This year’s party convention takes place in Kilkenny City, May 18-20. The venue is the Set Theatre, Langtons Hotel.
12 Months of FG/Lab Government, 12 Ways Ireland is Less Green
Green Party leader Eamon Ryan says that “For every month this Government has been in office they have found ways to make our country less Green.” He goes on to say that “At a time when Governments across the world are starting to see the economic sense in going green, Labour and Fine Gael are stuck with an outdated view of the world. They seem to relish undoing some of the progressive measures the Green Party progressed in Government, as if to score a political point and prove their old fashioned conservative credentials.”
The list of reversals is long but here is Eamon Ryan’s top twelve from the first year:
1 Climate Change legislation ditched while they watch the flood waters rise.
2 They are digging for GMO potatoes and giving up our food marketing advantage in Europe.
3 Out of town Shopping Centres ……. bring them on says big Phil Hogan.
4 Ocean energy and microgeneration supports dropped, …..sure haven’t we lots of turf left.
5. Changing the tax rules to punish people who are doing the right thing.
6 Directly elected Mayor for Dublin, …… no let the bureaucracy reign.
7 Site Value taxation swapped for the most bungled introduction of a property tax ever.
8 Tax breaks for home insulation axed, along with thousands of retrofit construction jobs.
9 Public transport budget savaged – Government takes easy option to cut capital ahead of current.
10 The review into improper planning abandoned – same old Fine Gael – always rezoning.
11 Moriarty tribunal safely gathering dust with the other papers on the Government’s reform shelf.
12 School children pay the price for across the board cuts rather than work practice change.
And there is more to come – college fees, incinerators, water privitisation, over-fishing, fracking, sale of ESB and BGE, pay to view your Irish teams on TV.
http://greenparty.ie/news.html?n=50
Wexford Organic Centre’s Training Days in Cushinstown
March 31 – Sowing, Planting and Growing Vegetables & Herbs
April 21 Growing Crops in a Poly-Tunnel (incl. erecting tunnel)
May 19 Managing Crops Through the Summer
July 7 Harvesting & Storing Vegetables
Having attended one of these courses last year I can tell you that they are really well run, sociable events. And you WILL learn loads of interesting stuff. The cost of each day is €40 pp (discount for couples). Price includes organic lunch. To book tel 087 2791846 / 051 428375. Email rmee@eircom.net
Teagasc Seeking to go GM – Cllr Forde’s Letter to Irish Times
Sir, Welcoming the call from Shane Morris to “develop evidence based, GM policies in a democratic manner” (Letters, March 13th) I would like to remind him of his own longitudinal analysis of university scientists opinion of GM food and crops. The survey conducted in 1999 and repeated in 2008 compared answers put to a range of Irish academics from the Life Sciences.
It showed that 40% of the respondents were not willing to buy GM food or drink of any kind, the percentage remained unchanged between 1999 and 2008. The study, co-published with Ewen Mullins and Charles Spillane, highlights a significant and continuing concern from within the independent research establishment and follows a similar sustained pattern of rejection of transgenic food and crops throughout Europe in public polls asking similar questions, with one significant difference, the lay person consistently rejects GM, in survey after survey 60% or more have said that they would reject GMO’s in their diet if they had the choice.
Irelands Chief Scientific Officer Patrick Cunningham, in an interview in an in house Teagasc magazine (T Research, Vol 2. No.3) recognised this concern as a major economic opportunity for our island nation and its potential as a GM free food supplier to the world.
I would suggest that the public have spoken in a democratic fashion. Along with a rejection rate of 40% from within the Irish Life Science community, this is surely reason to stop open air, genetic experiments and ask, why have the worlds largest insurers refused to insure farmers and food processors for any liability arising from the GM process. Consequent to this position, governments in GM crop producing countries have had to change legislation putting GM food producers beyond normal liability laws (a similar situation exists in the nuclear industry).
