Ask the politicians your questions

Raze_them_all

The debate about the pic in the other thread got me thinking. What are the local politicans offering us to vote for them. I'm not one to read the pamphlets cos they just anoy me, so without the waffle, quite simply what can ye do for kilkenny?


At the minute I'm quite lucky to have a job on the doors as I was let go from the building sites, So what can you do for employment/ attracting companies to the area?

Also I still consider myself part of the youth as I'm only 20, so will ye be doing anything for the vote, I know alot of skaters and what not all around the area are begging for a skate park which if was built would be great as it would take them off the street.
So will ye be doing anything for kilkenny's youth if elected?

ChristIsMurph

Raze_them_all wrote: »

The debate about the pic in the other thread got me thinking. What are the local politicans offering us to vote for them. I'm not one to read the pamphlets cos they just anoy me, so without the waffle, quite simply what can ye do for kilkenny?


At the minute I'm quite lucky to have a job on the doors as I was let go from the building sites, So what can you do for employment/ attracting companies to the area?

Also I still consider myself part of the youth as I'm only 20, so will ye be doing anything for the vote, I know alot of skaters and what not all around the area are begging for a skate park which if was built would be great as it would take them off the street.
So will ye be doing anything for kilkenny's youth if elected?

May as well throw in my 2 cents here.

With the skatepark, I'm actually a person that would use it myself I BMX! I for one will be petitioning for a skatepark in an appropriate area such as the Closh which was mentioned before as a potential spot for it. Also I want to establish a youth forum in Kilkenny which will allow younger people to voice their opinions to the members of the Kilkenny Borough Council with regards to what they would actually like to see in Kilkenny.

With Jobs my campaign is based around preparing Kilkenny for the upturn in the economy so we can attract and create as many jobs as possible. At local level we can't do anything about national issues (despite what some Cllrs think) and I want to see us improve the quality of life in Kilkenny and improve infrastructure making us an ideal place for industry in the future. To do so we need to have an improved and integrated public transport system serving all of the City, finish the ring road, upgrade broadband in the City plus many other small issues.

Aside from this I want to offer:
-a relaxation on planning restrictions regarding installing solar panels on residential houses,
-retention of full services as St. Lukes Hospital,
-a second Garda barracks to service the other side of the City which is a very heavy residential area,
-a sub division of the Fire Station on the other side of the City to increase response time for those living in these areas,
-installation of wi-fi spots around the City to allow people to access the internet while out,
-a second gaelscoil in the City as parents are queuing to get their kids into the current one,
-Meals on Wheels to be extended to 7 days a week,
-encourage the County and Borough Councils, plus government agencies and departments based in Kilkenny to use open source software allowing the use of all file types and saving the costs on purchasing new software.

I sincerly hope I did this without the waffle!

EKRIUQ

The bottle banks in Kilkenny City are always covered in discarded cardboard boxes and rubbish, why aren't there liter bins at these locations to stop people trowing rubbish everywhere.

Stephen

Probably because you'd get assholes dumping their entire weekly household waste in those spots then, rather than pay for their own bin.

fabbydabby

The only reason these people are queing round the block to enrol their precious ones in the Gaelscoil is because there are far fewer of the perceived social 'undesirables' in attendance there.

So ChristIsMurph it might be a far more fruitful exercise for you to concentrate on setting up a school for middle class kids only with no povs, proles, lefties, drop-outs, travellers, non-caucasians or eastern europeans allowed.

They wouldn't have to waste time learning Irish to reap the 'benefits' either...

ergonomics

I'd like to know what the politicians are going to do about parking around Nowlan Park? Whenever there's a match on, residents are left trapped in their homes as there are so many cars parked on the roads and on the paths that it is impossible to leave the house by foot or by car. It is definitely impossible for someone with a buggy to get past the ignorant drivers who abandon their cars on the paths. This is a particular problem for anyone living up past O'Loughlins (i.e., O'Loughlin Court, Hebron Park, Ashwood etc.) as drivers park their cars right up in to entrance to O'Loughlin Court, on both sides of the road leaving it impossible to get past on path, and only room for one lane of traffic on the road. If you do manage to drive down there you risk your life trying to drive out onto Hebron Road as there are cars parked (illegally) everywhere and anywhere leaving it impossible to see if there are cars or people approaching.

Not only is it illegal to park on the path but many of the cars are parked on roads marked by double yellow lines. If you approach the Gardai they say it is a Council issue, and the Council say it is a Gardai issue. I don't begrude people their day out to support their team, but I don't think parking laws should be ignored to such a degree for a match.

