Taxpayers have even more reason to be worried about Fianna Fáil’s €90 billion NAMA gambit after Minister Willie O’Dea admitted on the Pat Kenny show that NAMA is a ‘gamble’, Fine Gael Enterprise Spokesman Leo Varadkar TD has warned.

“Willie O’Dea and Peter Bacon, the architect of NAMA, both accept that this is a massive gamble. Taxpayers are right to ask why Fianna Fáil is so keen to gamble with their money without asking the banks, bondholders and institutional investors to take their fair share of the pain.

“In dealing with the banking crisis, the objective must to minimise the risk to taxpayers and to get credit flowing to businesses and homebuyers. NAMA achieves neither of these objectives. It won’t get credit flowing and it exposes taxpayers to all of the risk.

“Fine Gael’s proposals for a National Recovery Bank would be far more likely to get credit flowing again, and help job creation, without indulging in the biggest gamble in the history of the State.”

Fine Gael TD for Dublin West, Leo Varadkar, has condemned the decision of An Post to remove the postbox from Castleknock Village. The post box has been moved to Park Avenue which is closer to the new post office in the Castlecourt centre.

‘An Post moved the post box without any consultation with public representatives or local residents. Post boxes should be located where people congregate. Castleknock Village is a busy place with pubs, restaurants, shops, other businesses, a bus stop, several car parks and a church. It is the most obvious to locate a postbox in the area. It makes no sense to have postbox at the entrance to Deerpark, another at the entrance to Park Avenue but none in the village centre.’

‘Both Cllr Eithne Loftus and I have written to An Post to ask them to review this decision.’

Govt to adopt FG employment policy

Fine Gael Spokesperson on Enterprise, Trade & Employment, Deputy Leo Varadkar this evening (Friday) welcomed a comment from Minister of State Dara Calleary, who was speaking at the MacGill Summer School, Glenties, which announced Government plans to introduce new legislation allowing employers bound by Employment Regulation Orders (EROs) to plead inability to pay minimum pay rates* in certain circumstances, subject to the approval of the labour court.

This was proposed in a Fine Gael Private Members Bill, which was published earlier this year. The Bill was entitled the Industrial Relations (Protection of Employment) amendment Bill 2009.

“Currently employers who get into difficulty can plead inability to pay both the national minimum wage and increases agreed by the social partners in national wage agreements. However an anomaly exists for certain employers who are covered by EROs, for whom no flexibility exists. These include sectors which are suffering from the effects of the recession including hotels, catering, agriculture and the security industry.
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Madam, – Fintan O’Toole (Opinion, July 21st) is right to draw attention the background, instincts and ideology of the members of “An Bord Snip”. In doing so, however, he betrays much of his own ideology and flawed orthodoxy.

He contends that the economic crisis was caused by “the banks and developers”. This is facile. The banks and some developers certainly share much of the responsibility for this crisis, but absolving all others does not stand up to scrutiny. This is particularly true of the crisis in the public finances which he argues are merely “a function of the real economy”. …[more]

Leixlip plant now third on new technology list

The announcement today (Tuesday) that up to 300 INTEL employees are facing compulsory redundancy is a devastating blow to the families involved and is also an indication of how uncompetitive Ireland has become for multinational industries, according to Fine Gael Spokesperson for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Leo Varadkar T.D.

“This is devastating news for INTEL employees, their families and for business in the region. It follows on from earlier this year when 250 other employees who were forced onto the dole. It also completely undermines Minister Ryan’s announcement today that 300 jobs are to be created in the telecoms area of what he termed the ‘Smart Economy’. Holding onto the jobs we have is a critical part of any employment strategy.

“Crucially, the decision is also a signal that Intel’s plant at Leixlip will now drop to third choice site for new technology, which will result in reduced investment in research and development projects at the plant, the life-blood of any tech industry.

“I am calling on the Tánaiste to intervene in trying to defer these compulsory redundancies by:
Lobbying through the EU to restore the previously allowed grant funding that was due to be invested in Intel
To facilitate the plant to compete better with its competitors and other large multinationals.

“The genuine core of Ireland’s prosperity between 1999 and 2002 was the employment provided by multinationals and the direct investment into Ireland because of our educated workforce and before we became utterly uncompetitive. We are now overly dependent on the traded sector and unless we become an attractive place in which to invest again any economic recovery strategy is doomed to fail.

A close reading of the Bord Snip Nua report clearly shows that the report was ready for publication more than three weeks ago and that publication was withheld until the Dail Recess so that Ministers could avoid answering questions on the cutbacks proposed to their departments and agencies according to Leo Varadkar, Spokesperson on Enterprise, Trade & Employment.

“The McCarthy report actually calls for some cuts that have already been announced and refers to legislation which will ‘be published shortly’ which has actually already passed through the Dail and Seanad.  Among the recommendation made by McCarthy are cutbacks to the REPS scheme.  They were announced by the Minister for Agriculture before the report was published.  Section 12 of Volume II recommends further cutbacks to the Oireachtas.  In this section, reference is made to legislation due to be ‘published shortly’ to change the way MEPs are paid.  In fact, this bill was published over a month ago and has already been passed through the Dail and Seanad.

“Anyone who reads this report closely can see that it was ready for publication several weeks ago and has not been edited since then.  I can only surmise that the government deliberately withheld publishing the report until the Dail went into recess so that they could avoid responding to the recommendations made.  I believe that the Dail should be recalled to discuss the McCarthy Report and the forthcoming Report of the Commission on Taxation so that we can hear from individual ministers’ response to the recommendations made regarding their budgets.

Public Meeting on Uxbridge Development

More than one hundred people attended a public meeting organized by Fine Gael to discuss new plans to redevelop Castleknock Village.  The developers, the Uxbridge Consortium, propose to build a development of four blocks rising to a height of five storeys on a backland site of less than one hectare in Castleknock Village.  The proposed development will include a large shopping centre, fifteen retail units, a pedestrian plaza, a small café, medical centre, offices and almost fifty apartments over a double-basement car park for more than three hundred cars.  The development is broadly similar to one proposed by the same consortium last year.

‘Cllr Eithne Loftus and I were encouraged that more than one hundred people turned up for the meeting in the middle of July.  It’s heartening to know that so many people care about the future of our neighborhood’, said Deputy Varadkar.

The meeting voted unanimously to oppose the planning application.

‘While we do not object to an appropriate development that would enhance the core of the village, we are very much opposed to this proposal which really belongs in the city centre not in a suburban village.  The proposed development is too big and too high.  It will further worsen traffic in the already congested village and will turn neighbouring estates into car parks.  This development offers no community gain.

Please find below the detailed submission from myself and Cllr. Eithne Loftus to Fingal County Council in relation to the proposed redevelopment of Castleknock Village by Uxbridge Limited.
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Fine Gael TD for Dublin West, Leo Varadkar has welcomed a decision by Ben Dunne to keep open the Swimming Pool at Westpoint gym in Blanchardstown. Mr Dunne has announced that the pool would close in August and offered a refund to any member who wished to leave the club.

‘I strongly welcome the decision to keep the pool area open. Westpoint has thousands of members living in the Dublin 15 and provides a very well equipped gym, swimming pool, sauna and steam room at a very reasonable price. I am glad that this will continue.’

Just a reminder that myself and Councilor Eithne Loftus are holding a public meeting this Tuesday at July 14th at 8pm in Myos in Castleknock in relation to the plans to redevelop Castleknock Village proposed by Uxbridge Ltd.