You know.

Maybe we’ve been wrong all this time about Frances.

Oh.

Update:

Ah.

Sunday Update:

This morning, a spokesperson for Deputy Fitzgerald insisted her team did return the dog to Senator McDowell.

She said a member of the public left the dog with them after asking them if they had a phone to call the owner.

She said Deputy Fitzgerald was as surprised as anyone when that owner turned out to be Senator McDowell – adding that the former Tánaiste is just happy that the dog is safe and well at home.

Frances Fitzgerald Doubles Down On Tall Tail About Lost Dog In Ranelagh (Newstalk)

Free this weekend?

The ‘This is Dublin Ska Festival’ at Whelan’s, Wexford Street, Dublin 8 on Saturday and Sunday featuring Ska of all skools and, appropriately, a birra Dub.

Nick says: Lip up, fatty

Dublin Ska Festival

Shakeel Jeeroburkan

Shakeel Jeeroburkan is an independent candidate for the Clondalkin Local Electoral Area in the South Dublin County Council Local Elections on May 24.

Shakeel is a former police officer from Mauritius and runs his own business in Clondalkin.

He writes:

If elected, my priorities as a public representative would be as follows:

1. Housing

My overall priority is to end the homelessness pandemic. The root cause of the pandemic is the inexistent construction of social housing. When supply of housing goes down, demand increase, and so is the price. To reduce the demand and ease private rental price, I will push for the construction of more sustainable social housing and affordable housing for first time buyers.

I will look into derelict and vacant properties and work in partnership with other councillors and stakeholders to have those properties made available for rent or be used as social accommodation.

The magic is simply increase supply but by bypassing the vultures. All this will calm the pressure on Private Rental Accommodation, which will also see a reduction of the rental market price and a drastic fall in homelessness.

To compensate to private small-holding landlords, I will fight for a reduction in the Local Property Tax. This measure will also be of great help to young families across the county who are struggling.

Homelessness has reached a record high, and the trend does not indicate anything but an ongoing catastrophe. I will urge the local authority to issue guidelines and provide training to staff about how to respond to the very specific issues families experiencing homelessness face.

A framework to keep children safe and support families out of homelessness must be introduced urgently to prevent children and parents experiencing additional trauma during an extremely difficult time.

I also commit to end youth homelessness through a local youth homelessness strategy linked to the scheme of letting priorities. To achieve this, I will work closely with third parties like Focus Ireland.

Finally, there is the issue of wheelchair accessible housing for people with physical disabilities. To facilitate independent living, I will push for a minimum of 7% of new stock to be fully wheelchair accessible.

Many people with physical disabilities are facing barriers in finding suitable accommodation due to the lack of wheelchair accessible housing, and forward planning in terms of the appropriate design, planning and provision of wheelchair accessible social housing.

2. Environment

I am a poster-free candidate. Unlike others, I have refused to have my mug on every other pole on the streets. I have not put a single poster in the whole electoral area, not just the voluntary poster free zones.

Instead, I will donate to a homeless charity, the equivalent of a local candidate’s average spend on those posters/flyers within 3 months of taking up seat.

I have pledged to work for the people, not the vultures. I want to set an example to other candidates, that single use plastic posters can be prevented. It is an eyesore and is bad for the environment.

If elected, I am going to propose a plastic ban in my constituency, with the cooperation of local businesses. Many countries have banned plastic, so I don’t see a reason why we cannot follow suit as a small community. We need to tackle climate change before it is too late. We need to look after our future generation.

As regards to littering and dumping, I will push for the council to take back control of bin services, and also to provide for more bins in parks and other public spaces.

3. Anti-social behaviour

Using my experience as a detective, I will work closely with community Garda to curb on anti social behaviour, including cruelty to animals, in the Clondalkin electoral area. To bring an end to the problem, there is a real need of trust and team work between the public and An Garda Síochána.

Cooperation is part of the answer, and I will facilitate this by organising public events where community Garda will attend as well as other community stake holders. Another solution would be to work closely with local schools for early identification, prevention and intervention.

4. Integration

Full integration can take a long time and is a two-way traffic. It’s a long winding road that is achievable and is of huge importance in any community. I will work towards organising different types of events to promote integration, which will see more interaction with people of all social background and ethnicity in our community.

Thank you for reading my manifesto and feel free to get in touch should you have any questions. I can be reached by email hello@shakeel.ie or via my Facebook Pageat link below.

Shakeel Jeeroburkan

If you are running as an independent candidate in the forthcoming Local or European Elections and would like to share your manifesto (under 500 words) with Broadsheet readers and potential constituents, send your proposals with headshot to broadsheet@broadsheet.ie

This afternoon.

Killarney, County Kerry.

