Link to my Irish Times article on the loss of town councils…
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Leaflet delivery
From rob@marciadalton.net
On behalf of Marcia I would like to let you know that we have had a difficulty with our leaflet delivery company.
A specialised leaflet delivery company was employed to deliver the leaflets to everyone in the Ballincollig/Carrigaline ward. Sadly, it would appear that very many people did not receive their leaflet and the company have not been able to pinpoint exactly where the leaflets were delivered.
Between Marcia’s volunteer helpers and myself we are distributing leaflets as fast as we can so that you may read them before the election.
I would like to apologise to anyone who receives the same leaflet twice. It was not our intention to have this happen. I also had reports of leaflets being delivered out of the ward – I have been told that this has only happened in a small number of cases but I not confident that this is true.
If you haven’t received print literature and would like some, please email me at the above address and I will organise a delivery for you.
Rob.
Marcia’s husband and poster hanger!
From The Examiner, 28/04/2014
Update on meeting of Passage West Town Council with Cork County Council Area Engineer
- Request that the barriers around the Centre Block would be moved in for the Easter weekend. The Area Engineer said that she would speak to the contractors.
- The slip at Toureen/Patrick Murphy Park is dangerous. The hand rail is corroded. The Town Council will be requested to pay for a new one at a cost of €200. It will be fabricated locally.
- The picnic tables to be erected in Patrick Murphy Park/Toureen will be:
o Between the seats in Patrick Murphy Park
o Opposite Derek O’Brien’s
o Opposite the Tavern
- Request that the concrete plinths under the tables would be made flush with the grass, firstly to facilitate wheelchair access and secondly, to facilitate neat grasscutting.
- Sods in the old church need to be taken away. The Area Engineer said that she would look after this.
- The Festival Committee wants a plaque erected in Fr. O’Flynn Park in time for the festival and is seeking the assistance of the Area Office in this regard. The Area Engineer said the timescale was short but that she would do her best.
- The 10k Road Race is next week. The Area Engineer said that the contractors used by the Area Office for grasscutting had started their work in Monkstown today and so the grass should be complete in time for the Road Race.
- Request that the road sweeper should make a visit to the town in advance of the Road Race. Also that notice should be given of its coming so that footpaths could be swept onto the road for debris to be picked up by the road sweeper. In particular there is much gravel on the road around the area where the Road Race is to finish. Noted that visits from the road sweeper were far more frequent before Christmas 2013. The Area Engineer said that she would try to get the road sweeper.
- There is a water hydrant cover missing on Church Hill adjacent to the Eircom building. This is dangerous.
- Request that the Area Office might place boulders on the edges of the grass at Toureen on a temporary basis to stop cars from using the grass as a parking space.
- Request that the Area Office might donate some tar to fill potholes in the car park at the GAA Club in advance of the Road Race. If the tar is donated, the Club will look after the filling of the holes.
- Concerned that the County Council operatives who empty bins, etc. in Passage West will be operating throughout a larger area and without additional staff. Concerned that Passage West might not get the same attention it has been getting to date, particularly with regard to emptying of the Water Tower and emptying of the litter bins. The Area Engineer said that the operatives have been operating that larger area since Christmas. The best service possible will be provided.
- Observed that litter bins are not always emptied in advance of weekends. This causes great mess in the town and negates the litterpicking work the Tidy Towns does during the week. Request that the Tidy Towns would be given a key for the litterbins such that they are not emptied by Friday, the Tidy Towns would be able to empty them and put the bags in the water tower for subsequent collection by Cork County Council. The Area Engineer agreed that this would likely be possible and that she would look into it.
- Request that the two litterbins with broken locks would have those locks replaced.
- Acknowledgement that the Area Office has previously requested that voluntary effort would not be used to clean the LHS of the R610 from Passage West to Rochestown. Request that the Area Office should clear this side of the road of litter. It is intended that the all-community clean-up on 23rd April in advance of the Road Race will look after the cleaning of the footpath on the RHS. The Area Engineer reiterated that cleaning the LHS of the road is a very dangerous job and one which she could not condone the local community doing. She said cleaning of roadsides subject to dumping is a task regularly requested of the Area Office. They know it is necessary but simply do not have the resources. She will ask the operatives to be aware of it and to do the best they can but is not hopeful it can be tackled.
