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19th February 2013 • Volume 20, Issue 06 • Leader House, North Street, Swords, Co. Dublin. • Tel: 8•400•200 • info@northcountyleader.ie
Waste Of Unnecessary Funds Slammed Local councillor, Darragh Butler (FF), has hit out at the decision to increase the number of local councillors from 24 to 40 next year, which he claims will cost the taxpayer an unnecessary financial burden. In this move, which is part of the Department of the Environment’s ‘Putting People First’ initiative, the County Council will now have an additional 16 seats in County Hall and Butler told the County Leader that there is absolutely no need for this. “I’m extremely unhappy with this deci-
By Jennifer McShane sion. Aside from the impracticality of the issue, it will also cost a gigantic amount of money to get this project completed, and this money needs to be spent on improving our area and services, not wasted on this.” He put forward the question to the local authority, asking about projected costs for the additional seats and, while they said there were no set figures in place yet, each additional seat
is expected to cost a staggering €15,000 to €20,000 per additional seat. This could amount to a staggering €320,000 spent on this alone. On top of that, each extra councillor will be paid approximately €17,000 per year for their duties. “This is a total waste of Cllr. Darragh Butler money,” he continued. “What people want and need is to see that extra money being spent on services that really need improving: extra doctors, community care services, more special needs assistants and the like, not all this spent on throwing 16 extra councillors into the the mix. We just don’t need them, and it’s wasting a fortune.” “I appreciate the fact that councillor duties can be time consuming and they have busy jobs, but in no way do I think this warrants an extra eight or nine councillors in the Swords area, we’ll be tripping over each other. And while I do welcome some aspects of the bill (the number of councillors overall in Dublin will be reduced), but from a local aspect, this doesn’t work in our favour. The
Father And Son Commute Against Cancer Two Swords men are set to undertake a unique fundraising initiative in the fight against cancer for the month of March. Peter Trevaskis and his son, David, who live in River Valley have decided to cycle to work every day for the month of March. At first glance that may seem pretty normal, until you discover that Peter works in Cherrywood, just outside Bray. His son, David works in the city centre and has a shorter journey to cycle. However, to even things up, David has decided to cycle to work on a BMX bike. In fact during training, David had a fall and injured himself off the BMX, such is the difficulty adapting to a child’s bike. The idea to raise funds for cancer came from
SWORDS TRAVEL
By Patrick Finnegan Peter, whose sister, Ruth was diagnosed with the disease. Ruth, who lived in Arklow, was very excited about this initiative, but she sadly passed away last week. Notwithstanding this personal tragedy, Peter and David have decided to push ahead and will donate all fundraising to the Arklow Cancer Support, who took great care of Ruth. Both men are making an appeal to residents to support some of the many cancer charities in the area, including the Marie Keating Foundation, the Shave n’ Dye initiative or to donate blood. They are also hoping to make this an annual event that will be bigger all the time and are hoping for sponsors to come
on board. “We already have a few shops in the locality that have shown an interest in supporting us,” said Peter. Peter hopes to have a few friends to accompany him to work on their bikes and the plan is to have an event at the end of March, with a party and bands to recognise the efforts of the lads. The initiative is called Extreme Bike 2 Work - Commute Against Cancer and is well worth supporting their brave efforts.
Pictured getting ready for a training spin ahead of their Extreme Bike 2 Work initiative for cancer are Swords residents, father and son, Peter and David Trevaskis. The difficulty which will be experienced by David can be seen from the size of his BMX, which he will cycle to his work in the city every work day in March.
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jump from 24 to 40 councillors in the Fingal Council area has to be questioned.” Butler says that naturally, some parties would be in favour of the move for their own benefits. “Our party was also alluding to the fact that this solution keeps the Labour Party in a very cosy position, as without this, at least half of them would have been looking at losing their seats, so of course they would welcome the news. A colleague of mine jokingly called the bill ‘Putting Labour First,’ instead of ‘Putting People First!’ Butler says as well as the issue of the huge amount of money that will be spent on this, there is a practical side to consider as well. “The practicalities of getting through a meeting with 40 councillors needs to be looked at as well. As it is, our monthly meetings are very long, so if there are 40 councillors wanting to speak about every issue, we could be there for hours. The meetings are long enough as it is with 24. To me its unworkable.” He says what it all comes down to should be the people. “I think what locals really want is extra and improved community facilities, so we should be putting them first and putting our efforts and finances into this. I can think of groups such as Swords Boxing Club and Swords Tennis club who would really need and benefit from extra funding.” “At the end of the day, the bill is called ‘Putting People First,’ so that’s what we should be doing,” Butler concluded.