budget coupled with this unfair pension levy on our teachers, nurses, gardai and other public servants is short sighted and will deepen the economic recession”.

“The government seems blind to the fact that local communities like Dublin 15 are experiencing a jobs crisis. The prospect of significant job losses at IBM and SR Technics are a serious blow to our community. Why has the government not taken any action on this issue?”

“Protection and creation of jobs must be the main priority of government as it is central to beginning an economic recovery.”

“Working people in all sectors of the economy are prepared to play their part but the fact is the government is imposing, cuts in public services and unfair taxes on families who are already stretched. In addition nothing has been done to ensure that nobody loses their home in a recession exacerbated by bankers, developers and incompetent Fianna Fail politicians”.

“Everybody is suffering as a result of Fianna Fail’s chaotic economic policies including children, people of working age, the elderly and people with disabilities. I hope people in Dublin 15 and across the country can come out in force tomorrow to tell the government that there is a better way to tackle our economic problems while also protecting the living standards of our community.”

For further information contact Patrick Nulty at 087 9688259 or patricknulty@gmail.com.