Jerry O’Sullivan writes;

Rally of the Lakes weekend. Vin Diesel just rocked up…no one’s gonna make him park between the lines…

Meanwhile…

From top: Dublin Housing Action Committee (DHAC) publication entitled ‘Crisis’, 1969; DHAC founding members, from left: Sean Dunne, Mairin deBurca and Eamonn Farrell  in Liberty Hall in Dublin on May Day

The following is a talk given by photojournalist Eamonn Farrell, Director of Rollingnews and former Dublin Housing Action Committee [DHAC] activist, on May Day to launch a photographic exhibition at Liberty Hall focusing on the housing crises in the 20th century and 21st century Dublin.

‘Ironically in today’s newspapers and on the air you could get all the latest stats on the housing crisis. Not pleasant reading. I am not going to bamboozle you with further figures.

But if you will allow me I will try and paint a picture of my experiences as a housing activist in 1960s Ireland

Like many people in the sixties, I moved to England. Not just in search of work. I already had a job as a junior barman. In those days to be licensed to pull pints of the black stuff you had to serve three years as an apprentice and then two as a junior barman.

Ireland then was still in the grip of a conservative Catholic Church. No divorce. No Contraception. Gay sex was illegal. Women had to give up work when they married. Young mothers were being sent to work in laundries and forced to give up their children born outside of marriage. Priests demanded the right to question and interfere in the nature of your activities in the marriage bedroom.

Yes, that was the Ireland in which the tyranny of British occupation was replaced by the tyranny of a church exercising the moral oppression of the population with the compliance of an independent, but supine state.

I had worked in Kirwan House, a pub right beside what was then UCD in Earlsfort Terrace. It was frequented by students who were starting to get the whiff of new philosophies from the European mainland and were reading works not only by Sartre but by Marx and Lenin as well.

Bob Dylan was strumming, Luke Kelly was singing and O’Donoghues pub was only around the corner. For a teenager from Finglas it was heady stuff. But not quite heady enough.

In London I bumped into one of the students I befriended in Dublin and he invited me to come along to meetings of the Irish Workers Group (IWG), headed by Gerry Lawless.

Lawless had ensured himself a place in legal history by being the first person to take a case to the European Court of Human Rights. The IWG would have been described as a Trotskyist group, which meant little to me at the time.

The IWG held meetings every Sunday at Speakers Corner in Hyde Park And on a particular Sunday, I was delegated to speak. Of course I was nervous and nearly vomiting into my tea in the nearby Lyons Cafe, but it was nothing to how sick I was when I discovered the speaker before me was a young curly-haired radical by the name of Eamon McCann!

Now if any of you have heard Eamon speak you will know his mouth cannot keep up with the speed at which his brain is shoveling words onto his whiplash tongue. Needless to say I was a disappointment to myself and my comrades. Always meant to check with Eamon were those curls natural or the result of a perm.

My first task after that miserable performance was to go to a certain hotel where there was an international conference taking place, and at night cut down both the American and Soviet flags.

I duly arrived Stanly knife in hand and shimmied up the pole to cut down the American flag first. As I cut through, which was not easy, as once up the pole, my legs were wrapped around it like a pole dancer, I had only a split second to allow both hands free to cut the rope.

Suddenly blood was squirting from my hand, the flag was still in place, and I dropped to the ground like a fireman on an emergency call.

Continue reading →

Behold: the 1971 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40 – in this instance, completely refurbished, stripped back to bare metal and repainted with a rebuilt 3.9-litre 1F inline-six engine, upgraded undercarriage, performance tyres and bucket seats.

Currently accepting bids.

uncrate

Anastasia Kriégel

The judge in the trial of two teenage boys accused of the murder of 14-year-old Anastasia Kriégel has told the jury that he has made an order restricting publication of evidence given in the trial until its conclusion.

He told the jurors that it was a matter of law and the order stood until any further order.

…He said it was his duty to maintain the integrity of the trial process to ensure a true verdict in accordance with the evidence.

Anyone?

Judge restricts reporting in Kriégel case (RTÉ)

Update:

Oh.

From top: Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Katherine Zappone and Sister Marie Ryan of the Bon Secours; A copy of correspondence between the order and the Department of Children

Via Ken Foxe at Noteworthy.ie:

A copy of correspondence between the order and the Department of Children – obtained by Noteworthy under FOI – confirmed that the Bon Secours Sisters wanted to make a €2.5 million “donation” for the works that needed to be carried out at Tuam.

However, it was explicit that this was voluntary, with country leader Sister Marie Ryan writing: “Our advice is that we do not have any legal liability arising from St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home and we note that at our meeting you [Minister Zappone] agreed and acknowledged same.”

They said their donation would help to “expedite” the investigations the government wanted to do at Tuam.

Sister Ryan wrote: “This payment will be the sole contribution made by the Sisters of Bon Secours Ireland to the government in relation to the site.”

Separately, an account of a meeting between the Bon Secours Sisters and Zappone describes how the order had been “genuinely shocked” by the discovery of remains of the children buried at the site.

“[They] never expected such a finding,” the notes said.

Bon Secours Says It has no ‘legal liability’ to provide funding before mother and baby home commission ends (Noteworthy)

Previously: ‘Created And Operated By The State’

Broadsheet.ie