August is a wicked month

So wrote Edna O’Brien. A truism that David Norris may well soon discover. While the controversy about him gained him popular support, the resignation of key team members may well prove fatal to his campaign. I’ve blogged before that I feel he has the right to stand for president but it would be astounding given the internal disarray in his team if he can now attract the additional support that he needs to cross the line at the end of the race. His own team members who’ve stood by him in the past are now tweeting their resignations and distancing themselves from his campaign.
Polls have shown that Michael D Higgins is more transfer friendly than any other candidate. The shredding of closet Fianna Fail Dragon Sean Gallagher on this week’s Pat Kenny radio show reveal deep dislike for his failure to address his past membership of the FF National Executive and his continuous obfuscation on why he left Fianna Fail amid suspicions that he never left at all. This in time may prove as corrosive to his campaign as Norris’s failure to clarify his past. Gallagher will act as a sweeper for disillusioned FF voters giving them a reason to vote and will transfer well to the official FF candidate.
David Norris may well try to continue his campaign but it’s unlikely that he’ll get 4 county councils to nominate him now and he still needs 5 extra Oireachtas members to help him get his name on the ballot paper in October. About 10 years ago then PD minister Bobby Molloy saw his political career end after it was revealed that he’d made representations to have a man convicted of sexual assault get out early. According to what I’ve heard it is alleged that David Norris used Oireachtas stationary to make a clemency plea to an Israeli judge in respect of a man convicted of the sexual assault of a young boy. There are clear similarities between the 2 cases in my mind. Will he get his name on the ballot paper now? If he succeeds it’s unlikely he will win now. Just as the 1990 Presidential election degenerated into a FF/FG fight about the Lenihan affair and whether Jim Duffy was right to release his tapes, this election may well become about David Norris and not about the office of the presidency.
If David Norris cannot command the support of his election team, how can he command the support of the entire people if he actually won? Where ever President Norris would go the international media would dwell on this controversy. Would that not get in the way of his hope that he would represent another positive image of Ireland? How would press fixation on this matter help improve our international image? ULA and Sinn Fein attempted to get Bobby Ballagh to run however he turned down their advances. It seems that Fianna Fail may well use the presidential election as a way to divert attention from the forthcoming Mahon Report into the man who at one time wanted to be their candidate Bertie Ahern. Brian Crowley for some strange reason feels he has what it takes for this job although he will be an also ran.
Michael D Higgins is well placed to attract support when more people focus on the nominated candidates. I amazed at his energy in covering the country from Donegal last night to Waterford tomorrow but not by his enthusiasm or vigour. He has an outstanding record on issues such as human rights and international development. In time the Norris controversy will be in the past and Higgins will go on to be an outstanding President. The people rarely get elections wrong. That why there has never been an election in the month of August, it is a wicked month!

On our knees

I agree with Aodhán Ó Riórdaín Labour TD for Dublin North Central when he says it’s time to end the prayer at the commencement of each day in the Dáil. It’s only around since the 1930’s and suggests to me subservience of the business to Christianity. That is not how a republic should do its business. No offence intended to anyone who believes in Christianity, I’m one myself who goes to church regularly. It is in the interest of each church that there is a separation of church and state. The Catholic Church will be the biggest beneficiary of any separation.

Churches do not need the state to comply with their values for a church to develop. The latest census shows that the evangelical religions are the ones showing the largest increase in membership within the state. When I went to school, some teachers would start class with prayers and others wouldn’t. I’ve never started a class with a prayer preferring a role call. Maybe a roll call should be held at the start of each day’s business in the Daíl?
I was hugely surprised to hear that some local authorities start their monthly meetings with a prayer too. Glory be seems the prayer of choice in Castlebar. I’ve never said a prayer in Wexford Borough Council and never would simply because it is not what I’m elected for. We start each monthly meeting with a vote of sympathy to anyone in the community who has an association with the community who has died since the last meeting. The we stand I silence, some members join their hands in prayer, others like me stand in silence and put their hands by their sides. Curiously the minute always ends with one particular member blessing himself and sitting down! Each respects the deceased in their own way, in the absence of any death the meeting proceeds as per the agenda with no reflection. I’ve always assumed that other local authorities behaved the same.

