Having reached the half way point in 2009, I thought I’d have a quick look at a few planning application numbers from around the country for January to June.

In Clare, there were 680 planning applications to the end of June. This compares to 1750 for the same period in 2007. On quick perusal, applications are for no more than extensions and retentions.

Galway City had 250 applications, down from 500 in 2007. Cork County is down from 9200 in 2007 to 6100 this year. In both cases, very few applications were for anything more than a house or an extension. Dublin City Council, too, has very little going on: 3350 applications this year down from just over 3950 two years ago. Not much difference numberswise, big difference scalewise.

From what I can make out on Limerick County Council's website, there were about 740 applications to the end of June 09 compared to 1400 for the first half of 08.

Many thanks to Deputy Terence Flanagan for his relentless efforts in obtaining answers to some questions I put to the Public Accounts Committee on the cost overruns on the Ballymun Regeneration Project. It took him two years.

I’m not going to go over the whole thing again but, basically, the project to complete the reconstruction of Ballymun is years overdue and hundreds of millions of Euro over budget. Many moons ago the Comptroller and Auditor General published a report which, in my view, kinda pulled its punches in explaining what is an epic of tiger era indulgence and mismanagement. So, I composed 14 questions which I thought the Comptroller’s report had failed to address and sent them, via Terence, to the PAC.

Earlier this week, we got a response from Ciaran Murray, Managing Director of Ballymun Regeneration Limited. I won’t bore you (yet) with his ten page reply. Here’s a little amuse bouche.

Around about 2000, and amid a great deal of fanfare, it was announced that a €1 point something billion business and technology park would form a 100 acre centrepiece to the larger Ballymun regeneration project. It was to be co-developed by Green Properties and Ballymun Regeneration Ltd.

It went by the wall.  But not before Green Properties had run up some costs. I wanted to know how much of these costs the taxpayer had handed over to Green.  This is how Ciaran Murray responded.

'... A sum of € X  (see footnote) million was paid to the Developer on dissolution of the proposed joint venture.  €Y million of the figure related to the actual costs incurred by the Developer in acquiring 29.6 Acres of land, the title to which has been transferred to Dublin City Council and is an asset of the Regeneration Company.  The balance of €Z million was paid to the Developer representing 50% of the actual third party professional fees incurred by the joint venture in developing a Local Area Plan and obtaining planning permission on the lands.  As part of the Dissolution Agreement the Regeneration Company acquired the sole rights to use any designs developed and the benefit of the Planning Permission obtained.  All of this expenditure was funded through internal capital receipts generated by BRL through property disposals and only actual vouched costs were recouped in exchange for the acquisition of valuable assets.'

Foornote: Confidentiality clause inserted in joint venture Dissolution Agreement (settlement of high court proceedings) at the request of the Developer.

The developer was Green Properties. X is said to be somewhere around €6 million but I’d be interested in hearing what the exact figure is.

The €X million cost to the taxpayer doesn’t, of course, take into account the amount Ballymun Regeneration itself spent on wages, administration, legal fees, consultants fees, etc. before the business was wound up. What are we talking about here - €2m maybe €3m? We’re getting into electronic voting territory on this one element of the project alone.  

Well, kittens, and in particular FPL. I missed this telling sentence from an article by Joe Brennan in the Irish Independent last week which suggests that the steering committee advising on the establishment of NAMA have reached a worrying conclusion. Namely, NAMA won’t be any more effective in turning around bad debt sites than the average liquidator unless planning permissions for developments of unrealistic scale are guaranteed (for up to fifteen years): 

‘The steering committee behind the setting up of the so-called 'bad bank' had looked at obtaining powers to deploy compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) and grant planning permission, similar to that enjoyed by the Dublin Docklands Development Authority. However, it is understood that the Attorney General, who is also on the committee, advised that building such overarching powers into NAMA legislation could drown the whole process in a quagmire of legal proceedings...’

In other words as FPL has already correctly pointed out in his/her comment on the last post, and despite the concerns of the Attorney General (who'll be overlooked), the whole country will soon become a giant DDDA. What an irony: the price we have to pay for fifteen years of terrible planning is fifteen years of worse planning. Or no planning. Or maybe I mean, anti planning. Ooh la la.  

Here’s the full piece:

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/nama-wont-be-given-any-super-powers-to-deal-with-borrowers-1783097.html

All the jibber jabber in the financial pages and the opinion columns of the newspapers about ‘the best way to go about establishing fair valuations’ for bad debt sites is completely irrelevant. The only way to establish a valuation on any of these sites is to make an assumption about the amount of development which might be permitted. Which means that if the tax payer’s support is to be rewarded, all the NAMA sites must be developed beyond even the levels the original purchasers had in mind.   

