Archive for May, 2010

A TD’s work is never done

A TD’s work

is never done

What does a TD do? It seems like a simple enough question but when you think about it, the answer is not that straight forward.

At a meeting regarding the possibility of Educate Together getting the patronage of a new second level school in Gorey last week, no TDs were in attendance. Apologies from a few of the TDs from the South East region were read out initially by Karen Loughran who was chairing the meeting. There was vote in the Dáil apparently.

Following the opening speaker, Educate Together CEO Paul Rowe, Ms. Loughran returned to the podium to announce that a few more TDs had been in touch and would be unable to attend due to their commitment in the Dáil.

It must have been some sleeper members of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour who tipped off their master in Dublin that a phone call was required to say they wouldn’t be attending the meeting.

Now what I can’t understand is why they should have been there in the first place. The meeting was organised by the second-level working group from Gorey’s Educate Together to inform prospective parents about how they would run a second level school. It was never going to be a charged political debate with local representatives espousing the benefits or lack thereof of an Educate Together secondary school.

Yet this meeting will have been just one of thousands that TDs are invited to and expected to show a face at throughout the year in Wexford. Add to that funerals, christenings, birthdays, bar mitzvahs, shop openings, GAA matches and tiddly winks games and the amount of time a TD has to actually do anything constructive in the Dáil appears to be very small.

The problem comes back to the current political system which means that TDs have to make sure their constituents are happy because if not, come next Election Day they will not be re-elected.

This means that politicians in Ireland are looking at keeping their own corner of Ireland happy and not looking at the country as a whole. They feel under pressure to attend every meeting or event they are invited to for fear of upsetting locals and lessening their chances of re-election.

As part of the Aftershock series of programmes on RTÉ 1 last week, Dan O’Brien looked at the political system and how it needs to be reformed. He says that our current system lead to “ineffective and underperforming governments.”

The programme went on to say that our political system creates politicians who are “pathologically attached to their grassroots.” This can be seen at every funeral and field day across Wexford when politicians show up for no other reason than it is expected of them.

What good can a TD do at the funeral of someone they never knew? Would it not be better to allow them to free up this time to meet with companies looking to invest in Wexford or attend committee meetings in the Dáil?

It is therefore important that as voters we should not decide on who to elect dependant on the quota of funerals candidates attend in the run up to an election but consider the candidate who will represent Wexford and Ireland as a whole.

The whole political system needs serious reform and this will have to happen at national level rather than local level but if it does happen then maybe TDs will no longer have to look at the narrow view and will be able to see what is good for the country as a whole which invariably will be good for Wexford as well.

2010
05/18
CATEGORY
The Gorey Details
Uncategorized
Wexford
TAGS

Leave a comment

Legal Highs go underground

Legal Highs go

underground

Last week we reported in the paper that the head shop [The Stone Zone] based in Pugin Court on Michael’s Road in the town was to close.

While technically this was the case, the availability of the legal highs being sold in the store remains. A delivery service akin to a pizza or Chinese takeaway business is now in operation from the owner’s Wexford store.

All you need to do is text your order to the number posted on the closed front door of the shop and hey presto – you have your drugs delivered to your door.

While there was a broad welcoming of the closure of the store around Gorey last week, at a poorly attended meeting organised by the School Completion Programme in the Ashdown Park Hotel on Thursday night last, a HSE drugs officer warned about the lack of a public face on these head shops.

Susan Barnes, Drugs Education Officer, told the thirty or so parents who attended that the closure of the head shop may not be such good news. The sale of these legal highs has gone underground and only a mobile phone, which you cannot call, remains.

Ms. Barnes said by pushing these operators underground, the size and scale of the problem will not be known. It was easy for anyone to gauge the size of the problem previously by watching the shop for a while and noting how many people went in and out. This is no longer possible.

While the government is set on introducing legislation to curtail the operation of these shops, as Ms. Barnes pointed out, the people behind manufacturing these drugs have employed some of the world’s brightest minds.

From scientists to marketing gurus, the people who create the legal highs have consistently been one step ahead of the law makers in this and every other country. The government initially looked at banned certain products but this was attempted in the UK previously and the manufacturers had five replacement products ready to replace the banned one immediately.

All they need to do was change the active ingredient slightly and they circumvented the legislation.

