The Dublin City Centre Transport Plan is our Paris moment, and I think we'll very quickly be reminded that we once thought people were more important than cars, and our city (and our lives) were the better for it.
I can't stop thinking about this extraordinary intervention from Mary Robinson on the Late Late last week and how no one seems to have heard what she said, including Ryan Tubridy, who brushed off the words 'our children will have no future' like he had a cameo in
#DontLookUp
.
Watched a dad allow his 3-yr-old to hand feed wild animals in the Phoenix Park today, while a few metres away his two older sons threw carrots at skittish young stags and stamped their feet to make them bolt. You'd really wonder, fundamentally, what the hell is wrong with people?
So I’ve been seeing a lot of people on here conflating cheap clothes and fast fashion over the last few days, and some pretty crazy conjecture about the objectives of the Waste Action Plan that simply aren’t backed up by a reading of the document. THREAD.
"The question has to be asked of the state broadcaster what would the result of this election would be if Saoirse McHugh had got an equal billing with Peter Casey.
"I'll tell you, she'd be an MEP."
Racism isn't entertainment. Stop making it entertainment.
Today I had a 99 prepared by a maniac.
Exhibit A: It had a Kinder Bueno in it instead of a Flake.
Exhibit B: It was hollow in the middle.
The prosecution rests.
I'm sure every election campaign has its highs and lows, but for me nothing will surpass the crushing blow of finding out yesterday - the day before polling - that An Post simply did not deliver the 5,800 leaflet Publicity Post campaign that I paid for three weeks ago.
An all-white panel discuss the aftermath of George Floyd's murder in the US, with a white reporter on the ground in Atlanta, &
@RadioBrendanRTE
calls it 'a Spike Lee movie gone out of control.'
No one considered the importance of including people of colour in that conversation?
We need to go for clean energy, now, like a moonshot. 💫 We need to spend money insulating homes🏠, building cycleways 🚴♀️, rewilding 🌳. If we don’t spend our children’s money now, they will have no future. It’s that bad 🔥. If you didn't hear her last Friday, listen to her now.
I think of this image of Jill Meagher a lot. If I'm out at night, I find myself morbidly wondering how many CCTV cameras I'm passing, and if their images of me might ever take on the same sad poignancy. I know the risk as I take the risk because I have to live my life. We all do.
An appalling way to live and an unthinkable way to die. Can we all agree that a social animal with the emotional intelligence of a dog should not spend its life in a cage barely bigger than its body? This is just so far removed from what most of us think of as a 'farm'.
Scene of the fire which devastated a pedigree pig farm near Kilkeel last night. More than 2000 animals lost, including long established breeding lines.
If you're ever tempted to get involved with any kind of activism and you think 'Well what difference can one person really make?', look at Cormac Ó'Braonáin trending tonight and read what people like the President of Ireland are saying about him. He was 19. You have no excuse.
🔴 “Anybody under 70 in our world today is going to suffer some kind of catastrophe as we go above 1.5 degrees up to two degrees of warming.”
🔴 “Anybody under 30 will live through, if they are able to survive, a catastrophic world."
This is utterly compelling for me. 🇺🇦🌎 We have two crises, intrinsically linked, and a knee-jerk doubling down on fossil fuel dependency worsens both. I wish she'd been given a chance to expand on it, but at the same time, there it is. Climate crisis and solutions in 90 seconds.
The city is crying out for public toilets, but I discovered one in Rathgar that's not in use, so requested an audit of Dublin’s loos, past and present.
Past: 26 facilities - currently not in use; given away, repurposed or demolished.
Present: 4 public toilets in the entire city!
Today, Patrick O’Donovan T.D., Minister of State with responsibility for the OPW officially opened the spectacular Wild Atlantic Way Viewing point at the clifftop site of the OPW run Blasket Centre in Dún Chaoin in the West Kerry Gaeltacht.
The company responsible for the centre is Aramark. Aramark own Avoca. Think about this next time you're deciding where you want to spend your money. They denied a sick child a slice of bread.