I don’t see any problem with that, I’ve asked in the past that the minutes silence remember people that I’ve known who’ve died and I’ve included the victims of the famine when there used to be a National Famine Commemoration Week. Sinn Fein has used this to remember dead hunger strikers. There’s more important things to be discussing than prayers but in the week that the Cloyne Report effectively undermined the Catholic Churches hopes at credibility in the area of child protection it may well be best now to encourage the Catholic Church as the main Christian church to go its own way. Ending public prayer to a Christian concept of God may well be a symbol that we’re all moving off our knees.

Mick's kettle calling the pot pink

Its only months since the General Election. Few new TDs have made an impact like Mick Wallace. Mick regards himself as a national politician who said that issues such as hospitals are not for him. Mick’s flamboyant straight talking style has now caught him out. Sitting along one TD who’s a hedge fund manager and another who cuts turf, they cut straight to the point when discussing a FG TD’s attire during a Dail vote.

I’ve no problem with his clothing and whatever he want’s to wear. But I draw the line at his double standards. Today’s papers are full of the group sexism the three men engaged in. He’s right when he says today that he’s bang out of order. Another issue he’s bang out of order on his concern for the future of JLC’s and the Sunday premium.
Last week in the Dail he said “I employ 52 people in the restaurant industry and can assure the House that JLC rates are not my problem. I have other problems in that the position has been very difficult for restaurants in the past couple of years”.
Mick went on “An employer cannot complain about Sundays. A Deputy on the other side of the House claimed that only Friday, Saturday and Sunday are busy days in this country. That is not true. I can tell her that Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday are more lucrative days than Sunday in Dublin and Wexford.”

My eye is drawn to these remarks as its only about a year since a local paper in Wexford reported he was instructed to make settlements to his restaurant workers for not paying Sunday premiums under the exact same JLC agreements that he says he now has no problem with! While Mick Wallace may not have a problem now with the JLC rates, a year ago he was up to his neck in it and it ended up at an employment appeals tribunal after a worker who insisted on being paid these was sacked!

It’s not so much a matter of the clothes he wears but the reality that on this one issue of protecting low paid workers, Emperor Mick Wallace hasn’t a stitch on him! His election posters said that he stood for new politics. I’m not so sure anymore about that. There’s the element of do as I say but not as I do on this one.

If Mick had also paid his sub contractors there is the chance that there’d still be enough revenue to support the SNA’s that work in my classroom? In the past I’ve sympathised with Mick Wallace when his companies were placed in receivership. Mick has to understand that sympathy is not a one way street and soon people will run out of time for him. Even those on low pay have their limits.

We’re on the one road

Not in my years has there been so much anticipation. The decision of the proposed route of the new Oilgate to Rosslare N11 was finally announced today to councillors. Originally there were 8 different routes listed as possible. Now it is down to one preferred option. I know that most people will scratch their heads and wonder where will the money and traffic come for this project given the mantra that we are where we are!
The proposed route bypasses Oilgate to the east and rejoins the N11 until Newcastle where it will branch off west of Ferrycarrig Bridge before rejoining the alignment a the Barntown Roundabout. There is a new bridge proposed over the Slaney near the Irish National Heritage Park. Next it continues to Drinagh along the present bypass and curves away before the Drinagh roundabout to follow the course of the already agreed routé of the Wexford Rosslare road provided for about 10 years ago. In comparison to what could have been its minimal in its delineation,

Lets deal with that one about money. The criticism of the M50 roundabouts at Red Cow intersection was that it was designed and built when usege was low and that the time to do the spade work on any infrastructural expansion in a better economic environment in the future is now. The second point that makes it sound more realistic is that the project can be built bit by bit as there are several intersections with the existing national primary roads where the routes can re-join.
My initial fear was that the preferred route would take the road away from Wexford town in the direction of the N25 with the consequent bypassing of the town and the likely bypassing of New Ross, I reckoned Dungarvan would be the first town that the tourist would meet on the way to Kerry. That fear has come to nought. I’d hate to think of Wexford as being one more sign post on the way to somewhere else. Now I’m reassured.
A word of the actual preferred route. The maps provide for a 300M strip wide within which just 100M width of land will be ultimately used. If you look at the map and see your house in the line of the road it doesn’t necessarily meant that the road will go through your house. Indeed it will probably give the planers the leeway to avoid knocking any house and incurring extra cost. I know that when people look at the Whitford House and Clonard Village will see the land in the 300M zone however there is no certainty that there will be an intersection here, My view is that there will be just 2 intersections, one at Drinagh and another at Barntown with a linking distributor road collecting local traffic to these junctions.

