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O Brien To Be Selected For Labour North Kerry
Read more about: Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Kerry North, Labour Party
From the Indo, former Mayor Terry O Brien is due to be selected tonight as Labour’s candidate for Kerry North. They are trying to win back Dick Spring’s seat which was lost to Sinn Fein’s Martin Ferris last time out.
Terry O’Brien (37) works as a community development officer with the Irish Wheelchair Association and is both a town and county councillor.
He will be selected unopposed at a convention at the SIPTU hall in Tralee. Mr O’Brien, a wheelchair-user, was first elected to Tralee Town Council in 1999 and to the county council in 2004. He has twice been mayor.
The fascinating thing about this place next time round is the way Fianna Fail are playing it, Martin Ferris’ Sinn Fein seat looks safe as houses-built on a core vote that is sufficient to keep him in and unlikely to move to other parties. That leaves two seats, geographically we have on North County candidate - Fine Gael’s Jimmy Deenihan in Listowel and three Tralee candidates-Terry O Brien (Lab), Norma Foley (FF), Tom McCellestrim (FF).
Head office is not best pleased that the convention chose two candidates from the same geographical area-leaving the north county exposed where it usually generates transfers. The two candidates also come from rival dynasties within the party and sparks are sure to fly come campaign time. There is nothing like a good turf war to warm the blood.
The head office has considered floating in a third candidate onto the bill from the Northern area of the constituency and having three candidates on the ballot. Preliminary polling suggests that this would have the effect of knocking Deenihans vote back to 9% and into fourth place-behind Ferris, O Brien and one of the FF candidates-whomever gets there first it would appear.
With FF having the option of replacing an FG incumbent with a Labour, strenthenig slightly the possibility of coalition between FF and Labour rather than FG and Labour it is space worth watching.
[As I thought, I posted on this before]
hey don’t forget Morgan Stack. The people of Kerry are going to realise that Donald Rumsfeld caused bird flu and will run to Stack.
Not jam - just bread and butter
Isnt it time to discuss bread and butter issues like planning and all it encompasses ?
When those 2 by-elections were being fought in Kildare and Meath it was coming across very strongly that dropping a few hundred houses into a site and ignoring the need for infrastructure of schools, local neighbourhood shops,public transport, and pavements between housing estates, left families with no option but to use the car always
This is very sixties and seventies “planning”
or no planning
It is pathetic that in the “new suburbs of dublin” across Leinster parents of young children are being asked not to register their children to start school this year but to wait till next year- they havnt enough places.
What passes for planning in this country is unbelievable
As secretary of a large residents association in an old established part of Dublin it is patently obvious that many plans that are lodged are very basic in design, many with north facing apartments -the sun never enters the apartment
Some of these are very poorly measured and the worst of them have to look for retention permission to completion as the builder has huge difficulty working out the crappy drawings
It is truly primitive
The focus shouldnt be on developers who will often go for the lowest common denominator, but on the planners who are supposed to uphold standards laid down……..
A small example of sloppiness is if a developer is building 75 units or more he is obliged to provide one unit as a creche
-very handy i’m sure for those living there
But if the developer isnt reminded of that in writing in the conditions of permission he is not obliged to do it.
Err..blaming the planners is all well and good if they had the support of the department of the environment and the minister of the day and their local councillors. Fact is they don’t get that support and are undermined every step of the way.
As for your ‘examples’, it isn’t the planners who draw up layout of the developments, it is those in the employ of the developer. It’s a bit like moaning about the chef when the person who owns the restaurant orders them to use the cheapest ingredients. As for north facing apartments, surely if they have two sides and if one half faces north then the opposite side faces south, if not then there must be something in the way. Like another apartment perhaps?
When it comes to high density development the dept of the environment wrote “guidelines” which are widely interpreted.
Even An Bord Pleanala in its recent annual report castigated the number of north- facing apartments given permission by many local authorities across the country -of course the back of those blocks is south-facing but thats not much good for the poor schmucks who have to rent these dreary sunless dogboxes
An bord pleanalas annual report drew the attention of purchasers to the fact that apartments need to be measured by the said purchasers as often the size of rooms can change as building progresses so they are different to the drawings and may even fall below the regulation sizes for bedrooms
as for councillors, many of them havent a clue about planning and have never been properly involved in a planning application, their usual practice is to hammer out a formula letter to a council opposing a development as a people -pleasing exercise
not knowing anything about it- hence two sentences
sometimes, but only sometimes, an bord pleanala or dublin city council will give a serious thrashing to a planning application
even to the point of saying that the application is sub-standard in design- that means someone at least read the bloody thing
planners are all powerful
across dublin city now plans are being drawn yet again for social housing north and soutside
the plans are to demolish what they built some years ago for families which proved thoroughly unsuitable and to try and get it right this time round
theres eating and drinking on this for a phd student writing about wasting public money
the big question is how sustainable is this kind of development
flat roofs i have seen being repaired on new developments
flat roofs in a wet climate ?
flat roofs in a country that is bringing in an eu directive on energy efficient buildings from next year ?
about a year ago i heard mary o rourke td reminiscing about the introduction of free secondary education
she spoke abou how huge numbers of schools had to be built fast to meet the demand
she than said, of course that brought about its own problems the flat roofs that leaked in due course and the hassle and the cost of repairs ………