A slice of bread.
In
@thetimesIE
, the state has opened an investigation over claims staff denied a woman living in direct provision a slice of bread for her ill child.
The company responsible for the centre has said the incident was caused by a miscommunication.
Good morning from Thomas St, where I've been waiting 50 minutes for a
@dublinbusnews
13 bus to Ballymun that's supposed to be every 15 mins. Could have hopped in the car and gotten there in 25 mins, or biked it 35, but I figured, nah, I'll take the bus. Big mistake. Huge.
A long and late council meeting tonight, but one at which my motion to embed the principles of
#DoughnutEconomics
into Dublin's next Local Economic & Community Plan was agreed! Hopefully just the first step for Dublin to follow the lead of Amsterdam and other Doughnut Cities. 🍩
Welcome to Fingal, where the verges have wildflowers and the parks have toilets and water fountains that get kids excited about refilling a water bottle instead of buying a drink! 😍
If you vote down cycling infrastructure based on how much it inconveniences drivers, you ignore a) the fundamental truth that a lot of the time drivers inconvenience themselves by choosing the least efficient mode of transport and b) cyclists who don't feel safe become drivers...
Was shocked to learn at my first local area meeting (thanks to a motion from
@taradeacy
) that the council can't afford to open Crumlin pool to the public for more than one day a week, but by all means put a €15m heated pool in the middle of the Liffey. 🤨
Dublin City Councillor goes to Amsterdam, drags entire family to visit to the new 7,000 bike parking facility at Central Station.
All suitably impressed, and everyone agrees I’m tremendous fun to travel with. 🤗
Jesus wept 😭 One more time for the people in the back: IF YOU WANT PROGRESSIVE CLIMATE ACTION YOU DO NOT VOTE FOR FINE GAEL. We have two electoral cycles to turn this ship around, and it's not going to happen on their watch.
YOUR VOTE MATTERS.
VOTE CLIMATE.
It’s not the Cobblestone, but our city’s natural heritage matters too. Last year I highlighted the destruction of trees along the Dodder and DCC issued an enforcement order requiring full remediation of the woodland. I need your help to ensure that's what happens here. Thread 👇
If I was a teacher in a private school attended by the children of the CEO of the Beacon hospital, I would simply not accept a vaccine I had absolutely no entitlement to. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Your daily reminder that, contrary to popular opinion, the media will not decide the formation of the next government, and two thirds of Green Party members would have to approve the party's involvement in any coalition arrangement.
Blackpitts student accommodation was applying for change of use to tourist lets before it was finished being built. Meanwhile there's more student accom being built within 200m of the one that secured change of use, while further change of use is being granted in the same area.
We call on parties to nominate more female candidates to run for
#SE2020
and for co-option to the more than 30 council seats left vacant by successful
#GE2020
contestants who won Dáil seats.
David McCullagh: But wearing masks isn't in our culture, how would we persuade people to do it?
I don't know David, staying in our houses for weeks on end and keeping 2m apart isn't in our culture either, so I guess you just make people do this too. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
#rtept
Saw a tweet from someone in the UK last week that said if the new increased measures didn't change your life all that much, you'd been doing social distancing right. The measures announced tonight won't change my life all that much, and I suspect that's the case for many of you.
I dunno folks, should I resign because I don't believe people should be shamed into dieting if they put on weight during a global pandemic & I don't believe a doctor should prescribe a generalised weight loss programme on the radio without doing individual health assessments? 🤔
Turns out taking your cat on holidays is pretty great! We brought this fella back to Connemara, where we found him injured on the Roundstone to Ballyconneely road on a September night 14 years ago. Without a doubt he's the best thing we ever pulled out of a ditch. ❤️
Sad to hear
@saoirse_mchugh
has left the Greens, but I might take this opportunity to put it out into the universe that someone should give her a few million euro to rewild a massive chunk of Ireland and run it as a wildlife sanctuary where I could then go and work. K, thanks. 🙏🏻
Little bit of personal news. I'm delighted to say that, as of three minutes ago and after several glasses of wine, I've declared myself Clerk of Handforth Parish Council.
