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Anti Service Charges
Public Meeting
Wednesday July 16 8.30pm
WASF Hall, Moeran Road, Walkinstown,
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Cllr Joan Collins: “I abstained from [the council vote on the Lord Mayor] this year as I couldn’t lend support to the joint candidate put forward by the Labour/Fianna Fail pact, I couldn’t vote for the Fine Gael candidate and I couldn’t vote for the Sinn Fein candidate.”
Voting pact for Lord Mayor ‘disgusting’
On June 30th Dublin City Council’s annual meeting took place. This meeting “elects” the city’s Lord Mayor.
In 2004 Labour joined forces with Fine Gael, the Green and the PDs “rainbow Coalition” to divide the Lord
Mayor and deputy Lord Mayor office for the council’s five-year term. There was a fanfare of polilical agreement on issues.
Michael Connaughton (Labour) was voted Lord Mayor by the cabal of Fine Gael, Labour Party, Green Party and the PDs. Catherine Byrne (Fine Gael) was voted Lod Mayor the following year under the same arrangement.
The trend was bucked briefly when Vincent Jackson was voted Lord Mayor. This time the vote between the Labour candidate and Vincent Jackson was equal and Vincent’s name was pulled out of a hat.
The following year Paddy Burke was voted in (Labour got the job under a new pact with Fianna Fail which guaranteed that this year they would get the Lord Mayor position).
I find this type of wheeling and dealing disgusting. There is no principled politics and the job of Lord Mayor becomes a tool for the city manager (who would also be included in the loop of discussions before the annual meeting.
I abstained from the voting this year as I could not lend support to the joint candidate put forward by the
Labour/Fianna fail pact, I could not vote for the Fine Gael candidate and I could not vote for the Sinn Fein candidate.
I abstained from the Sinn Fein vote because at last year’s Estimates meeting, two Sinn Fein councillors voted for the estimates (which include the bin tax). This flew in the face of the people’s campaign in the city to resist the imposition of the double taxation of our waste collection and the 23 people who were sent to jail for resisting the non collection of our waste in 2003.
The review of local government raises the issue of a directly elected Lord Mayor, which I support, handing back powers to city councillors but also includes proposals to introduce stealth taxes on the people of the city. The city manager has already sent in a submission with the support of the Finance SPC (made up of councillors to seek the power to introduce water tax, property taxes, recycling taxes, motor taxes etc).
I oppose this form of stealth tax and the Anti Bin-Tax Campaign has held a series of meetings to inform people in the Crumlin/Kimmage ward of Government and councils’ s intention to impose these stealth taxes on the people.
At these meetings the Anti Bin-Tax campaign has agreed to rename the campiagn the Anti Service Tax Campaign. I would encourage local campaigns to do the same and make this issue a major item for the Local Council elections in 2009.