- Request that the footpath from Pembroke Wood across the R610 to the Rockenham side should be dished. Appreciation of the works done crossing at the bottom of Rockenham, but there are 400-odd houses in Pembroke Wood and dishing should also have been carried out to facilitate those residents. The Area Engineer agreed and said that she would investigate further.
- Request that the footpath up the Glen in Monkstown should be fixed and widened to facilitate the elderly. The Area Engineer said that she was aware this was necessary and would follow it up.
- The Tidy Towns has done a survey of signage throughout the town. Request that if they send a list of redundant and damaged signage to the Area Office that these might be removed or addressed as appropriate. The Area Engineer agreed that this would be fine.
- Request for advice and assistance with regard to rehabilitation works the Tidy Towns hopes to undertake at Steampacket Quay/Penny’s Dock. The anticipated works were costed in accordance with a quote received from a recommended contractor. However the contractor omitted one essential element of the intended job in the quotation and so the project is now undercosted. Despite best efforts, no cheaper quotation can be got and so the Tidy Towns is short of funds. The Area Engineer acknowledged that the project is worthwhile and the Area Office can offer limited assistance with regard to making up the shortfall. The Town Council also offered an increase in its already-promised financial contribution to the project to assist with the shortfall.
April update PWTC…
Some updates from the April meeting of Passage West Town Council
Signalisation of the Shannonpark Roundabout
The County Manager still has not decided whether to take the signalisation of the Shannonpark roundabout to full Council. The Area Committee voted against the proposal to signalise the roundabout. If the Manager does proceed to take it to full Council, it will be an almost unprecedented step that he should step over the opinions of the elected councillors in the area.
Passage West – Carrigaline Greenway
It is still hoped that the Greenway will go to Part 8 planning. This will give the public opportunity to comment on its extension from Passage West through Monkstown, Raffeen and up to the N28. The SECAD funding which was hoped to advance the project has not been secured. Funding is now being sought from national cyclepaths funding.
Lower Harbour Sewerage Scheme
The consultants for the Lower Harbour Sewerage Scheme, Nicholas Dwyer, have committed to a series of public meetings prior to advancing for planning permission for the various pumping stations associated with the scheme. The public meeting for Passage West/Glenbrook/Monkstown will be held in Passage West. The date and venue is yet to be confirmed.
Public lighting at Buncoille
The Town Council is going to fund the erection of a public light at Buncoille. The light will be double headed, one facing towards Hayes Boreen and the other facing the R610. It will be mounted on an existing pole in the grass patch in front of the lime kiln.
A light at this location has been awaited a long time. Unfortunately the cost of funding street lighting from Buncoille to Murph’s Pub is simply beyond that which the Town Council can achieve. But they are pleased to at least help residents and safety by providing this light at Buncoille.
Future of Town Hall
The benefits of the Town Hall are well recognised. Its size makes it ideal for a meeting room for smaller groups. When the Town Council is abolished at the end of May, the building will revert to the ownership of Cork County Council.
The Town Council regrets seeing this meeting room lost to the people of the town. So for the present, it is planned that a lease arrangement will be made between the County Council and the Tidy Towns group such that the Tidy Towns group will hold the key for the Town Hall. Although the County Council will insure and maintain it, the Tidy Towns will pay for electricity and heating and an annual rent for the lease. This will facilitate the availability of the Town Hall for all smaller groups in the town wishing to use it for meetings.
Other points of note
- The Town Council will arrange the plastering and painting on the walls of the Town Hall car park and the library car park. They are in very poor condition at present.
- The Town Council gave permission to the Tidy Towns group to put water butts on the downpipes of the Town Hall.
- There will be a community clean up day on 23rd April to prepare the route of the Road Race for the Race on the 25th April. The clean up will be held at 7pm and everybody is asked to give what time they can.