Just reading up on the standing orders and really looking forward to getting stuck in at the next meeting!
Ok, it's not quite what I imagined, but I can't tell you how happy it made me to cycle into and out of Eamonn Ceannt Park today! I've had four motions on this over the last two years, and raised it at every opportunity, and finally one set of
#KissingGates
has been removed!
Minister
@EamonRyan
addressing
@DubCityCouncil
's monthly meeting this evening, calling for Paris-style radical change to create a clean, quiet city, humming with people and playing its part in the climate transition. 🌳🚴🚶♂️
What we don't hear enough from public reps who are happy to tolerate footpath parking is how it destroys infrastructure, the danger that poses, and the cost of repairs. This mangled path is on Clanbrassil St, right where people parking on the footpath drive off it onto the road.
My beloved boy is not long for this world, and he hasn't much enjoyed being touched or snuggled these last few weeks. He curled up beside me tonight and I was afraid to move a muscle in case it was the last time I ever got to watch him snooze contentedly in the crook of my arm.
I'm so honoured to have topped the poll in Kimmage Rathmines, and grateful to the 2,026 people who trusted me with their first preference vote. It's such a strong endorsement for the liveable city I believe in, and I will never stop working to achieve it. 💚
Congratulations to
@carolynmoore_ie
who was elected to Dublin City Council for Kimmage-Rathmines!
She will continue her work in making Dublin a climate resilient city.
I'm so fucking sick & tired & ANGRY hearing ministers outline the 'very small things people can do' when we are just swimming against the tide of government inaction & retrograde policies. No amount of bird boxes will counteract the impact of the Heritage Bill,
@josephamadigan
!!
The minister wants us all to put up bird boxes to save nature. How utterly useless. Clearly we can have no hope in these politicians to address the crises we're in.
Green Party motion from
@carolynmoore_ie
just passed - removing white water rafting as an objective in Dublin City's next draft development plan.
We don't agree with the white water rafting facility idea - good to remove explicit support for it from the plan. 👏👏👏
Paris, 9th arrondissement. These miniature gardens used to be car parking spaces until a few years ago. The city reclaimed them, and replanted them with fruit trees and flowering shrubs 🌱
This blasé destruction of new infrastructure shows exactly why we need a conversation, not just about social distancing measures, but about the mentality of entitlement to road space that makes so many drivers believe that the needs of other road users just don't matter.
We were shocked last year to learn how much it would cost to put a Christmas tree in Kimmage, and struggling to justify spending that amount of our funding for the area on a temporary tree. I pointed out that there was a perfectly gorgeous tree already in Kimmage, et voila! 😍🌲
I can't think what could have caused the damage to these bike stands at Spar on Harold's Cross Road. I guess someone parked their bike, like, really super hard. I've put in a request to have them replaced so hopefully vertical bike parking can resume here soon.
Hazel Chu isn't a migrant, and it wouldn't make any difference if she was. If you make Ireland your home, you're Irish. The end. Canadian white supremecists don't get to say who's Irish and who's not, and GO'D's pathetic little fash mob doesn't get to define what makes us 'us'.
As
#BikeWeek
draws to a close, a little thread about coming to cycling... later in life, shall we say. Honestly if you'd told me pre-pandemic I would be cycling everywhere AND enjoying it, AND finding places to go just so I could cycle there, I'd have laughed myself stupid.
Instead, retailers (like Penneys, and others, with the complicity of the media) spend lots of money convincing us all that it’s normal to buy new clothes every week. That you should overhaul your wardrobe every season. YOU SHOULDN’T!! LOL, it’s literally killing the planet!
What a great way to start the day, out showing my
#CycleBusSolidarity
and shouting for safe cycling for and with the kids in
@D12BikeBus
! They were 40-strong when I joined in Crumlin...