It really is gone beyond a joke, and something needs to be done. So, what are you going to do?

Nightwish

Another parking issue I've noticed is that since the new cycle lanes have been painted, people have taken to using them as parking spaces. This is both dangerous and frustrating for cyclists and motorists alike. Its particularly prevalent along Bohernatounish Road by SuperValu. The traffic wardens dont patrol that far out of town, leaving it to the Gardai, who dont seem to care.

Also, I want to know about encouraging businesses to locate here. In the good times the best we could do is get VHI and Banking 365 to open here. Thats well and good if you want to work in a call centre, but Kilkenny needs more. It needs industry and to stop relying solely on the hospitality industry and retail, both of which will suffer the greatest in this recession.

And the ring road should not take another quarter of a century to be finished. Get the ball rolling now, so when the upturn comes (if it does!) that we can get started without delay.

Cabaal

Stephen wrote: »

Probably because you'd get assholes dumping their entire weekly household waste in those spots then, rather than pay for their own bin.

Agreed, rubbish bins wouldn't fix such a problem as people would simply use them instead of there normal bin coillections.

CCTV and very heavy fines OR putting bottle banks into a secure locked area that can easily be monitored and shut during certain hours.

An example of a locked area that appears to work is the one in Callan beside the Co Council offices, sure its annoying its locked at 5pm but I've never seen rubbish fecked around it like other places in Waterford and Kilkenny

Cabaal

ChristIsMurph wrote: »

-installation of wi-fi spots around the City to allow people to access the internet while out,

Curious what benefits you see from this and how you believe a company would make back costs on such a rollout?

There are already numerous free wifi spots around and Eircom offer pay spots too, if a premises wishes to charge for wifi this would be expensive for the setup required to implement it so I'll assume you want free wifi which would be cheaper roll out then some sort of pay service.

If for example a cafe already has DSL it would be nice to perhaps ask them to share it out for free but given the poor ADSL product availability in Ireland this could actually cost a business 100's of euros.

Your probably thinking why, well the vast majority of ADSL providers have very limited caps and if you go over them you can be charged.

There are companys like Smart who offer very good LLU packages but these are in limited areas and once again the reason for this is the failure of Comreg and previous FF governments.

In addition by right and in-line with an ISP's T&C's a cafe that wants free or paid wifi shared out should be subscribing to a business package but if they do this it'll cost them even more on a monthly basis when compared to residential prices. (though at least it shouldn't be capped which is good)

Given the high cost of line rental (phone line on its own costs over 25e which is highest in the EU) and DSL (thanks Comreg for not doing a decent job actually regulating the industry and encouraging LLU) its not going to pay a cafe to get in a phone line and dsl just to share it out for free (net access).

Further to this what incentive is there for Cafes to offer free wifi to customers after high costs are taken into account, especially given 3G and Midband access that is available to pretty much everyone with a mobile these days?

Of course the failure of governments to give it (Comreg) power to encourage affective/competitive ADSL rollout in Ireland is another matter, while I have mentioned Midband above this is not actually real Broadband despite what the government wishes the average joe to believe as part of the NBS.

(Midband refers to Three, O2, Meteor and Vodafone so called "Mobile Broadband")

ergonomics

Just going to bump this as I would like to see what the politicians have to say.

ergonomics

Ok, I know ChristIsMurph has been online since I bumped this yesterday cause he was posting in the other thread but yet he hasn't replied to this. What do you do when you go to peoples' doors and they tell you their issues, just stand there in silence? To me, that's equal to what you are doing by not replying to this thread.

I would really like to hear opinions on my issue re: parking around Nowlan Park and I'm sure the other people who have posted here would also like to hear an opinion on their issues. Why no reply? And I'm not targeting Darren alone, I am genuinely irritated that neither on the politicans who we know use this board have felt the need to respond to this thread. It'll only take five minutes.

Sully

Give the lad a chance. It takes time to construct proper, decent answers. No politican, including Andrew McGuiness, replied. Now I know Andrews account is sitebanned but before.

ChristIsMurph

EKRIUQ wrote: »

The bottle banks in Kilkenny City are always covered in discarded cardboard boxes and rubbish, why aren't there liter bins at these locations to stop people trowing rubbish everywhere.

There are litter bins usually in the surrounding area. This is just people being lazy. We could establish a recycling facility in the centre of town for cardboard and paper.

fabbydabby wrote: »

So ChristIsMurph it might be a far more fruitful exercise for you to concentrate on setting up a school for middle class kids only with no povs, proles, lefties, drop-outs, travellers, non-caucasians or eastern europeans allowed.

