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I was very conscious as I left last Monday’s Council meeting that it could be my last meeting as a Dublin City Councillor. Aside from those who have chosen not to run again, I think we all probably felt the same as none of us will know for sure where we will stand until all the votes in Friday’s election are counted.

I really love being a local councillor, working for and with local residents on either individual or community issues, working with local Council officials to resolve/progress issues, trying to change Council policy and ideology or just simply getting local people the information they need to get things done or push things themselves – local empowerment. Basically, it’s about improving our local communities and the way we do things so as to make a difference for the better.

From listening to local residents, not just during the last few weeks of this local election campaign but over the last five years, the above are priorities are what I will concentrate on if elected over the next five years.

If you’ve read my page entitled My Council Record you’ll get a feel for some of the core issues I’m passionate about. If you’re more into listening in the video below I describe some of the things our Labour Party Group has achieved over the last five years and some of the particular projects I’d like to progress with local communities within my area over the next five. These include a strong environmental agenda, the creation of Teen Spaces, extending Dublin Bikes Scheme out into our area so we can use this great public transport scheme to communt into the city centre and ensuring the Oscar Traynor Land site and other local sites are designed in a sustainable way.

If you have ideas to add to these or to better these please get in contact with me as together we can strive to improve and enhance the communities we live and work in.

If I am the type of person you would like to represent you and work with you for the next 5 years please consider me for your number one vote or highest preference on Friday 24th May.

Thank you!

At the January meeting of Dublin City Council I proposed an emergency motion seeking an additional 4 ambulances for the Dublin Fire Brigade Emergency Medical Service ( DFB EMS) to resolved their capacity issues and noted concern that the service’s call and dispatch operation might be transferred to/amalgamated with the National Ambulance Service call centre in Tallaght. That concern has now escalated to a significant potential reality, so much so that Dublin Fire Brigade’s initial intention to take industrial action 0ver their capacity issues has turned into a full scale dispute over call and dispatch.

Pertinent to understanding the dispute is understanding how DFB EMS operates. If you make a 999 call from Dublin city or county it goes to a call centre. If you need a fire brigade or an ambulance your call is transferred to the Dublin Fire Brigade call and dispatch centre in Tara St. There it is dealt with according to a highly effective protocol that maximises resources and minimises the threat to life and property.  Here’s why:

Dublin Fire Brigade provides a unique fire-based EMS service that fronts 14 ambulances and supports them with local fire appliances and fire officers. It can provide this service in a most clinically effective and efficient way because all DFB officers are trained paramedics or advanced paramedics. Each officer can bring A&E expertise to the site of any medical emergency. The service operates on a zero-down-time basis meaning crews swap over to accommodate breaks to ensure the DFB ambulances are always on a call. In any one 24 hour period each ambulance could attend to a different incident every hour.

So why change this way of operating?

In 2014 HIQA published a review of Pre-hospital Emergency Care Services in Dublin. Its report highlighted several concerns and made 12 specific recommendations. One of the concerns related to emergency calls ‘dropping’ between the two services i.e. between the DFB EMS call and dispatch in Tara St. and the NAS call and dispatch in Tallaght and the potential risk to lives. DCC’s reaction to this was to consult with the HSE and each of the other 3 Dublin local authority CEOs and as a group unilaterally decided to transfer the DFB call and dispatch service to the NAS in Tallaght. Needless to say without evidence rationale or fire officer consultation there was uproar.

It was decided to form an Expert Panel to examine the HIQA report and its recommendations. It was also agreed to put together an Ambulance Forum consisting of DCC, DFB Senior Management and officer union representatives. The Expert Panel would report and this Forum and it would come to an agreement on the implementation of the recommendations in the Expert Panel’s report. This worked well and agreement was reached on the recommendations relating to the governance and financial arrangements/funding sources. However, the outstanding piece of the jigsaw is how to prevent calls dropping between the two systems.

A technical sub-group was formed with 2 telecommunication experts advising to see how the two systems could talk to each other effectively and safely. A report was drawn up with a series of different options on how to effectively proceed both in the short term and long term. This report was given to the Ambulance Forum. However, DCC pulled out of the Forum before the report could be presented and discussed rendering the Forum’s work incomplete and effectively collapsing the Forum. This raised concerns that DCC’s original plan to amalgamate the two call centres was back on the cards.