The reason the head shop in Gorey closed its doors was because no insurance company in Ireland would cover Pugin Court while such a shop was operating from that location.

This may be an avenue other landlords could go down in their attempts to close the head shops but whatever they do it will not get away from the fact that there is a demand for these products.

The fact the owners have offered a delivery system to get their products to the people of Gorey is a clear indication of the amount of business they were doing while they were open. It is only a matter of time that another of these shops open in the town if there is such a demand.

Unfortunately the meeting last week was poorly attended as it is by informing and educating yourself about exactly what these drugs can do to you, can the problem begin to be solved.

Children are very susceptible as they see these shops openly selling the products legally and they believe they cannot do any harm.

Susan Barnes said the most important fact that parents needed to tell their children is that legal does not mean safe. This however is a hard message to get across.

The children no longer have any fear about these drugs as they were not illegal one parent told the meeting last week. This is a worrying fact and one that could see these products do some serious damage to the young people of Gorey before the government figure out a way of curtailing their sale.

2010
05/18
CATEGORY
The Gorey Details
Wexford
TAGS



Leave a comment

Board of Management were right not to give in

The Board of Management of Gorey Community School is seen in many quarters as the bad guy in the current impasse relating to enrolment in the school – however they seem to be looking out for the welfare of their students which is to be commended.

Anyone who has been in the school when the school bell goes for lunch break will know that 1600 students rushing about is a sight to behold – and to be scared of. To manage and control this number of hormonally imbalanced teenagers is a logistical nightmare I would imagine. To educate this number of students is almost an impossibility.

Yet Gorey Community School continues to surpass expectations and deliver top academic results despite the amount of students it caters for. The staff at the school have to be commended for this achievement as well as the principal Michael Finn, who throughout this debacle has firmly kept his eye on his student’s welfare and nothing else.

The Board of Management decision last Monday week to adhere to their enrolment policy and not permit any more than the sanctioned 270 pupils enter first year has angered and bewildered a lot of parents in north Wexford, but in reality their decision was an easy one.

No official communication had been made between the school or Board members and the Department. Yes John Browne and Seán Connick had received long letters from minister Coughlan thanking them for their interest in this matter and telling them devolved funding would be made available. They were quick to issue a press release basically stating: “Look at us. We’re brilliant. Look what we’ve done for Gorey.”

However a letter to a Wexford TD cannot be brought to the bank by the Board of Gorey Community School. Why did the Minister not contact Michael Finn or the chairperson of the Board, Sr. Kathleen? The only contact the school got was a call from a woman in the building section of the Department who gave some very vague details to the Principal.

This latest mess the Department has made is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to dealing with the educational needs of Gorey. That a town the size of Gorey has only one secondary school is ridiculous. Yes the town has experienced a population boom in the past decade, but it’s not as if this was not highlighted to the officials in the Department a long time ago.

A new school has been officially promised for Gorey since 2005. Yet today not a sod has been turned on the proposed site and last week it was revealed that the outline planning permission granted for the school will have to be reapplied for, pushing back any completion date.

The Department ‘promises’ to have a school delivered for Gorey by 2012 – it does not however state when in 2012 this will happen. Going on past performance is it any wonder that the Board of Management didn’t want to accept funding from the Department do to a lack of trust.

If we imagine for a minute the Board decided to take on the extra students and build the new classrooms. What then? More pupils crammed into an already overcrowded space? Would the Department feel as if the problem had been solved and put the completion of the new school on the long finger?

However much parents of the 39 children on the waiting list want them to go to Gorey Community School, surely they want them to go to a Gorey Community School which is not overcrowded and has a Board of Management which is looking out for the welfare of their children.

2010
05/18
CATEGORY
The Gorey Details
Wexford
TAGS




Leave a comment

Gorey’s Teen parents are the lucky ones

Last Thursday the Chief Executive of Barnados opened only the third of their Teen Parent Support Programmes (TPSP) in Gorey.

This raises a number of questions. Does Gorey have a particular need for such a service? Is there an epidemic of underage pregnancies in the north Wexford area? Most importantly however, why is this only the third of these programmes in the country?

Having a child when you are in your teenage years is probably one of the most frightening experiences your can go through. It is almost certainly unexpected and a lot of the time a result of a one-night stand where no contraception was used.