On the question of whether we the Irish taxpayer should be putting €4B into shoring up the ailing Anglo Irish Bank, I thought the chap who asked Alan Dukes ‘do you ever get fed up trying to explain complex banking issues to the (stupid) [my parenthesis added] public?’ on Questions + Answers last week might have hit the nail on the head, but in a way he himself wasn’t intending.

Hopefully not being too unfair to this gentleman, it seemed to me that what he was trying to do in his question was imply that if the ordinary Irish citizen better understood how necessary it is when dealing with international bankers to maintain an air of scheming connivance and, furthermore, if we only understood the sanctity of the secrecy and unaccountability which characterizes the world of big finance we would, in order to allow the next financial ponzi scheme take root and destroy us afresh, let retired-politicians-turned-bankers fling money into a black hole in quiet acquiescence. While Dukes dutifully replied that no, on the contrary he quite enjoyed trying to convince the reluctant public of why it should continue to live only to support the banking system, I thought I sensed that he actually really did appreciate the questioner's intention: yes folks, he appeared to hint, little people don’t understand what this kind of thing is all about and are better off leaving it to those who do. Like him.

If we accept both Alan Dukes’ and Mary Coughlan’s assertion that the main reason for supporting Anglo is to protect our national reputation then wouldn’t this mean we’d be spending an equivalent amount of money convincing the rest of the civilized world that we have no tolerance for the frocked child abusers who terrorized a previous generation? (The Ryan report is already drifting into a convenient haze...) And, in any event, does anyone really, really believe that, when a situation can be exploited for a quick buck, international banks care a jot for a country’s financial reputation? In five years time when the money starts to flow around these parts again, they’ll be back.
 
In short, the Government is simply lying to us about what it’s doing. The reason why they’re intent on supporting Anglo Irish Bank is because they’ve been told to do so by Brussels. And this is what really lies at the heart of the Lisbon Treaty: the freedom to let money do what money wants to do.   

Meanwhile, the cause of all this mess – a planning system whose only obvious effect in recent years has been, not to improve our way of life in any measurable fashion, but only to create a little bubble within which the spectacularly greedy indulged themselves in a diabolic orgy – remains fully intact, its failings completely oblivious to a cabinet of demagogues, high on dema but low on gogue.

And now I need a drink.

The Dublin Dockland Development Authority shares its acronym with the better known Demolition Derby Drivers Assocition. Whose motto is 'We Crash'.

I just finally read Justine McCarthy’s piece in the Trib from several weeks back regarding the state of play in The Docklands of Sodom and Gomorrah. http://www.tribune.ie/article/2009/apr/26/ddda-deals-to-be-investigated/?q=DDDA Well done, Justine – you don’t write a piece as carefully pitched as that one was without having a good idea of what’s really going on down there. I look forward to the fruits of your further investigations – perhaps you might just be the person to finally explain to the rest of us the inner workings of that most inscrutable of quangoes that is the DDDA. For example, it would be useful for us all to know how a teeny, tiny little organisation which happens to have life or death power over some of the greediest, sharpest, money grabbinest bastards in the country manages, without much public accountability, to keep everyone happy and away (relatively speaking) from the courtrooms they so otherwise adore? I’ve always felt that the folks at the DDDA must have the moral fibre of members of certain religious orders, especially when faced with circumstances which might lead those of us with weaker juridical constitutions astray. Circumstances like, for example, when U2 decided to take a greater (that is to say ‘financial’) interest in the tower which was proposed to bear their name; or when the designers of the competition winning original U2 Tower, BCDH, were shafted and (allegedly, etc.) owed an absolute fortune in unpaid fees; or the occasson when Liam Carroll was satisfied to accept a reduced level of development on the site he owned right next door to the one where the revised Norman Foster designed U2 tower of awfulness was due to be built? Or the time the same Liam Carroll was fortunate enough to have the development potential of another piece of land he owns within the DDDA's jurisdiction suddenly multiply?

I need a little help on something. While interviewing Brian Cowen on the radio last week, George Hook asked the Taoiseach why, instead of fooling citizens into believing that supporting bad banks is a patriotic thing to do, the Government didn’t just let Anglo Irish go to the wall? And, in reply, the Taoiseach said something to the effect of ‘… because European rules say we're not allowed to…’.

