Wednesday 23 December 2009

Christmas Greetings from Cllr. Ted Tynan

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the people of the North East Ward for their support for me during 2009 and wish you all a safe and peaceful Christmas and best wishes for the New Year.


Ted Tynan

Monday 21 December 2009

Running a city on a shoestring not possible says Tynan

Workers Party Councillor Ted Tynan has said that government cutbacks will seriously affect Cork City Council services and that the allocation from central government to the local authority it totally inadequate.

Cllr. Tynan was speaking in advance of tonight’s meeting of the City Council which will vote on the financial Estimates for the coming 12 months. The Workers’ Party councillor will be voting against the Estimates because they contain domestic refuse charges and because he considers the central allocation as totally inadequate.

“The Minister for the Environment expects councillors to perform a ‘loaves & fishes’ miracle with funding for the city council cut by a further €7 million this year. Already the council has lost in the region of 140 staff through a combination of layoffs of temporary staff and non-replacement of permanent staff. Despite the best efforts of a dedicated staff this is inevitably leading to cuts in services in the area of housing maintenance, roads and other areas”, said Cllr.Tynan.

The Workers Party councillor has called for a more drastic cut in the Lord Mayor’s salary and allowances demanding that instead of an €8,000 cut to €94,000 per annum the mayoral salary should be cut to equal the average industrial wage of €32,000. He is also calling for a complete embargo on conference travel by councillors both within the country and abroad.

“Despite the most serious financial crisis in the city’s modern history, we still have dozens of councillors from the three party pact of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour travelling to conferences in every corner of the country. Some councillors have attended multiple conferences and I can see no benefit whatsoever to the city or the city council of such conferences which are little more than junkets. It is time to call a halt to them”, said Cllr. Tynan.

Thursday 10 December 2009

A Diabolical Budget

Cllr. Ted Tynan has described Wednesday's budget as diabolical and utterly perverse, saying it targets working class people and only working class people with a vicious round of cutbacks in their incomes and in public services.

Cllr. Tynan said that Minister Brian Lenihan’s budget was drafted to an agenda set down by IBEC and big business and that the minister had bent over backwards to grant their demands while tightening the thumbscrews on working people, the poor and their families.

"The reduction in excise duty on alcohol and the car scrappage deal is an affront to society. This budget will force some people to cut back on food and home heating. It is a perverse government indeed which can cut child allowance but give an effective subsidy to the drinks industry and the motor trade".

"Nowhere in this budget do we see any effort to seriously tax the ostentatious wealth that is still being flashed around by the moneyed elite in this society, the one percent who hold one-fifth of this country's wealth. Nor has any effort been made to reform the banks as part of the NAMA process. Having gambled away billions they have been given a massive top-up which has been raised by bleeding workers dry and throwing the most vulnerable people to the wolves”, said Cllr. Tynan.

"This is a budget which makes historic figures like Richie Ryan and Margaret Thatcher seem benevolent. It is a slash-and-burn budget which has reduced the most marginalised people in society, not just to poverty, but to abject poverty. The decision to slash Jobseekers payments for young people and cut it for everyone else, in addition to the cut in child benefit is an outright attack on the poor. Not one single job will be created as a result of this budget, but still we have handouts to businesses in the name of so-called competition”.

“In short Minister Lenihan’s budget is an abomination. It is the product of a government which has been bought by big business but paid dearly for by ordinary workers and their families. It is a government with no morals, no mandate and no shame”, said Councillor Tynan

Tuesday 8 December 2009

WAS QUAY WALL DAMAGED BY MECHANICAL DIGGER?



Workers Party councillor Ted Tynan last night asked City Manager as to whether the quay wall beside the Mercy Hospital may have been damaged by a mechanical digger weeks before the wall collapsed in the recent severe weather.

Speaking at a meeting of Cork City Council which was dominated by the recent flooding crisis, Cllr. Tynan says that he had seen photographs showing a large mechanised excavator (traxcavator) working at the same spot where the wall was to collapse early on the 20th November at the height of the heavy rain and high tides. He has been informed that large amounts of stone, possibly old cobblestones, was removed from the River Lee at Grenville Place around a month before the wall collapsed. His source and a number of others he spoke to say that the excavator’s bucket hit off the quay wall on several occasions.

Cllr. Tynan has tabled a series of questions to the City Manager, Mr. Joe Gavin, in an attempt to find out if the machine in question could possibly have damaged the quay wall and to ascertain why it was removing this material in the first place.

“The recent floods have had a devastating effect on parts of the city centre around the Marsh area. It is estimated that damage at the Mercy Hospital alone was in the order of €2 million and the hospital was almost put out of action. We need to find out why this happened and if there is any connection between the removal of the stone and the wall’s collapse. I haved asked the City Manager tonight to investigate the reports and give his opinion on the matter”, said Cllr. Tynan.

Photos shown were taken with a cameraphone on 19th October - one month before the wall collapsed, and show the traxcavator machine working at Grenville Place.