I take an exception to this. There are plenty of kids who are lower class or higher class that attend these schools. It is not excluding anyone. The list is too much and we need a second school to cope with the demand.

Nightwish wrote: »

Another parking issue I've noticed is that since the new cycle lanes have been painted, people have taken to using them as parking spaces. This is both dangerous and frustrating for cyclists and motorists alike. Its particularly prevalent along Bohernatounish Road by SuperValu. The traffic wardens dont patrol that far out of town, leaving it to the Gardai, who dont seem to care.

Also, I want to know about encouraging businesses to locate here. In the good times the best we could do is get VHI and Banking 365 to open here. Thats well and good if you want to work in a call centre, but Kilkenny needs more. It needs industry and to stop relying solely on the hospitality industry and retail, both of which will suffer the greatest in this recession.

And the ring road should not take another quarter of a century to be finished. Get the ball rolling now, so when the upturn comes (if it does!) that we can get started without delay.

I will work with the Joint Policing Authority in getting the Gardaí to sort this issue out. They can ticket the cars if parked illegally. I will also petition for more traffic wardens.

We need to encourage by upgrading things like broadband and roads. Roads leading to Kilkenny are dire, this is something needs addressing asap. Ring fencing funds at County Council level is something I will be asking my colleagues who will be elected to the County Council to try and achieve.

On the subject of broadband. Local councils can petition the Minister to upgrade broadband services within the City. Which is something at which I will aim doing. However, a vote for Fine Gael will bring us to opportunity to do this across the country. If we have a Fine Gael led government we will see a plan implemented whereby we establish a new state company titled "Broadband 21" which will finally introduce more efficient broadband across the country, including Kilkenny City.

From the policy document "Rebuilding Ireland":

“Next generation” broadband to every home and business in Ireland by 2013, with
speeds of up to 100 Megabytes per Second available to 90% of the population;

http://www.finegael.org/upload/file/Rebuilding%20Ireland.pdf

There is the link to the document, if you look at page 8 section 2 titled Broadband 21 it explains in detail.

ergonomics wrote: »

I'd like to know what the politicians are going to do about parking around Nowlan Park? Whenever there's a match on, residents are left trapped in their homes as there are so many cars parked on the roads and on the paths that it is impossible to leave the house by foot or by car. It is definitely impossible for someone with a buggy to get past the ignorant drivers who abandon their cars on the paths. This is a particular problem for anyone living up past O'Loughlins (i.e., O'Loughlin Court, Hebron Park, Ashwood etc.) as drivers park their cars right up in to entrance to O'Loughlin Court, on both sides of the road leaving it impossible to get past on path, and only room for one lane of traffic on the road. If you do manage to drive down there you risk your life trying to drive out onto Hebron Road as there are cars parked (illegally) everywhere and anywhere leaving it impossible to see if there are cars or people approaching.

Not only is it illegal to park on the path but many of the cars are parked on roads marked by double yellow lines. If you approach the Gardai they say it is a Council issue, and the Council say it is a Gardai issue. I don't begrude people their day out to support their team, but I don't think parking laws should be ignored to such a degree for a match.

It really is gone beyond a joke, and something needs to be done. So, what are you going to do?

The Gardaí have to realise it is their problem. However, they are the ones directing traffic to park there. We need facilities to hold large crowds over that side of town. Obviously something like the Ormonde Car Park with free parking during the match would be good but it's extremely awkward to still convince people to park in the car park. O'Loughlin's are always kind enough to open their car park for it as well. We could liase with the Gardaí and create blocks away from the residential areas to stop them parking up alongside the graveyard area. Perhaps there could be a solution in putting people in the second part of Hebron industrial estate (as the first place contains Bishop Birch Place). To be honest I will consider whatever anyone has to say. But I will look into other areas and see if they have the same problem and how they have dealt with it appropriately. And also again this is something which will be done mostly through the Joint Policing Authority, with the Kilkenny GAA and the residents of the area.


On a final note I wish to apologise for my delay. I've been getting a load of emails about everything I'm subscribed to on this. I replied to that other thread yesterday as a quick reply for a defense for myself on an issue. I have had this reply in front of me the past few days and have been adding to it every chance I get while studying for my final exams and canvassing. I have now finished exams and will be slightly more free to reply.

jiggajt

fabbydabby wrote: »

They wouldn't have to waste time learning Irish to reap the 'benefits' either...

Learning Irish is a waste of time?? Explain?