Thurles Information

Leo Varadkar to visit Tipperary North

With Election Day looming closer than ever our local Fine Gael TD Noel Coonan has announced that he is holding his final rally in the Muintir na Tire Hall, Roscrea, this Friday night at 9.00pm.

Deputy Leo Varadkar will be the guest speaker on the night and all are welcome to come along for one last drive, to demonstrate their support and hear how Fine Gael intend to revitalise the constituency of North Tipperary and South Offaly, which have been decimated under the outgoing government and its supporters.

Speaking to Thurles Information this morning, Deputy Noel Coonan stated:

“Fine Gael will most likely be in Government, following the upcoming election and I cannot stress enough, how important it is that a constituency as large as ours retains its Fine Gael Deputy to represent it in Dáil Eireann. It is absolutely crucial that we keep our Fine Gael seat and that is why people are encouraged to vote “No. 1 Coonan, Noel.”
Deputy Leo Varadkar has kindly agreed to travel from Dublin to address the meeting and reiterate Fine Gael’s numerous comprehensive and costed policy plans that will help pull us out of our economic doldrums.
I’m looking forward to an enthusiastic attendance on Friday night in Roscrea similar to the hugely impressive crowds that attended our previous campaign meetings and selection convention in Thurles. I have been greatly encouraged by the level of support shown to date for Fine Gael in North Tipperary and South Offaly and I’ve no doubt that the public have seen the light and realise that this Government, supported by Independents, are now dead in the water.”

Deputy Coonan also warmly welcomed the good news that construction is to start this September on Borrisokane’s Day Care Centre. The local Fine Gael TD has been relentlessly pressing the Minister for Health for this project, which is to commence as a matter of priority and is “thankful that the persistence has finally paid off.”

The Deputy stated: “Mr. Brian Gilroy, Director of Estates in the HSE informed me that the project will go to tender by end of July 2011 with construction to start in September 2011 and an anticipated completion date before end of June 2012.
The procurement process for the design team has been completed and contract documents have been issued to the design team for formal appointment.  The first project meeting with the design team took place at the end of January and the expectation is that a planning permission application will be lodged before the end of March 2011. Following that, the project will go to tender by end of July 2011.
I wish to again acknowledge the vital role played by the Borrisokane action committee in continuously pushing for the progression of this important facility and for displaying patience during the many dark days after the false dawn. As the only local Opposition TD, I was happy to work with the committee to keep the project alive.”

Deputy Coonan concluded by saying: “This day care centre will thankfully take pressure off the Hospital of the Assumption, Thurles and the Dean Maxwell Home, Roscrea, where there is a large demand for residency.”

If election posters win votes, then I can predict accurately the outcome of the upcoming general election, yes the next Taoiseach will be the 35-year-old Labour party’s bright hope Allan Kelly.

On the eve prior to the Dail being ‘dissolved,’ (or considering our recent severe weather, thawed out might be a better description) Pedestrian crossings, Roundabouts, ESB and Telephone poles, Chapels and Churches were decorated with at least two images of the well airbrushed phizog of our Mr Allan Kelly MEP.

However, I noticed this morning that ‘Mother Nature’ had taken revenge over the last few days and with the help of the up-and-coming unemployed vandals in our town, both have contrived to take a particular dislike to images of our Mr Kelly,  blowing him out of the picture you could say. It is amusing how health and safety and litter laws go out the window, for all political party’s, when the old election poster has to be erected.

So why do we need posters I often ask myself, and I have come up with the conclusion that it is to refresh our memories in identifying those whom we may support, because we haven’t seen them for the past 3 years and, God willing, won’t see them again for 5 years more.

On the topic of the erection of posters Mr Kelly has topped the pole, well he has topped the poll before. No I am not referring to European Elections, he topped a Dail league table back in 2008, raking in €35,310 or 23pc of all political donations that year, according to the State Ethics watchdog, who knows about these things.

His many donors included his New York-based PR guru brother, Declan Kelly, as well as the PR firm he originally set up, Financial Dynamics. The then senator Kelly, if we believe the press reports, also returned €5,000 to donors, as their amounts exceeded legal limits. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern merely declared €19,000 that same year. The then Labour spokesperson on finance, Mr Kelly, said that he did not know how many billboard adverts he had taken out, how much the billboards cost and said he did not know how much he had spent on his campaign to date, but said that all of his spending was in line with “normal business and election and spending practices“. His memory is worse than poor Bertie, memory loss is a virus endemic to Dail appointees.

Note all our TDs, Senators and MEPs are not allowed to accept foreign or anonymous donations worth over €127, and they cannot accept donations with a total value over €2,540 from the same person in the same year and just why they have this stupid regulation, I will never fully understand.

The Ireland South MEP was only elected to serve in Brussels in June 2009 and had vowed to serve a full term, but in a widely expected U-turn, it was announced by his Labour leader Eamon Gilmore that Mr Kelly would be seeking a general election nomination and as expected the MEP went unchallenged for the party’s nomination in Tipperary North.

At the time of the European Election, Mr Kelly said it was his “firm intention to serve the full five years as an MEP if elected“. He made that pledge after Fine Gael accused him of using the European Parliament as a “PR exercise” to raise his profile for a future Dail campaign. Mr Kelly however insists his decision to run in the General Election has not been an easy one and the announcement of this election has placed great strain on him to change his mind, and it shows in the facial lines evident on his election posters.

Hundreds of constituents, he says, have been asking him if he planned on running in the imminent election and he denied his U-turn on serving out a full term in Brussels will be anyway damaging to his future prospects. “I don’t think there’s any chance of that. I will be speaking directly to people in Tipperary North in the next couple of days. . . I’m very closely knitted into North Tipperary. I think I’ve a very good relationship with them,” he states.

Still I believe Mr Kelly may have ‘dropped a stitch’ and his best chance of election is possibly by using posters, certainly his use of Twitter in the past will not work to his benefit.  His ‘Tweet,’ (check here,) did not demonstrate to me any great  respect for the ‘working class’ and the ‘less well off in our society’, whom the Labour Party claim to defend and whom Mr Kelly wishes to now publicly represent.

Our readers may not know this but the Labour Party was founded in 1912 in Clonmel, County Tipperary, by James Connolly, James Larkin and William O’Brien. It is the oldest political party in Ireland and the only one which pre-dates independence. It’s founders believed that for ordinary ‘Joe Soaps’ to shape society, they needed a political party that was committed to serving their needs in creating a fair society. James Connolly said “The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave,” forgive me, but where would he have placed the ‘Pikey’ in that great order of things.

I am at pains to point out of course that Mr Kelly did issue an apology stating his “account had been compromised.” How I do not know, as he appears not to Tweet any more, but maybe he has no access to ‘Broadband’. Certainly his constituents over around Timoney, Roscrea, have no proper access to a basic reliable telephone system.