My question is simple – is this true? I’ve tried looking for the answer myself on various EU websites but, just as it was with the Lisbon Treaty, the experience makes me feel dim, euphoric and giddy all at the same time – a bit like Patrick on Sponge Bob. (Actually, before I settled on the Patrick analogy I just used there a second ago, I was going to make a reference to Charlie McCreevy and his ‘you’d want to be mad to read the Lisbon Treaty’ comments from last year. Obviously, something deep in my subconscious is making a connection between Charlie McCreevy and Patrick from Sponge Bob. Uncanny. (Also, does anyone know if, in a previous career, McCreevy was the person who voiced the lines ‘There is no dark side of the moon. As a matter of fact it’s all dark’ on the eponymous Pink Floyd album of the 70s? The voice isn’t quite right, but the mentality is captured exquisitely.))  

Anyway… now that Declan Ganley has said it won’t be him, who’s going to step up to the plate and save us from the ‘you might think you’re voting for greater democracy in Europe but, instead, you’re helping banks increase that uncomfortable hold on your throat ’ inspired Lisbon Two? Ganley was on to something for a while, but I think if he’d stayed in Galway and focussed his energies on getting the Irish people to more fully understand his message instead of forging alliances with folks from unusual parts of the Continent so unknown to us that the pro Treaty media could mispresent their characters any way it liked, he would have obliterated Lisbon Two last weekend.

Richard Boyd Barrett, perhaps?

Despite the Irish Times’ desperation to have us believe that, unlike the last time round, this time their opinion polls showing that the Treaty will be supported are accurate, my gut feeling is that a combination of (a) increasing awareness that support for the FF government is irrational and, therefore, absurd + (b) Joe Higgins + (c) Sinn Fein’s heavy first preference vote getting in Leinster and Munster + (d) The People Before Profit folks suddenly emerging in Dublin + (e) Ganley’s natural 70,000 constituency in the North West, will all mean that we’ll be facing a Lisbon Three this time next year (if the banking system hasn’t collapsed the in meantime, in which case the Lisbon Treaty won’t be necessary (because its got nothing to do with you or me feeling any sense of 'ownership' of the 'Great European Experiment')). 

This is from the latest Nenagh Guardian:

'A Ballina man is appealing for people experiencing planning problems in North Tipperary to contact him with a view to setting up a forum on the matter.

Patrick Clarke has spent six years battling for planning permission in Ballina. He says his case is just one of too many affecting people all over the county, who Pat alleges are being treated unfairly by the local planning authority. Pat and his wife Martina McKeogh have been renting in Ballina for over two years with their four young children, who all attend Ballina NS. They want to build a home in the area and do have local connections on Martina’s side, she being able to trace her family history in the area back over eight generations.

Six years ago the couple were offered a site on the family farm, only to discover that they could not proceed with their plans to build a house as they did not meet ‘local need’ criteria. “Because neither of us were born locally nor lived locally for 10 years we are excluded from building our family home on the family farm,” Pat says... he has been repeatedly refused planning permission by the local authority, whose interpretation of the local need policy he finds too “black and white,” offering no room for discretion in individual circumstances.

The Ballina resident believes many other people are experiencing similar problems in North Tipperary, and that local politicians are either unable or unwilling to help. He’s now appealing for people to contact him on the matter. “You are not alone,” Pat says. “There is strength in numbers. If you wish to do something about this then now is the time to act.”

Contact Pat on 087 9020321 or email  mailto:pclarkeirl@eircom.net

Anyway. So far so typical: a ridiculously discriminatory planning policy, which wouldn't last on the statutes in the US or any Continental European country for the smallest fraction of a second, being exposed for the national embarrassment it is.

However, the situation must be viewed in the context of a separate North Tipp application for a family home which was recently approved but for which there was an alleged question as to that applicant's qualification under the 'local need' rule. It has come to Pat Clarke's attention that the applicant on the 'successful' application couldn't really be considered a local but does have alleged connections with a local TD as well as a senior planner. Whether this fact in any way influenced the outcome of the planning application, as Clarke suggests in a letter to all TDs in the country that it might have, is something I couldn't possibly comment on.  