- A majority of the members of the Town Council agreed to write to the Department of Agriculture, Food & the Marine in support of the Foreshore Licence application by Monkstown Bay Marina Ltd. for the 285 berth marina to which planning permission was granted by An Bord Pleanala in 2010.
- At present Passage West/Monkstown is twinned with Chasseneuil du Poitou in the Vienne region of western France. There is a concern that the twinning may die when the Town Council is abolished. Should anybody be interested in promoting the twinning of our towns into the future, please contact any member of the Town Council or the Town Clerk at niall.okeeffe(@)corkcoco.ie
The proposed MUGA/table tennis for the Marmullane Tennis Club site is waiting for Sports Capital funding. It is presumed that a decision will not issue from the Department of Transport until the end of May.
The Painting Scheme will be finishing up early this year. This may be one of the reasons that the number of applicants to the scheme is very much lower than it was last year. If anyone is interested in applying for the scheme, please contact any member of the Town Council or the Town Clerk at niall.okeeffe(@)corkcoco.ie
From the Archives…
From the Passage West/Monkstown News, 26th March 2009
Passage West Town Council supports the removal of the gate fee for recycling at the Raffeen Civic Amenity Site. There has been much concern locally at the introduction of this charge. At its March monthly meeting, the Town Council unanimously supported a 
motion which suggested that Cork County Council would use incentives and schemes promoting sustainable waste management to finance the operation of Civic Amenity Sites in lieu of the €3 gate fee, as the latter is having a generally negative effect on the diversion of waste from landfill.
The motion will now be sent to the County Manager as a request from Passage West Town Council. It will be accompanied a case study which Cllr. Marcia D’Alton gave when introducing the motion. The Town Manager suggested that the case study would help to illustrate to the County Manager the effect the €3 gate fee can have both on a typical young family and on materials management at the household level:
“We are a household of six. We generate approximately one bag of rubbish every two weeks. Since the introduction of pay-by-weight, we have used the Raffeen Civic Amenity Site for all our waste disposal and recycling: we have young children and the cost of nappies in pay-by-weight would have been exorbitant. However, I live in an estate house with no garage and I have facilities to store recyclable materials generated only over the course of one week. So I paid a visit to the Civic Amenity Site every week with my sorted recyclables and every second week I would also bring along a bag of rubbish.
The charge for disposing of one bag of rubbish at the Civic Amenity Site was €8. Consequently, the cost of our household waste management using this system was €218 per year. This compared favourably with private waste collection. At present, Country Clean is charging €275 per year plus a once-off charge of €65 for the purchase of the general waste bin and €35 for the purchase of the recycling bin. Wiser Bins is charging €280 per year and a once-off charge of €45 for the recycling bin.
But on 1st February, a €3 gate fee was introduced at the Civic Amenity Site. For our system of household waste management, the cost escalated from €218 per year to €432 per year, i.e. €3 for each recycling trip and €10 for each bag of general waste. This was unacceptably high.
So I did some shopping around. For new customers, Cork County Council is offering a flat one year introductory rate of €250. We signed up to this, so we now have two bins outside the house: one for recycling and one for general waste. These are collected on alternate weeks. Glass is not acceptable in the recycling bin, so I make a trip to the bring site at Monkstown whenever necessary, usually once each month.
My old toaster finally went irretrievably out of order some three weeks ago. It will still be collected at the Civic Amenity Site for free because, by law, Cork County Council is not permitted to charge for the collection of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment. But the new toaster which replaced it came with cardboard, plastic and polystyrene packaging. Heretofore, I would have gone to the Civic Amenity Site with the old toaster, put it in the WEEE section, put the cardboard into the cardboard compactor and the polystyrene into the polystyrene bin. The Civic Amenity Site hasn’t taken light plastic for a long time (collection ceased because of contamination), so I would have put this in the general waste at home. Since the 1st February, I can leave the toaster for free at the Civic Amenity Site, but to recycle the rest of the packaging from the new toaster, I must pay €3. Instead, I put my cardboard into the recycling bin outside my front door. But I am not allowed to put light plastic or polystyrene into the recycling bin, so I have to put it into the general waste bin. So now my polystyrene is destined for landfill rather than for recycling. Am I going to drive specially to the Raffeen Civic Amenity Site to recycle my toaster? I am perhaps unusual in that having worked in waste, I am acutely aware of the issues. That aside, I am in Monkstown several times each day and so it is not a huge issue to drive to Raffeen. But for people who don’t work in the waste field and who live in Carrigaline or Douglas, which is easier: to drive to Raffeen with the toaster or to put that toaster straight into the general waste bin for which there is a flat charge? So that is a toaster destined for landfill rather than recycling.