All I know is that I'm sitting here on polling day looking at stacks of leaflets that should have gone through people's letterboxes last week, and An Post had nothing to offer but 'sorry'. It's untenable for them to offer a commercial service if they can't do better than that.
Don't worry folks. The men in suits are here to save the planet. We should put our faith in the men in suits, because if anyone is responsible for getting us into this mess, it certainly isn't men in suits. 👨💼👨💼👨💼👨💼👨💼
Launching a joint project with
@BordnaMona
&
@coilltenews
with
@ADoyleTD
&
@creedcnw
that will see bogs no longer used for peat production and transformed into rich, native woodlands. Our land is one of our most powerful tools in responding to the climate challenge.
Truly disheartening to witness the destruction of mature trees in a conservation area along the Dodder. Overturning an appeal against planning permission for a three storey house here, ABP were clear that the development would not result in any damage or removal of trees. Well...
Some good news in all the Brexit gloom: Lidl's Henry Hippos are basically indistinguishable from Percy Pigs.
I ate the whole packet just to make sure. 🐷🦛
Canada Goose to quit Grafton Street after setting up shop last December - making it the ninth big brand to announce it is leaving the street recently via
@businessposthq
I increasingly just cannot get over the way people drive in this city. I cannot believe what I'm seeing here, the utter carelessness of it. The utter lack of regard for safety... Caution... The law! Imagine a young kid just came bolting of a gateway...
Who wants to break it to her that her party is in government and what she's actually doing here is highlighting how utterly ineffectual they've been at introducing any measures that would improve cycling infrastructure and make it a safer more appealing option for commuters? 🤔
Pleased to report that after making no progress on the issue last summer, I brought another motion on kissing gates to our
@DubCityCouncil
local area today, and we've agreed to task
@DCCBeta
with proposing some solutions that will keep our parks safe and allow equitable access.
This is a genuine question, not intended to upset, but with so many well-meaning independent collections going on to send items to Poland that *may* be needed by refugees, is there any coordination going on to ensure it won't present a huge logistical challenge to aid agencies?
My original upload has stopped playing properly, but it's worth resharing Mary Robinson's attempt to discuss the climate crisis on the Late Late in March 2022, which Ryan Tubridy has zero time for. I wonder if this was included in the two times ever it was mentioned on the show?
During the summer I would have seen loads of other women out running after 9pm; this week I noticed I've seen only men. Why? Because public spaces belong to men after dark.
That's just one issue DCC's new Women's Committee will be looking at, and I'm thrilled to be involved! 💪
We made a little history today
@DubCityCouncil
by forming the first cross party formal Women’s Committee 😀🥳
Looking forward to harnessing all the knowledge & skills of my fellow Councillors to implement our common goals & priorities
Huge thanks to EVERYONE who helped form it
🚽 Good things come to those who wait! It's over two and half years since my proposal to bring the disused public toilets on Orwell Road back into service was agreed, and finally - after structural issues and other delays - there's a contractor on site! 🙌
When people say Dublin could never be Amsterdam I think of this.
@Tempsyngest
mini all-ireland: hundreds of families, limited parking, so people were asked to walk or cycle. This was the result. This shows what's possible, and it's why we need to keep prioritising active travel.
🌳 A win for nature today as permission for retention of the unauthorised works currently underway in the Dodder woodland at Pearse Bridge has been REFUSED. The report finds it has 'significantly impacted on the special character of this riparian strip'.
Very proud to vote for my brilliant colleague
@hazechu
to become just the 9th woman of 352 Lord Mayors of Dublin. In her speech she said she hopes ALL children will be able to look at her and see what they can achieve if they just have the ambition and the support to it. ❤️
Blackpitts, Mill St and Newmarket Sq lost houses, artists studios, rehearsal spaces, markets, cultural spaces and an historic pub, and for what? Could have been an amazing new new community, instead it's a dead zone of empty beds in boxes.
#rtept
There's a distinction between ‘fast fashion’ & ‘cheap clothes' that I think is being missed. Cheap clothes are just that: clothes that are cheap. But they're not necessarily the problem. The inherent unsustainability of the fast fashion model is what we need to urgently address.