Pat is hoping that people in the North Tipp area for whom his situation may resonate will contact him before the local elections on Friday and assist him with an email campaign. Here's his contact information again: Pat Clarke, 087 9020321 or pclarkeirl@eircom.net

From John Gormley’s statement yesterday announcing the new legislation which will improve planning around the country:

“A sound development plan is the key to ensuring good planning at local level. Decisions taken at development plan stage affect all other planning decisions” said the Minister. A key element of the Bill is the introduction of a requirement for an evidence based core strategy in development plans which will provide relevant information as to how the plan and the housing strategy are consistent with regional planning guidelines and the National Spatial Strategy…’

Apart from sounding like something which well meaning Dissenter  industrialists say about improving the lot of their workers in Dickens novels, what does the phrase ‘evidence based core strategy’ actually mean? The ‘evidence based’ approach is the latest iteration of a particularly English life-simplifying illusion which begins with David Hume, courses through John Stuart Mill and any number of Victorian men of letters and now, in a new line which traces itself back to 1920s Oxford, has found voice in Gordon Brown’s administration. It’s an approach that distrusts imagination, personality, spirit and all those other things which make us human (and Irish) (in an article in the Guardian lately, an ‘evidence based’ commentator criticised some new British Government initiative as being ‘overly reliant on ambition’). The only compelling evidence that I personally would base a planning policy on is that there’s no evidence that the English planning system is the one we want to adopt.  More Kant, Minister, and lest cant (sorry, couldn't resist...).

The new Planning Bill was, of course, announced in advance of the Local elections as part of a shameless piece of Green Party self promotion. (In this morning’s Times, a piece about the proposed planning changes is so fawning it feels like one of those ‘advertisement features’: it’s actually an ‘exclusive interview’.) And that's about all you can say about it - it's more a party position paper that a thought through piece of legislation.

The planning system in this country needs radical, radical, radical change. There isn’t any hope whatsoever that the necessary change can be delivered by our current bunch of political leaders or, indeed, that the change can happen under our political system. What are we supposed to do?

It's a real website, check it out, add to it, etc.: www.ghostestates.com, that's .www.ghostestates.com.

Excellent.

Does anyone have any more info on John Gormley’s proposals for what to do with unfinished housing developments? I read something a few weeks back about how he hopes to prevent the sponsors of such developments from getting planning permission on future projects. To this end, apparently, a system will be put in place which will allow local authorities to exchange information with each other about rogue builders. But do the Minister’s proposals have anything to say about the hundreds of half built housing estates already littering the country? I’m not being rhetorical – I’d really like to know if anyone has heard anything in this regard.

Meanwhile, on the issue of facilitating local authorities to exchange information about bad builders, it all just seems like so much whispery/gossipy/judgmental fuss – a whole nuther way for local authorities to don’t do what they’re already excellent at not doing (not to mention a whole lot of law suits (not to mention, is this the way we run our planning system?)) How about we do what they do elsewhere – planning applications get judged on their merits, but the actual construction can only go ahead after the contractor has been issued a permit. The permit is issued on foot of proof that the contractor’s insurances are up to date, there are no certificates of ‘incomplete work’ on his file and (crucially) there are no judgments against him/her for non payment of subcontractors. No gossiping, no mid ranking functionaires finding a new way to frustrate us all in the practise of their arbitrary discernments, just a little bit of constitutional discipline.

Seemples!

Is it possible that the Bilderberg group really doesn’t control the planet afterall? In a year when they run the risk of having their Lisbon Treaty defeated by the Irish people for the second time and as the Irish Government displays an economic/managerial incompetence that will soon have average people storming Leinster House, who amongst Ireland’s elite did the Bilderbergers invite to Athens for their informal knees-up this weekend past? Former AIBman Dermot Gleeson! (For the second year in a row.) (Hope he cleaned that suit.) No Sir Anthony O’Reilly (I heard he once used to be Irish) and no one from the Irish Times invited to discuss ways in which the level of the Lisbon debate may be raised (by saying nasty things about Libertas) in their respective media orgs prior to the vote.

Anyway, still a bit giddy after my moment of madness in Nenagh, I had half a thought to go down to Athens myself and join all the ding-bats of Europe in a bit of girly civil disobedience. By all accounts that would not have been a great move. Last week, in an attempt to prove that the Bilderberg group are a harmless bunch of international financiers and attorneys general and that you’d have to be a right Fr. Horan to think otherwise, the Guardian of London sent some young comedian called Charlie Skelton to the conference location near the Greek capitol. His self confessed aim was to poke light hearted fun at the claim-they’re-lefties-sound-like-fascists anti-Bilderberg lunatics as they blow whistles and chant the Lords Prayer backwards through bullhorns outside the Astir Palace Hotel. Things didn’t turn out as he had planned. Within minutes of his arrival in Athens Skelton had been picked up the Greek police three times. By Friday it was clear from his reports that he was having a fully fledged, unscheduled nervous breakdown. Followed by shadowy figures everywhere he went, convinced that people were searching his hotel room when he wasn’t there and, when confronted by Greek security types, reduced to paranoid blubbering, Skelton ended up seeking help from America’s foremost subversive, Alex Jones, before making his surreptitious way to the safety of the British Embassy.