In January the Expert Panel made a presentation to the DCC Special Committee on Fire, Ambulance and Emergency Management of which I am Chair. It emphasised that moving DFB call & dispatch would not only be financially inefficient but highly dangerous from a patient safety perspective reiterating that DFB’s call and dispatch is an integral link in the cycle of pre-hospital emergency care management. While the capacity issues remains, this is now the crux of the DFB dispute with DCC. This is what DFB officers are protecting. This is why DFB will be outside City Hall for our March meeting tomorrow evening. This is why DFB voted overwhelmingly to take industrial action two weeks ago.

However, there is a safe and effective telecommunications solution to enable DFB’s call & dispatch in Tara St. to talk to the NAS centre in Tallaght. It can be implemented in a short timeframe and can fully address the concerns in the 2014 HIQA report.

Therefore, there is no rationale for amalgamating the two centres except for the yet to be understood rationale of  DCC. This is why DFB EMS is calling for your support in their campaign.

As the trolly count increased in our hospital A&Es, recent days have shown us how much we depend on the effective resourcing of our emergency medical services. However, another crisis is about to emerge in Dublin City and County’s pre-hospital Emergency Medical Services.

We are extremely fortunate to have a world class fire based pre-hospital Emergency Medical Services (EMS) operated by Dublin Fire Brigade. This highly efficient and highly effective service is unique in Ireland but quite common in the US and Canada as well as Europe’s major cities.

Currently Dublin Fire Brigade has 12 ambulances and 23 fire tenders. Both ambulance and fire service crews are fully trained paramedics or advanced paramedics who can bring expert medical care and treatment to the site of any medical emergency. The service includes a call and dispatch service that ensures all crews are effectively deployed to emergencies. Where necessary call & dispatch operators, who are all medically trained, can talk a caller through the administration of CPR until officers arrive.

The service operates on zero down time meaning that ambulances are continuously available 24/7 365 days per year with fire officers deployed to ambulances to cover crew breaks to ensure no break in availability. Last year the service responded to 115,000 calls representing 40% of the national volume, an increase in calls on 2015.

However, an increase in calls and incidents means 12 ambulances are not sufficient to effectively meet needs. Dublin Fire Brigade has evaluated the current situation and indicated that an additional four ambulances would allow the service to safely meet emergency needs arising across its operating area of Dublin City and County.

As Chairperson of Dublin City Council’s Special Committee on Dublin Fire/Ambulance Services and Emergency Management I am presenting an emergency motion to Dublin City Council (Monday 9th January 2017) calling on Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Simon Coveney to make funding available immediately for four additional fully crewed 24/7 ambulances to meet Dublin City and County capacity needs in a safe and effective manner

We currently have a crisis in hospital A&E services, Dublin citizens’ do not need a crisis in pre-hospital emergency medical services!

Text of Motion

This week An Bord Pleanála ruled that a particular residential unit in Temple Bar being rented out as an airbnb needed a change of planning use from residential to commercial. I very much welcome this ruling and seek now that regulations governing planning and tax aspects of airbnbs be issued by the Department of the Environment and Local Government.

There are over 3,000 Dublin properties available on Airbnb. Many of these are private individuals renting out a room in their homes to tourists visiting our city or renting out there home while away on holiday themselves. Others, however are operating as commercial businesses renting out entire apartments or houses on short-term lets. Such commercial operations cause difficulties for those living in the immediate area – occupants coming and going and perhaps not being vigilant or security conscious particularly those renting in an apartment complex.

These commercial operations have also had a negative impact on housing supply. There are over 750 families currently living in hotels while several hundred ‘entire homes’ are available on Airbnb for letting and potentially several hundred property owners using their  ‘home’ for commercial purposes with no adequate regulation in a time of unprecedented housing demand.

No doubt this planning decision will take time to filter down and have a real impact on housing supply. It will also have an impact on hotel and other tourist accommodation in the city. Hotel occupancy and room rates are currently very high and there are very few planning applications for housing in train. This is in a context where the hospitality sector enjoys a special low 9% rate of VAT yet continues to refuse to engage with the wage setting mechanisms such as the JLC system to improve wages & conditions for hospitality workers – a debate for another day!