'Dispose of' your perfectly functional car and go electric, even if your primary mode of transport is cycling, says
@Shane_RossTD
, missing so many points on sustainability, climate action, resource use and mindless consumerism I can't even count them all. What a fucking tool.
Classic bit of Dublin parking today... And with a free loading bay not 10m away! I have requested enforcement at this stretch many times, but so far there's been absolutely no sign of any repercussions for the people driving along, breaking and blocking this footpath. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
and: explore the idea of a producer responsibility scheme for textiles. YES! Let people drop last year’s curtains & cushions back to Ikea, or drop the €12 sequinned joggers they wore once to Electric Picnic back to Penneys, and let THEM deal with disposing of them responsibly.
Fast fashion is so-called because it’s literally about speeding up retail & trend cycles so that we buy more. That intentional acceleration impacted high end fashion, mid-range fashion, and low cost fashion, because it’s not about the price so much as the speed of the turnover.
'We'll take your money and hope for the best' is a pretty poor approach from a trusted brand like An Post in any case, but the failure of a state owned company to have appropriate checks and reporting structures in place for the delivery of election materials is quite shocking.
Good lord. They've ended the segment with - 'for balance' - a text from someone who wanted to defend Donald Trump's response in these primarily Democratic states. Astonishing to hear.
Whatever unfolds across Europe in the coming weeks, it's important to remember that catastrophic climate breakdown and lethal heat can also be tremendously good fun. 👍🌍🔥
.
@RadioBrendanRTE
contributor is utterly wrong to say Lord Mayor only started asking this week for an outdoor summer plan. In April the Green cllrs,
@hazechu
included, proposed a plan all about the proactive management of outdoor gatherings, which is now so, so evidently needed.
You, voting for an MEP in May: But Maria Walsh is young, and gay, and platinum blonde! She must be reasonably progressive right? 🤔
Maria Walsh in Europe: LOL, nope! I literally just voted to let migrants drown in the sea. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
🇮🇪 MEP vote on whether to rescue drowning migrants in the Mediterranean:
👍Anderson, Carthy, Cuffe, Flanagan, O'Sullivan, Wallace.
👎Fitzgerald, Kelly, McGuinness, Walsh.
no vote recorded for Daly, Dodds, Long, Kelleher.
Just went for a quick run and was wondering why half the apartments on Clanbrassil St were in complete darkness when everyone's supposed to be home. Then I remembered - of course! - Air BnB.
🚫 No trees. 🚫 No activities. 🚫 No access to parks or woodlands. 🚫 No entertainment. 🚫 No community groups. 🚫 No gatherings. 🚫 No public spaces. 🚫 No play. 🚫 No sports. 🚫 No fun.
At what point is somebody going to intervene and say 🚫 No more rip off insurance fees??
✅ Reviewing regulations for clothes banks. GOOD. Countries in the Global South don’t need our rubbish, & our disposable fashion is ruining their indigenous fashion industries as well as our own, which is why
✅ promoting eco-design with Irish designers & retailers also = GOOD 👏
A burning UNESCO biosphere reserve marks a depressing start to National Biodiversity Week. Ground nesting birds that hadn't nested here in years had returned this year, and whether this fire was started intentionally or not, it was the wrong decision to reopen the island to cars.
On the day that car restrictions were lifted on Bull Island, a large grass fire has destroyed parts of the UNESCO biosphere reserve & bird sanctuary. Clontarf Cllr.
@donna_cooney1
says
@DubCityCouncil
must do everything in its power to protect the island.
Let's double down on the dehumanising experience inflicted on this highly respected and accomplished woman, or as we like to call her 'Ryan Tubridy's ex' 🙄
😍 Check out the lovely new water fountain in Eamonn Ceannt Park! 💦 This was one of my asks from our discretionary fund, which is why I love the discretionary fund, and why the 50% increase next year thanks to a Green Party ammendment to the 2023 budget is such great news. 🤗