We had a bad day at the office on June 5th.

Neither Johnny nor I were in the running for a seat, and our vote in both electoral areas was down from the General Election in 2007.

We knew it was going to be a difficult election, but we did a lot of canvassing, and spent quite a bit of money on posters and advertising, so we were hoping to do a bit bit better than we did.

In the end of the day, however, we weren’t on a level playing field. I can’t remember an election in which the opposition had such wind in their sales, and given the public mood, it would have been a miracle had we made a breakthough.

We won’t give up, however. All the same issues and challenges that existed on June 4th remain today. The breakthrough we seek may take years to come, or may never come, but if it does, we have to be ready.

Watch this space.

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No matter how many seats we win our lose on Friday, it was worth going into Government for this alone.

Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill, 2009

Published in full today, this Bill will put an end to developer led planning in Ireland. In arriving at this point, we’ve done enormous damage to our cities, towns and countryside, but at least we can stand up and say that the Green Party stopped the rot.

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A reverse vending machine at Sligo IT, one way to solve plastic bottle litter

I’ve been asked this a few times now so here’s my explanation.

Every year, Failte Ireland conducts a visitor satisfaction survey amongst international tourists who visit Ireland. One of the questions they ask is what part of your trip were you least satisfied by. Every year, approx. 20% of respondents say that they were dissatisfied about the amount of litter on our roads and streets.

That means that 1 in every 5 tourists who comes here goes home and tells their friends and neighbours that we have a litter problem.

That accounts for a lot of jobs in our tourism sector.

Secondly, Local Authorities all over the country spend millions of euro every year on street sweeping and litter picking. All of this money comes from either central Government or commercial rates, all of which has to be paid for by taxpayers and local businesses.

At a time when we need to be driving our costs down as much as possible, in order that we can preserve jobs, the cost of cleaning up litter is not one we should be required to deal with.

Litter most definitely costs jobs.

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Minister for Energy, Communications and Natural Resources, Eamon Ryan, visited Carrick on Thursday last.

The Minister met with members of the local Chamber of Commerce, and the Tidy Towns Group, who have appealed to all to be litter aware during the month of June, during which judging takes place.

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Beyond where its use is necessary (eg when there are problems with mains supply) I really wish we could get over our love affair with bottled water.

Millions of gallons of this stuff are being driven all over Europe every day, adding to carbon emissions, transport congestion, waste, litter and unnecessary energy consumption. The PET plastic that is used to make the bottles also takes up enormous capacity in our recycling capacity, when it actually finds its way into our recycling system.

This is really bizarre to me. In most cases, the water is these bottles in the same water that comes out of our taps, except that its not as fresh as the water in out taps, because it generally sits in a vat or a bottle for weeks on end before it is consumed.

We really try to avoid using bottled water in our house. We have a UV filter on our well supply and we know our water is safe. We keep a few bottles of tap water in the fridge at all times and take these with us when we go out somewhere.

Obviously, not everyone is this lucky, but a lot of us are, and cutting down on our use of bottled water is an excellent way to contribute to a more sustainable future.

Click here for an interesting article on the subject.

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There seems to be a view about, promoted largely by members of Sinn Fein and Fine Gael, that the Mobile Broadband service that will be provided to Co. Leitrim under the National Broadband Scheme will not adequately serve the county’s broadband needs.

This might have been true 5 years ago, but these days, the development of mobile broadband is advancing far more rapidly than wired broadband, to the extent that mobile broadband will most likely the normal mode of delivery for residential customers within 5-10 years.

This makes sense, particularly in Ireland, where are network of telecommunications cabling is very old and where we have abundant space in our radio spectrum (because we don’t reserve big chunks of it for the military).

The cost of upgrading our network, particularly in rural areas where settlement is so dispersed, would be enormous, and by the time we completed it, mobile broadband will probably have outstripped wired broadband in terms of the speed it can deliver into a residential home.

Another advantage of mobile broadband is that it is portable: you can take it with you when you leave you home, or when you leave the country.

From that point of view, it would be ludicrous for the State to invest hundreds of millions of euro in upgrading the eircom network, particularly in rural areas, where it is over 30 years old.

Instead, we will extend the mobile reach in Leitrim through more masts and better signal management, so that Leitrim residents can avail of improvements in mobile broadband as they come on stream.

This is the same model of rural broadband delivery that is being used in the UK, Australia and the US.

To learn more about the National Broadband Scheme, go to http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/nbs

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