For today, and as a member of Dublin City Council Housing Strategic Policy Committee where my key focus is the increase of housing supply in Dublin, this decision is a small win for supply. I commend Dublin City Council for taking the case and encourage others to ‘report’ unauthorised commercial use of residential properties to the Planning Enforcement Section of DCC.

I’m not sure the Minister’s new obesity strategy will deliver the outcomes required or support those who need to improve their diet and lifestyle so as not to become overweight or obese. The reason I say this is that the strategy is not hands on enough, it’s not investing in people to help people who are over weight.

Many people remark at how ‘lucky’ I am not to ‘struggle’ with my weight. I am lucky in the sense that I was brought up on good home cooked meals, I learned about nutrition and I was taught by my mother how to cook for myself at an early age.

I’m also lucky because I understand (and accept) that weight is more or less a formula between food/calories in and food/calories burned off in the course of my day and that food/calories not burned off is stored therefore adds to my weight. I also understand that eating food is not just about weight but about feeding my body to keep it and me healthy and give me energy to go about my day’s work.  I understand that fresh food is better for me than processed foods.  Going to restaurants or having pizza on a Saturday night is a treat and I generally apply the theory of everything in moderation.

If I were the Minister I would have liaised with the Minister for Education and increased the time for Social Personal and Health Education in schools from it’s current 30 minutes per week to 60/90 minutes per week and I would have introduced and funded monthly cookery classes in all schools from Junior Infants up. I would have recruited and funded more nutritionists and dieticians. I would have allocated funding to local Family and Resource Centres for cookery courses that would include teaching basic nutrition. I would have allocated funding to local authorities for allotments. I would have allocated more funding to our community games, our local sports clubs and other local groups that work with communities to improve our understanding of food, nutrition and cooking. Basically I would have invested in people to help those who ‘struggle’ with their weight.

Evidence on how effective such person-to-person support is can be found in the outcome of Northside Partnership’s Preparing for Life Programme. This programme supported mother’s to be from conception up until their child went to school and included a home visiting programme. The evaluation showed that, in addition to improved cognitive understanding and social behaviours  and a reduction in visits to hospitals, ‘the children whose parents received the intervention were also less likely to be overweight (23% compared to 41%)’

Yesterday, May 31st, the Labour Party launched a very substantial motion on workers’ rights under Private Members Business. This motion calls on the government ‘to prepare and introduce a legislative package that will protect and enhance workers’ rights by:

• ending the abuse of ‘if and when’ contracts;
• combatting bogus self-employment;
• ensuring freelance workers have the right to collectively bargain;
• extending the Transfer of Undertakings Regulations (TUPE) to workers in services such as catering and security;
• protecting workers in ‘informal’ insolvencies and collective redundancies;
• providing statutory redress for the victims of workplace bullying;
• promoting employment standards and the Living Wage in public procurement; and
• preventing unilateral reductions in pay

All the above reflect historic core Labour Party work and, more recently, priorities outlined in its 2016 General Election Manifesto. In particular, the call for the ending of ‘if and when’ contracts, the right to collectively bargaining for freelance workers, a Living Wage and the protection of workers in ‘informal’ insolvencies and collective redundancies all build on work achieved by Senators Ged Nash and Ivanna Bacik during the last government.

However, the genuine and continuous striving by Labour to enhance workers’ rights has been called into question. It was a comment below on my own Facebook by someone, whose political ideology I wouldn’t completely share but whose activism and advocacy for social justice and workers’ right I hugely respect that moved me to write this blog. Sadly he’s not the only one who holds this view as social media responses over the last 48 hrs show. Its easy to script the sanctimonious underpinnings, the deliberate pauses, the overplayed cynicism and the assertions similar to the comment I received from those politicians who, unlike Labour, are more conscious of their own image than of actually doing something about the issues they supposedly believe in.