Is Mise, Cllr. Danny Forde
Cllr Danny Forde slams Wexford Borough Council’s decision to go ahead with 20 year old “road to nowhere” plan
Wexford Councillor Danny Forde has come out strongly against Wexford Borough Council’s recent decision to rubber stamp a plan to build a new “road to nowhere”. Commenting on the recent inclusion, in WBC’s 2012 Budget, of the most expensive development ever to be undertaken by the Council, Cllr Forde said it is madness “to commence a €3.4 million road building project in the 4th year of a severe economic downturn, while reducing expenditure in all Council service areas”. He sees as “a regrettable throwback to the excessive spend and credit frenzy of the Celtic Tiger years and a defiant snub to the business and local community”. Referring to the building boom of the last decade and the present world recession, Forde went on to say that “the link road, which was originally designed to open up rezoned agricultural land to service a 500+ unit housing development between Carricklawn on the Newtown Road and Park on the old Ferrycarrig Road, will end up being a financial noose around the neck of the Council, the ratepayer and every person living within the Borough, for years. He went on to say that “the addition of 500 houses to an already, severely depressed market will ensure the continuation of extreme low house prices in Wexford”. He mentions the recent national house price survey which shows house prices in County Wexford having dropped further than any other county since 2007. “Using local rates and rental income, from Council properties, to complete the project is cynical in the extreme.” The Green Party Councillor concluded by saying “every individual, every family and economic entity has discarded previous financial plans and are now, if able, investing what little resources they do have on future-proofing the quality of their businesses, their lives and the lives of those around them. Shifting the spend proposed for this new road project over to sensible, forward thinking, community-led projects in housing, amenity and lifestyle would help Wexford Town in its transition to a sustainable future.”
County Wexford’s Two Green Councillors Making A Difference
Wexford Greens have two dashing and dynamic councillors, Niamh Fitzgibbon in New Ross and Danny Forde in Wexford. Both have been doing their bit to make the county that little bit cleaner and greener. Over the past year, both have served the party well, participating at various levels in party policy-making initiatives; both are proud of their colleagues who served in government; and both are looking forward to the challenge of “greening” politics even more in the years ahead. 
Danny and Niamh practise what they preach – not always a given in politics where there is typically more of a focus on petty point-scoring and time-wasting than on delivering for the county.
Please contact either Danny or Niamh if there are any issues you think they can help with.
Wexford Town Crying Out For Allotments
Do you think Wexford town needs allotments? If yes we want to hear from you. A recent attempt to set up an allotments scheme in a lovely old walled garden adjacent to town foundered just before it was due to open. We say that this issue is too important to put on the back-burner any longer. Let’s get together on this one and get allotments in Wexford. Email wexfordgreens@utvinternet.com
Wexford Tidy Towns
Cllr. Danny Forde Leads by Example
The Blog Farm
The Blog Farm: an international repository of life experiences, personal observations and future aspirations.
Walking with Blackstairs Eco Trails
Mary White on the trail
Relaxed and fortified we then drove the short distance to Borris where this particular walk starts (between uplands and lowlands they have at least twelve regular routes). Our route takes us into the grounds of Borris House, ancestral home of the MacMurrough Kavanaghs. We follow a small tributary of The Barrow through ancient woods full of bugs, berries, birds, fungi and wild flowers. All the while our guides are ready with a few words on interesting specimens encountered. 
We eventually leave the woods behind and find ourselves on the Barrow tow-path in blazing sunshine. No otters in view today but loads of little darting “boatmen” bugs and a few stately swans. This regularly mowed path is a walker’s, or indeed a jogger’s, paradise. Today we have the whole river to ourselves.
We take a short break at an old lock where Mary produces a very welcome minature bottle of the most delicious sloe-gin (note to self: include a bottle of this in my survival kit!). The final kilometre of the walk is over before we know it and everyone sprawls out by the riverside in the hot sun while the drivers are ferried off to collect the cars.
In no time we are back at the house for more tea/coffee and the most amazing spread of pastries – brown soda bread, heart-scones with cream and logan berry jam, shaped sponge cakes, flapjacks. With much happy chat, cups refilled and everyone settled into comfortable armchairs one is reluctant to leave this scene of easy contentment. 
But, eventually, go one must albeit armed with a jar of blackberry jam in one hand, a half dozen eggs in the other and the t-shirt that proves you did the walk! Hats off to Blackstairs Eco Trails for doing what they do and doing it so well. If stars were given for guided walks I couldn’t see them getting less than five every time.
