Bin Tax campaign, Increase in charges passed.

Tuesday January 21, 2003 19:58

by IMC

The increase to the bin tax in Dublin was passed last week in extremely unusual circumstances . Three labour party councillors were absent some with excuse; a Fine Gael councillor broke with his party whip and voted for the increase. A tied vote was broken when the Labour Mayor used his vote to pass the increase, running against party policy.

What followed was the now all too typical sight of several parties launching at each other to point fingers, and blame, at whose action and inaction was to blame for this. The Social Party attacked Sinn Fein, Sinn Fein went for the greens, and even labour youth condemned their own mayor; who now faces expulsion from his own party. The bin tax campaign has been the scene of acrimonious attacks, with bitter words exchanged repeatedly between the smaller left wing parties . The environment minister Martin Cullen has earlier threatened to shut down Dublin county council if the increased charges had not been passed.

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Bin Charges

by Killian Forde - Sinn Fein

Wed Jan 22, 2003 01:44

A point of clarification, as a member of SF, I recall no statement from SF having a go at Greens re their support for estimates and bin charges in last weeks dublin city council meeting.

Our attitude towards them would be that we believe their policy is wrong but at the same time would respect the Greens in clearly making their policy public and following up on their policy. The only statemnet I am aware of being realised by SF was by Cllr Christy Burke who attacked Labour.

Burke pointed out that Labours public position and what they did on the night of the vote were very different. He suggested that the Labour party were complict in ensuring that certain councillors did not turn to oppose the bin charges.

Just to be clear...

by Joe Momma

Wed Jan 22, 2003 18:09

Labour:
Two Labour councillors were apparently absent with excuse. Joe Costello was on his honeymoon, so I suppose nobody can blame him. Derek McDowell was absent for unexplained reasons, but Tommy Broughan seems to have given him the all-clear. Mary Freehill, however, was AWOL - she claims she was ill, and indeed too ill to call in sick until 24 hours after the vote. However, she hasn't participated in any vote on this issue for the past few years. She may be in trouble with big bad Broughan, but I don't think she's been excluded from the group as yet.

Fine Gael:
Two FG councillors, not one, switched their vote, although nobody seems to have noticed the second. All the media reports I read talked about Joe Doyle switching, but I'm told that Chris Giblin also changed his vote. I'm also told that he sat on the opposite side of the chamber in the hopes that nobody would notice him when the vote was taken, and it appears to have worked.

To thicken the plot, it seems that FG councillor Gerry Breen told the Evening Herald that FG voted tactically to provoke the split decision and thus force the Lord Mayor to use his casting vote. The idea was to embarrass him or something, but as far as I can tell all it's done is increase his profile.

Clarification

by Killian Forde

Sat Jan 25, 2003 20:39

A few days ago I stated that I knew of no statement that re bin charges that said that "sinn fein went for the greens". I wrote in stating so and I still have to be corrected. I could not say that I am 100% confident that a party member may have "gone for the greens" but in light of a lack of confirmation that is the case, i expect that this statment by is edited.

Unless there can be some sort of back up to prove that "sinn fein went for the greens" surely then the story, which is on the home page, should be removed by the moderators or edited by the author.

Otherwise it is nothing better than tabloid shite, that all of the indymedia subscribers are trying to find an alternative to

Apologies

by C.

Wed Jan 29, 2003 12:36

This will be corrected.

Thanks

by Killian

Thu Jan 30, 2003 01:01

Thanks for the acknowledgement and look forward to the correction.

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Bin Tax campaign, Increase in charges passed.

Comments (5 of 5)