When it comes to being civilly disobedient, I prefer to do it with a laptop and a glass of red wine.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/charlie-skeltons-bilderberg-files    

Dermot Gleeson’s departure from AIB last week reminds me that Bilderberg season is almost upon us - Gleeson along with Attorney General, Paul Gallagher, were our representatives at last year’s event near Washington DC. This year, the international banking community will attempt to influence well placed, second rate intellects from ‘open economies’ at their meeting in Athens due to take place on the 14th of this month. I’m curious to see which Irish people will be included on this year’s list of invitees. There’s nobody on the boards of the banks worth asking and yet, even though we’re a very small customer, as one of the spots on the planet most reliant on some new global financial ponzi scheme to get us out of our mess, they need some Irish bodies in the conference room. The question is: who? These are my guesses: Peter Bacon and someone with a high-up back room position at the Irish Times. I’m no conspiracy theorist – if the disillusionatti want to meet and greet in Greece it’s alright with me. So long as no one from the Irish Government is there. 

The important news outlets (New York Times, et al) agree never to cover Bilderberg meetings and the lesser news organisations – the Irish ones, for example (except the Irish Times) – have no idea what it is, so don’t expect the names of the Irish attendees to be reported on the SixOne News. We’ll have to wait for their identities to be leaked on the whacky-fringey internet sites, which is always kind of fun. And, then, later that same week we have Eurovision! Its like The Rapture for agnostics.

With all the Chelsea/Barca/Drogba drama of earlier in the week, you might have missed this:

In answer to your breathless and sometimes deliciously tart texts and emails which I received on the day of the paint-ball massacres, no I had no hand act or part in encouraging Ms Hoctor to consider returning to her teaching job from which is in on leave. My only contribution to her difficulties is that I managed, anti-G8-summit-style, to get her kicked off the dais in Nenagh (which I'm still sore about because Sinn Fein, whom I happened to be standing beside at the time the red mist decended, got all the credit for for the fracas! Lads, if that's all the thanks I get, I'm standing with the Legion of Mary at the next big demo.)  

By the by, has anyone been noticing how much trouble the world's major newspapers have been getting into lately? The Boston Globe was teetering on the brink last week and within the past year the precarious business models of Le Monde, the New York Times and the LA Times have been exposed. In the case of the New York Times, its well known their monopoly on revenue for classified advertising has been shattered with the arrival of giant internet sites like Craigslist. And the quality of punditry on the big commentary sites - both left and right - is so much better that what you'll find on the news stands. So what's going to happen in Ireland, I wonder. Already, the Sunday Tribune and Sunday Business Post are delaying the publication of their on line editions, presumably to encourage folks to go out and buy their papers. And already the quality of commentary you'll find on some news sites is better than that available in the print media. Interesting.

Thanks to Richard and everyone else for their info/photos of unfinished housing schemes, abandoned by bankrupt developers after half the houses have been bought by (typically) middle income young couples trying to raise families.

Has anyone any idea how to tackle the problem? Feel free to comment. Maybe we should think about meeting.

  ... with An Bord Pleanala running months behind in deciding on appeals, to what degree is the Bord’s inefficiency contributing to the downturn in the economy?     

#

The Elwoods were great. Denis Byrne’s design was awesome. And, Tom Johnson, I have to hand it to you: you really know how to make a television show.

I don’t know the extent to which this kind of thing is happening but, I suspect, a lot. It seems that one of the consequences of the combined evils of the downturn in the economy and our disregard for planning/public administration is that overstretched developers are abandoning new housing schemes and leaving them half finished.

This one,

in the midlands, is typical of what I believe to be occurring: in this particular case about half of the forty-odd houses which the developer received planning permission for were completed before being sold at the very height of the market. But when things started to go pear shaped, all work stopped and the site was more or less abandoned leaving the following: about twenty houses occupied; a cluster of almost finished houses;

another cluster of half finished houses;

some exposed foundations for intended houses;

unfinished roads; street lights that don’t work; piles of unused timber frame walls which are now home to a large population of rats (the HSE has written a report about it);

and a storm water system which empties out onto neighbouring land which, itself, is only yards away from a cemetery.

