Residents' Protest outside City Hall tomorrow (Mon) on new Sports & Community Centre

Many thanks to all those residents and supporters that took part in the packed meeting of local residents called to discuss the Ballinfoile-Castlegar Sports and Community Neighbourhood Centre on November 30th in the Menlo Park and who attended the action committee gathering on Monday last. The attendance at both events was a great morale booster to all campaigners!

Packed residents' meeting in Menlo Park Hotel

The next step in our campaign is to ensure that we have a good turnout on our peaceful protest that will take place at 2.30pm (to 4pm) tomorrow (Monday December 14th) outside City Hall in advance of a crucial meeting of Galway City Council when the management structure of the centre will be voted upon.
It is a now-or-never scenario for us on this key facility. So please if you are available make every effort to attend and encourage others (family, friends and neighbours) to take part. Even if you are not from our area, we would appreciate your support as this issue is about ensuring that every citizen of Ireland has a basic right to community and recreational facilities which is increasingly threatened due to the draconian cutbacks to public services as a result of the last government’s decision to force taxpayers to pay for the gambling debts of a rich well connected elite of bankers and property speculators.

Protestors from Ballinfoile, Tirellan, Sandyvale, Castlelawn district protesting outside City Hall in 1989

Demands
We as concerned residents are demanding that councilors ensure that the new state-of-the-arts sports and community complex that we fought for since 1987 to obtain serves the needs of and is controlled by the local community.
After the welcome news last September that the government had agreed to allow Galway City Council to break the local government jobs embargo in order to hire staff for the centre, it was disheartening to hear at last month's council meeting, called to decide the city budget for 2016, that only 50% (€300,000) of the finance needed to operate the centre (& that of Knocknacarra) as a fully fledged public enterprise would come from local authority sources. For this meant, according to Brendan McGrath council CEO, that they would have to bring in an outside contractor to form a public-private partnership to run the centre. For it is our fear that this arrangement could mean that privatization could occur sooner or later to the detriment of the local community as profit would take priority over social needs.

Ballinfoile - Castlegar Sports & Community Neighbourhood Centre

So we want to ensure that councillors on Monday keep by the commitments made by Brendan Mc Grath at the November budget meeting that:
a) peak hours would be retained for local groups/individuals
b) Low rental fees would be charged to local groups/individuals
c) People from the locality must be well represented on the oversight/management board.
Furthermore we request that:
d) local community representation makes up at least 50% of the oversight board
e) the new jobs that will accrue in this facility will be given to local people where possible.
f) consideration is given to social enterprise partnership programmes as an alternative to taking in private contractors.
If these just demands are not meet, it will represent a betrayal of decades of struggle by a local community and raises questions over who our political system serve.

Finally, we are asking all residents and supporters to attend the public meeting that will take place at 8pm on Tuesday December 15th in the Menlo Park Hotel to hear what was decided at Monday’s council meeting and what actions need to be undertaken.

The New Land League is Defending the Indefensible.

Michael Davitt must be turning in his grave as we witness the self-proclaimed inheritors of the once proud defenders of the poor Irish tenantry now stand guard at the palatial mansion of a property speculator. Protecting a member of the landlord elite who gambled away monies on properties that bankrupted the country, its citizenry and future generations defies all sense of justice. 
Calling a property with an indoor gym, a sauna, an open-air swimming pool, a tennis court located on probably the top multi millionaire strip in Ireland, with Bono and other luminaries as neighbours, a "bog standard home" is an insult and a betrayal to all those ordinary people who lost their jobs, their homes or were forced to emigrate because of the greed of the native born absentee landlord class. 

Protecting a rich speculator who this year states his home is in Ireland but last year said in an English court his home was in London in order to avoid paying his debtors including the Irish state and Irish taxpayer & who transferred c€160 millions in property to his son before he filed for bankruptcy is immoral.

I also have to say that the issue of the Land League and absentee landlords is, as with many Irish people, personal. Members of my family were killed and imprisoned during the Land Wars of the 19th century as they struggled to defend themselves from eviction and starvation against the armed might of those who had invaded and stolen their clan lands during the previous centuries.

Eliminate Derelict Site Eyesores from Galway City

Burnt-out House at Kirwan Roundabout, Galway city

As a community activist I abhor the way that property speculators have been allowed to destroy the physical and social fabric of neighbourhoods as well as the international image of Galway city. 

It is time that residents groups across the city unite to put pressure on Galway City Council to start the process of prosecuting their owners, many of whom are prominent businesspeople.

There are many derelict sites both in the city centre and in the suburbs that are undermining the physical appearance of our city. In the lead up to the Volvo Ocean race, the process of eliminating  such sites be started upon.
But more importantly than keeping up appearances for the benefit of tourism, it should be recognised that these properties are a cancer eating away at the character and spirit of urban neighbourhoods. One prime example is the large ruined house located at the busy Kirwan Roundabout. Shane Connolly and the other owners of this property  have shown nothing but contempt to the local community since they purchased it a few years ago by allowing a once fine house to fall into ruination becoming in the process a magnet for illegal underage drinking and other forms of anti-social activity that has infuriated residents of nearby estates. It was not surprising to locals that this unoccupied house was set on fire last summer nor that a large garage shed on the lands burnt down a few months ago.  It is a horrible eyesore. Local residents asked the council for this property to be classified as a derelict site as we were very surprised that it had not already had this designation.

Burnt-out House at Kirwan Roundabout, Galway city

It is well overdue for City Hall to start going after the wealthy absentee landlords of such properties, and classify them as derelict sites as they are mandated to do under the Derelict Sites Act 1990. This legislation requires local authorities to impose an annual 3% levy of the market value on all such properties. The considerable monies collected should be welcomed by the council as it could help fund essential public services in these times of budgetary cutbacks. Should the owners fail to pay, the authority is entitled under the Act to serve compulsory purchase orders. Their names should also be published in the media.

In many cases such properties were bought during the Celtic Tiger period by property speculators whose only interest was to maximise their profits by selling on the lands at considerable profits once the sites were increased in value by rezoning, road construction or securing multi-home development. Hence, as is evidenced across the city, once well maintained houses and gardens were deliberately allowed to become dilapidated by unscrupulous owners who were often part of the banking, political and developers’ old-boys network that bankrupt the country and ruined the lives and dreams of so many ordinary people.

The city manager and the Director of Planning have been written to requesting that the Kirwan Roundabout site and other properties be placed on a publicly-accessible Register of Derelict Sites that contains full details of owners and land valuations and that the required levies be collected as required within the Derelict Sites Act 1990. The benefits of such a strategy to the citizens of the city cannot be exaggerated both in terms of tourism and in enhancing the spirit of neighbourhoods. I have also asked Galway City Community Forum to bring the issue up at the relevant inter-sectoral Special Policy Committees and to monitor its implementation.  Local councillor Frank Fahy has been very supportive of this stance.