You only have to look at the current Programme for Government to see the non-importance of workers’ rights – two pages on turf cutting and a few lines on workers as Ged Nash pointed out. If you want further evidence have a look at how many Fine Gael TDs signed the Irish Congress of Trade Unions Charter for Fair Conditions at work or ask how many of them even attended Labour’s Living Wage  Conference or indeed check out all previous Fine Gael election manifestos. These TDs are the same ones that the Labour Party coalesced with in the last government and yet managed to progress many worker-centred issues, most notably the introduction of collective bargaining legislation in the face of not just Fine Gael’s ideology but global anti-trade unionism.

The thing is, if you can step back and take an objective view, it is evident that it is not Labour that is cynical or exploitative. Rather it is Labour that seeks to consistently exploit, on behalf of workers, every avenue that will lead to even the smallest gain towards better fairer terms, conditions and protections for them. If you look you’ll see that Labour demonstrated that in the previous government and is now pro-actively leading the way for workers in this era of new politics and therefore this motion, and indeed the Labour Party, should be supported for what it is what it can achieve for workers in our country .

What its critics need to realise that, while they were concentrating on protesting and point scoring, the Labour Party actually got out there and did something about the issue

#Yes4WorkersRights

At yesterday’s  North Central Area Meeting (Monday 16th May) I proposed a motion calling on DCC to carry out a transport assessment and a social infrastructure audit for the Oscar Traynor Rd. site. This 17 hectare site is part of Dublin City Council’s Vacant Land Initiative.  It is the city’s biggest development at present with 655 housing units and a retail centre planned for the site. The development of the site needs to informed and appropriately managed so as to ensure we have both a sustainable development and potentially negative impacts for the local communities surrounding the site are mitigated against.

Housing in the area is absolutely needed, there is no question about that. However,  Dublin City Council need to take and lead and prepare the site so as to ensure the end result is a sustainable community with appropriate amenities, facilities and proper traffic management. At present such preparation is not forthcoming. Indeed, there seems to be a significant reluctance on the part of DCC to conduct the appropriate preparation. I am calling for a transport assessment and a social infrastructure audit to be carried out to support good planning –  making key preparations simply cannot be left to those who win the contract to develop the land.

Transport Assessment

When you look at the current traffic issues in the immediate you’ll see that the Oscar Traynor Rd. and the Dundaniel Rd. are highly congested at peak hours. If traffic from the 655 units planned for the site are added to this the roads surrounding the area will be at a stand still. This will have a negative knock on effect on those commuting into the city from the M1, residents in Santry Court, Aulden Grange, Woodlawn, Larch Hill, Dundaniel Rd and the Castletimon estate. A transport assessment will identify such issues and will be able to make recommendations to mitigate against them.

Social Infrastructure Audit

There are 3 primary schools in the immediate area, including Gaelscoil Cholmcille adjacent to the site which is currently seeking to expand. An obvious question to ask is whether there be enough places for additional children coming into the area? Another vital requirement is childcare facilities – there are none in the immediate vicinity. The master plan has provision for a large passive park. However, the area needs an active well thought out park with designated football pitches, basketball court, a pavilion area for residents to be active and for local schools and clubs to use. These basic needs can only be captured through a social infrastructure audit – once identified deficits can be planned for.

We cannot just wait to see what the developers come up with in their plans – DCC is the only authority that can take the lead so as to ensure the new community that will be developed on the site will fully integrate with and support the current local communities around the site.

Text of motion – passed Monday 16th, North Central Area Committee

Motion in the name of Cllr Alison Gilliland

That Dublin City Council take full responsibility for funding, conducting and disseminating a 1) Transport Assessment and 2) Social Infrastructure Audit on the  planned development of 655 units on the vacant lands on the Oscar Traynor Rd. That

a) these assessment /audit be initiated as soon as possible 

b) this responsibility is detailed in any tender briefs/documentation with regard to the lands.

c) DCC will use the resulting reports for each assessment /audit to inform the facility, amenity, public services, traffic and transport requirements for the development of the site so as to enable a sustainable, fully serviced urban community. 

d) plans be drawn up by DCC, where appropriate in conjunction with any developer that may win the tender, to address any deficits identified in each assessment/audit

e) these plans operate in tandem with progress on the development so as to realise a sustainable, fully serviced urban community, to minimise disruption and knock on negative impacts to the local communities surrounding the vacant lands development.