All national and local policy is aimed at diverting waste from landfill. The newly introduced €3 gate fee for Civic Amenity Sites in Co. Cork is diametrically opposed to this. In November 2005, I introduced a motion to the effect that Cork County Council should establish a “Goods Rehoming Facility” adjacent to the Raffeen Civic Amenity Site. The term “Goods Rehoming Facility” was chosen to indicate that the function of the facility would be the acceptance of good quality/nearly new items still capable of performing their original function. This was initiated by the observation that many of the goods accepted at the Civic Amenity Site was perfectly serviceable and/or in relatively good condition.
This was not a novel concept. It was, and continues to be, done in many countries. When introducing the motion, I discussed some such Goods Rehoming Facilities in operation worldwide. In terms of the waste hierarchy, reuse is of course far preferable to recycling.
The motion was fully supported by Passage West Town Council. So I subsequently gave a presentation on behalf of the Town Council to Enda Kiernan, Senior Executive Engineer of waste management with Cork County Council. He too was very taken with the idea. Some time later, I went to County Hall to discuss the concept with Patricia Power, then Director of Services, Environment, and Mary Stack, Environmental Awareness Officer. They too approved strongly of the proposal. They noted that a container on the Raffeen Civic Amenity Site was kept specifically for particularly high quality items rescued from disposal at the site. As a consequence of our proposal, they initiated a mini-Goods Rehoming Facility at the Macroom Civic Amenity Site.
But the Macroom initiative was open for only a couple of hours on a weekday morning, one day per week. I commented at the time that this would be destined to failure: a Goods Rehoming Facility must become a convenient alternative to going out to buy new if it is to succeed. However, issues of staff shortages and recruitment embargoes were cited as being the reason it couldn’t have longer opening hours.
Since before Christmas, a specific policy of not rescuing any goods regardless of quality has been introduced at the Raffeen Civic Amenity Site. So, while heretofore if I wanted a bicycle for one of the children, I went to the Civic Amenity Site, I was told that nothing was available now or would be available in the future. No Goods Rehoming Facility has been developed. Four years on, the bottom has fallen out of the recycled materials market, the need for general waste disposal facilities grows ever more acute and Cork County Council is not merely discouraging customers but is also adopting policies which actively increase waste to landfill.
A Goods Rehoming Facility would:
- encourage reuse
- attract customers to the Civic Amenity Site
- divert good material from recycling or disposal
- contribute at least in part towards the cost of running the Civic Amenity Site and, consequently, could held to at least reduce the newly introduced €3 gate fee.
If Cork County Council is interested in diverting waste from landfill, I believe it would have been preferable to close the Civic Amenity Site from Monday – Wednesday inclusive with full service available from Thursday – Saturday inclusive rather than to apply a gate fee to all who are striving to manage their waste correctly.
When my family loses its first-time customer status next year and becomes subject to the pay-by-weight system, we will switch to a private waste collection service. Although we would prefer not to, the cost of nappies in the pay-by-weight system would be prohibitive. And so Cork County Council, rather than making money for its waste collection service, will lose one of its most loyal customers.
The €3 gate fee is not merely a disincentive to diversion of waste from landfill and an encouragement to dump waste illegally; it will drive customers away from the Civic Amenity Sites and I can see no way by which it will contribute to the finances of the sustainable running of Civic Amenity Sites in the longer term.”
Election Leaflet
My 2014 County Council Campaign Leaflet
Election Leaflet