I took this video between 3.10pm and 3.30pm on Thursday April 26th at Ballyfeeny National School on the Roosky to Scramogue Road.

The road is used as link between the N4 and N5 through east Roscommon and carries large numbers of heavy vehicles, as can be seen from the video.

I’ve put the video on my website to try and publicise the efforts of local parents to get Roscommon County Council to adequately provide for their children’s safety. Engineering works are needed to slow traffic approaching the school, the speed limit of 80km needs to be reduced and regularly enforced, high-visibility hazzard lighting needs to be installed and maintained, and, in the long run, the more parking needs to be provided to allow parents collect their children away from the main road.

I am also highlighting this issue to draw attention to a central feature of the Green Party’s electoral manifesto.

If we are part of the next Government, we have committed to initiate a “Safe Routes to Schools” programme, which will see the installation of secure crossings, secure cycleways and secure walkways on every national school in the country.

We believe that this will improve road safety, promote healthier lifestyles for children and reduce car dependency. I hope you feel the same.

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Today, April 22nd, is Earth Day.

I wanted to mark it on my blog, so I’ve pulled up that old Winston Churchill quote that Al Gore uses in ‘An Incovenient Truth’.

‘The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.’

There are lots of issues that will be discussed in the forthcoming General Election: Health, Education, Crime, Stamp Duty, Agriculture, Jobs, Transport, Planning etc etc

But try to remember just one thing amidst the frenzy:

We have only 1 planet.

www.climatecrisis.net

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Would you like to live in a house built on this site?

The Planning Department in Leitrim County Council, and the elected members of Leitrim County Council, would like you to live in houses built on sites like this.

This site is in Dowra, on the Leitrim/Cavan border. Earlier this year, Leitrim County Council granted planning permission for the construction of 34 houses on this site. On April 4th, An Bord Pleanala (thankfully) overturned that permission.

Of course, this caused consternation in the chamber of Leitrim County Council, where several councillors, seemingly oblivious to recent CSO data that show that 29% of all houses in Co. Leitrim are vacant, railed against An Bord Pleanala and the local environmental group who appealed the original decision of the Council.

These same councillors have repeatedly called for the “regionalisation” of An Bord Pleanala, so that they can exert more influence regarding decisions like this.

Let me state the Green Party’s position very clearly:

No houses on floodplains

No regionalisation of An Bord Pleanala

Planning for communities, not property developers

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This is the view that confronts pedestrians walking from Hyde Terrace in Mohill when they want to go into town.

The footpath has been closed off to allow from the development of a block of apartments, and has been closed for several months. There are no parking restrictions on either side of the street, and mothers with buggies have to cross the street to pass, if they can find a gap in the parked cars on the other side of the street. There are no traffic lights on this street and no pedestrian crossings.

This is what happens when your Local Authority and elected Councillors promote the view that towns are for parking cars and developing property and not places where people live and bring up children.

This development should not have been allowed go ahead until:

Local residents had been consulted about its potential impact

The Developer had provided a secure walkway past the site

The Developer had provided for temporary speed ramps on the road

The Local Authority had imposed (and enforced) parking restrictions on the other side of the road

Given the the footpath was obviously going to be closed for several months, is that really that much to ask?

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Anyone who drives around Leitrim and Roscommon will be well aware of the filth that lines our rural roads.

This is a national embarrassment, but to date, it hasn’t even registered on the Government’s To-Do list.

The reason why are roads are so filthy is because of the Litter Monitoring Survey (LMS).

This was set up under the Litter Pollution Act, 1997 and is the only mechanism used by the Government to monitor our litter levels.

Basically, it involves Council officials taking a walk down the Main Street of their county town every now and then and picking up what ever litter they find. They then take it back to a depot and count up the various types of litter they find. The results are collated nationally and sent to the Department. These results are then used to formulate litter policy.

There are 2 principle problems with this:

1. Analysis only occurs in urban areas

The availability of bins helps alleviate litter pollution, so litter in urban areas is less of problem than on rural roads. However, the LMS bases its national analysis on litter collection in urban areas, and doesn’t distinguish between the problem in urban areas and on rural roads, so clearly, it is going to underestimate the problem on rural roads.

2. It is volume based, rather than impact based

Under the LMS, 1 cigarette butt is equal to 1 plastic bottle, despite the fact than the plastic bottle is 50 times more visible and takes about 10 years to degrade. Furthermore, litter items like chewing gum and cigarette butts are going to feature much more in urban areas, while plastic bottles will not, given that at least some people will put them in bins. However, plastic bottles are the primary cause of litter pollution on rural roads, because of the number of them sold at petrol stations.

It is for this reason that the LMS reports obviously inaccurate statistics like:

75% of all litter in Ireland is either cigarette butts or chewing gum!
1% of litter in Ireland is plastic bottles!

I have been lobbying the Department re. rural litter for 3 years. Last year I made a breakthrough, in that I was invited to consult on a Position Paper that Failte Ireland presented to the the Department on litter pollution.

I pointed out my concerns re. the LMS and noted that the best way to tackle litter is not to penalise people for creating it, but to attach an economic value to litter so that people are less likely to throw it away. This can be facilitated through Reverse Vending, where people can return used plastic and aluminium to Reverse Vending machines where they will receive monetary credit for what they return.

This is now official Failte Ireland policy in relation to litter, and while the Department has agreed to instruct the LMS to include rural roads in their analysis this year, they adamantly refuse to consider Reverse Vending. Their stated reasons are: only 1% of Irish litter is plastic or aluminium, and (wait for it) Irish people are not sophisticated enough to use deposit refund systems!

I actually have a letter from the Minister for State for the Environment, Batt O’Keefe which says this!

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