The local Council has issued enforcement notices and so on, but I’m sure it will come as no surprise to the unfortunate residents of our housing estate when I express the opinion that it’s only a matter of weeks before some of the half finished houses, which sit unlocked and unguarded,

will be taken over by drug addicts: this, the punishment the people who bought the houses receive for mortgaging themselves to the hilt for the rest of their lives for the crime of wanting somewhere modest and respectable to raise a family.

I seem to remember a time when it was standard practise for developers to post bonds with local authorities to ensure completion of projects – whatever happened to that? has the practise stopped? are the bond amounts too small to see the projects through to completion? Or what?  What is the point of having a planning system at all if situations like this are allowed to happen? What is the actual point of hiring architects and engineers, what is the point of wasting time at meetings with mid ranking bureaucrats, generating masses of paperwork, getting into scrapes with An Bord Pleanala, and so forth if, in the end, this is all it amounts to?

What’s the deal with Twitter? For a start, how to you upload those groovy personalised graphics everybody else has? I signed up a couple of weeks ago and waited for it to turn me into an overnight twitterrstar but, so far, nothing (except that I very quickly picked up a ‘follower’ (not very reassuringly, he’s pictured aiming what appears to be a Magnum Forty Four with a silencer at some unseen victim - http://twitter.com/PuckaneSean (its okay, Sean, I know you're not really a psychotic cyber stalker. Am I not right?))) 

And are you up to speed with the most deliciously satisfying obsession that the German meedja have developed with Ireland, our economy, our national character, etc?  Newspapers, TV programmes, magazines, radio chat shows, and so on – all of them withering in their assessment of how we're dealing with our economic situation. This is from their paper of record, Die Zeit:

The Germans think it, so I'm probably not mad.

And by the way, if the trillion dollars that Barack Obama is spending on clearing up the sub prime mortgage situation increases liquidity, does that mean the Irish banks will recover as well? I'm very much hoping they do. We'll all know what it means if they don't.

***

Just heard that my old pal in County Monaghan, Cllr. Vincent Martin, has the Minister for the Environment’s endorsement in forcing the Local Authority to get independent professional advice before purchasing land. Ironic really: the planning policies implemented by the Department of the Environment cause such price instability that the same Department needs professional advice to assist it in dealing with the mess it made, if you’re still with me.

Maire Hoctor has been in correspondence with the Nenagh Guardian complaining about the treatment she received at the Nenagh Hospital rally a few weeks back when she was ordered to stop talking by an irate member of the public and was forced to sit down when the same member of the public received general support from the rest of the crowd.

Anyway, in her missives to the paper Maire alleged that the citizen who so disrespected her on the fateful day was a member of Sinn Féin. She’s wrong. I’m not. 

And thank you for uncovering the identity of KingKane: the genius who had the wherewithal to record Deputy Hoctor’s recent appearance on Prime Time when out takes of the Deputy failing to read from her own notes were broadcast by accident. He’s Dan Sullivan and he has an excellent blog at http://dansullivan.blogspot.com . Good luck to him in his campaign for a Seanad seat in the next election (if there’s still a Seanad).

Which reminds me. My own campaign for a Council seat in the next local elections has hit a snag. Around Christmas, It was odds on that the Fine Gael party would run me in East Clare. They (said they) needed three candidates to run in an area where they’re likely to win two seats. The party has one extremely strong candidate in Joe Cooney who’s immensely popular, hardworking and a shoo in to retain his seat. But for a while there weren’t any obvious heads ready to fill the ticket: the word going around was that Cllr. Mashem McInerny wasn’t going to run again and there wasn’t even a whisper about who’d run at number three.

The way it turned out, Mashem decided to run after all and then a chap from Whitegate, Pat Burke, put his name forward and snagged some official endorsements from local branches (which I didn’t have ) and which meant that, were I to be included on the ticket, someone would have to make way for me. That wasn’t about to happen.

So I’m not running or Fine Gael. And, even though winning a seat in this area is a distinct possibility, it’s a bit late to be thinking about putting myself forward as an independent. Without an organisation behind me, it would be very hard to gain any real traction. So... we'll see.

***

I’m checking out an excellent situation which I’ll be posting about soon regarding the smallest construction project in the history of the State and how it was handled by An Bord Pleanala. You’re all going to love it. And I’ve been following up on one of the new ways in which the planning system has been revealed to be a disaster: unfinished, rat infested housing estates which Councils are refusing to do anything about.

And, if you haven't already, check out the comments left by Mossie and Eamonn on the March 4th post.