The fear of informing your parents, your peers and the nosy neighbours across the street could consume a person of considerable mental strength – not to mind a teenage girl.

While Gorey in the 21st century is a considerably more liberal and tolerant society than it was only 50 years ago, there is still a serious stigma attached to any teenage girl who gets pregnant.

While we no longer ‘get rid’ of the baby or send the girl to live with a relative in another part of the country for nine months, people will still have preconceived notions when they see a school girl in her uniform who is pregnant.

The programme launched last week, which has been operating in Gorey since July 2008 offers a welcome relief to these teenage parents. It is somewhere they can go without being judged and without fear of recrimination.

The staff there will help the young parents to find their way and inform them of what they need to do and how to do it.

Fortunately for the teenagers of north Wexford, they have a service like this, however if you were from Enniscorthy say and needed the help of TPSP you would be out of luck.

There are only three of these programmes, one in Dublin, a student parent programme in Waterford and the service in Gorey.

There is a serious demand for this service – Gorey TPSP has 45 clients at the moment – yet it has been left up to Barnados to provide it where they can. In other parts of the country there is a mish-mash of people trying providing a similar service. The HSE and Foroige are two of the groups who attempt to help teenage parents, but with nothing on the scale of the TPSP.

While the Irish education system still lags decades behind best practice in relation to sex education the problem is only likely to grow – here and across the country.

One mother speaking about her experiences at the launch told the assembled crowd of her dire situation when she found out she was pregnant. She was no longer on speaking terms with her parents and didn’t know what to do. She was lost.

Having been put in touch with TPSP, they helped her more out of her family home but also helped her to reconnect with her parents and helped her to look forward.

The goal of TPSP is to make teenage parent realise that having a child at that age does not necessarily mean the end of your life. While it may seem like an oxymoron, teen parents in Gorey are the lucky ones. They have access to this superb service while teen parents up and down the country have no such luck.

A lot of them are left to fend for themselves, alone and in fear. If the government are not going to update the sex education in our schools then they have a moral obligation to help those in trouble through teenage pregnancy and provide funding for Barnados to set up more of these centres around the country.

2010
05/18
CATEGORY
The Gorey Details
Wexford
TAGS



Leave a comment

Public mislead on Methadone Clinic

The furore surrounding the possible locating of a methadone clinic in a HSE centre at the new Civic Centre has caused outrage but is this due to scaremongering or a genuine belief that Gorey will be overrun with heroin addicts.

The facts are that the HSE is planning is set up a methadone prescription service at the Mental Health Day Hospital which will begin operating soon in the Civic Centre. It will operate for a total of three hours per week. No methadone will be dispensed at the site.

The Clinic will be used by people attempting to rid themselves of heroin addiction in the north of the county. No one from any other county will be accommodated in the Clinic.

Currently those people in Gorey who want to get off heroin have to travel to Waterford or Dublin to attend a GP who can prescribe methadone. GPs need to be specially trained to dispense methadone and none of the GPs in Gorey are so trained.

However once the prescription has been received the users they travel back to Gorey where a number of pharmacies currently dispense methadone – and have done so for many years.

At the moment a number of GPs in Co. Wexford have received – from the HSE – training in relation to dispensing methadone which will eventually eliminate the need for methadone users to travel to Waterford or Dublin.

So there it is. Methadone users have been in Gorey for many, many years and have received the drug from pharmacies in the area for many, many years. They have been among us for a long time yet now that a specialised centre is being talked about, a sense of fear has been instilled among the public who are looking to oppose the measure being brought to their town.

The problem surrounding the establishment of the Clinic, which will offer users a full aftercare service, is that the HSE need to apply to Wexford County Council for a change of use to the existing premises.

This will allow those opposed to the Clinic to lodge complaints and delay the Clinic interminably. While the Wexford County Council planners may give the go ahead for the clinic a large number of prominent public representatives have said they would appeal the decision to An Bord Pleanála.

A series of public meetings have been held in the town to ‘inform’ people about the situation, though a lot of what has been said has been scaremongering. Initially the people were told the clinic would be a dispensing clinic with users from all over the South East descending on Gorey just to get their fix – even though pharmacies in the town have been and continue to dispense the drug on a daily basis.

There will be no easy solution to this problem and it is set to run and run.

2010
05/18
CATEGORY
The Gorey Details
Wexford
TAGS




Leave a comment