It will take many years before the design and planning permission stages are over. There will be an oral hearing and the matter will go to An Bord Pleanála direct as it is critical infrastructure. It could be 20 years before it is built and given that its 10 years since the preferred route of the Enniscorthy bypass was agreed and still land hasn’t been purchased then it’s not a case of holding ones breath. Not so much a giant step today but a baby step but a step it was!
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Being part of the problem

I’ve just got an email in relation to a protest next week about the reduction in SNA posts. It’s an issue I put a motion to Wexford Borough Council last October asking that SNA’s be retained. Despite the motion the 2011 budget cut the funding and when Ruairi Quinn became Education Minister he accepted the FF Green plans. When schools closed for Summer some SNA’s were let go. A circular letter from the Department said that schools would get 90% of their SNA allocation before the Summer and the 10% balance would be re-assessed in September. In the intervening period there exists the uncertainty for an SNA as to whether they will ever get a job again doing what they love. On the other hand there is the cap of 10,575 full time equivalent posts, a reduction of 200 posts on 2010.

Why is it so that so many parents are exercised? Not so much that all the parents believe that they will lose a SNA completely, they clearly won’t. More because we have a record in the country of not providing for children with learning difficulties. More because many parents have learnt that the only way to get something is to fight for it. There is a fear there among parents. The reality of that fear bonds these parents together and ironically for the Department of Education makes them a greater lobby than if the department had funded the SNA and learning intervention historically. The National School system was founded on a premise in 1832 of “If it can’t be efficient make it cheap, and if it can’t be cheap make it efficient”. Any minister in the department needs Dr Who’s tardis to understand this department’s century old policy. It was the original social department of the state, predating social welfare, health and outlasting Lands and the Gaeltacht. Inspectors for the department visited children in the care of religious orders at residential homes and some were concerned at what they knew but the department turned a blind eye. I always suspect being a member of the Knights of Columbanus was central to getting on in some government departments like Education.

It seems to me that Wexford is worse affected by the reduction in SNA hours comparatively more than anywhere else. Why? The matter was raised at a VEC meeting where we were given the Departmental press release that blamed the increase on numbers qualifying for SNA’s on pressure by parents on professionals to produce reports that would result in the child getting an SNA. Professionals buckling at the prospect of parent power? That’s a new one on me, one that I find hard to swallow as it conflicts with what parents in Wexford told me when I visited a school here last year. Parents were concerned that there child was been given a 10 minute assessment in a classroom situation after which a decision was made on the application for an SNA. Questions were asked about the consistency on a national level of decisions on similar applications and the inconsistency of qualifications of those deciding on who got an SNA. Rather than parental pressure being the cause of the upsurge it strikes me that the pressure was downward from the department on those deciding on applications for SNA’s.

The department has seen it all before and will see it again, The department will survive and endure. That’s the problem. Education come’s pretty far down the department’s list of priorities. Time moves on and the world is a different place. That proves true for everywhere except in Marlboro St. For parents of children relying on SNA’s challenging the economic orthodoxy is one thing but taking on the mandarins at the Department of Education may well be a step into the unknown. In the past they’ve pursued a sex abuse victim of the principal convicted of these offences as she had the temerity to seek compensation from the Department. Cutting striking teachers pay in Christmas week didn’t cost this Department a second thought.

As a department it’s dysfunctional but can’t be abolished, how else would we provide for education? Ruairi Quinn has a job of work to make the department human. I wish him well and I hope that when the remaining SNA hour4s are reviewed in September that the matter that affects Wexford is resolved.