Cllr Melisa Halpin of the People Before Profit Alliance (PBPA) will put forward a motion at tonight’s meeting of the Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Co Council Transport Area Committee calling on the Manager to re-instate a single pay parking zone for Dun Laoghaire town and its residents.

Prior to the general election local residents and the People Before Profit Alliance organised protests opposing the removal of the 46a from Monkstown Farm and cuts to the other bus services in the area.
Labour and Fine Gael TD’s including Eamon Gilmore and Sean Barrett said they supported the campaign. But once in government they have continued to carry through the cuts, both locally and across the city. Cllr Melisa Halpin and Richard Boyd Barrett TD have met with Dublin Bus management and the junior minister responsible for Dublin Bus – appealing to them to restore the 46a to Monkstown Farm and protect other local bus services. So far there has been no response.
At a recent public meeting on the issue in Dun Laoghaire, local residents agreed to formally request a meeting with the Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore to ask him to re-instate the 46a to the Farm.
Residents have also planned further protests in September to mark the first anniversary of the removal of the 46a from Monstown Farm and Abbey Rd.
Bus campaigners in Dun Laoghaire have now linked in with other communities in Dublin fighting bus cuts. The newly established city-wide Save Our Bus Services campaign has held protests all across the city against the cuts and plans further actions in the Autumn.

Last night Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council voted unanimously to call on the government to safeguard the future of publicly owned forests.
The motion, put forward by People Before Profit councillor Melisa Halpin and seconded by People Before Profit councillor Hugh Lewis, praised the work done by the Dublin Mountain Partnership in making the mountains more accessible to the people of the county and called on the government to safeguard the future of our public forests.

Cllr Halpin was co-opted onto the council last night to replace Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett who was recently elected to the Dail.

The meeting was Cllr. Halpin’s first representing the people of Dun Laoghaire and speaking to the motion, she expressed concern that the EU/IMF deal could see the sale of state assets such as Coillte and noted that Fine Gael were committed to the privatisation of many state assets.

“We, in People Before Profit, are completely and utterly opposed to the sell off of our forests. Here in Dun Laoghaire Rathdown, forests occupy 2500 hectares and are an invaluable asset to the people of the county. It is utterly unthinkable that the forests of Ireland would be sold off for the sake of short term financial gain.”

“Privatising our state assets is no way of dealing with the economic crisis. It will lead to job losses and wage reduction which will in turn lead to further job losses. Coillte is still a profitable company that pays a dividend to the state”.

“While the EU/IMF deal only talks of the ‘possible privatisation of state owned assets’, we have seen in Greece that a recent EU/IMF progress report on their bail out has called for a ‘scaling up of the privatisation’. With Fine Gael in government all state owned companies are under threat of privatisation.