From TaraWatch Re Green Giveaway

TARAWATCH PRESS RELEASE

09 October 2009

‘Protests Planned for Green Convention at RDS Tomorrow’

TaraWatch is calling for demonstrations at the Green party Special Convention at the RDS tomorrow, to protest against the lack of protections for the environment in the proposed Programme for Government.

Education and electoral reform are not core Green issues. The core idea behind the Green Party is supposed to be protecting the natural and built heritage, from industry and inappropriate development. Anti-corruption is an integrated part of that, because it is what leads to economic and environmental damage, by by-passing the legal checks and balances.

At this very moment, Minister John Gormley is actively defending Ireland’s behaviour in relation to the M3, in the European Court of Justice, against the European Commission, and arguing that the decision by Dick Roche to demolish Lismullin is NOT subject to the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive (EIA) and that Roche did NOT have to perform one when he made the decision.

Gormley is also arguing to the European Commission that the National Development Plan (NDP) is NOT subject to the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Directive, and that the NDP is not actually a development plan at all, but rather simply a ‘financial plan’, and therefore there does not have to be cost-benefit analysis or independent assessment done on the NDP.

Gormley is NOT arguing that Ireland must ratify that UN Convention Against Corruption, which Michael McDowell had promised he would.

Gormley has NOT introduced the new National Monuments Act, which he promised he would deliver in 2008, and will not do so until 2010.

Gormley has NOT fully ratified the AARHUS Convention, for public participation in public decision-making, making Ireland the only country in Europe not to have done so.

Gormley has NOT reversed of the guillotining Freedom of Information Act, which would aid the public in preventing further economic and environmental damage.

Gormley has delayed the UNESCO nomination of Tara and a couple of dozen other of Ireland’s most important heritage sites for 2 years, even though Ireland is well past the ten year time limit of revising the UNESCO list, under the UNESCO Convention. The last revision was in 1992.

Vincent Salafia, a lecturer in Sustainable Management at Queens University Belfast, said:

“The Green Party is quietly facilitating the economic and physical ruin of this country, and TaraWatch is calling on all concerned citizens to join them in demonstrating at the RDS tomorrow.

“The Green Party is a fraud, as it has abandoned its core environmental concern, which is what got them elected in the first place.

“The Green Party is actually demanding things that Fianna Fail want to do anyway, because they know it is needed, but want to able to say they were forced by the Greens to do it, in order to keep their cronies happy. The Greens are arguing for issues that they know are vote-getters, period.”

“Paying above market value for property under NAMA is “criminal”, and “robbing the taxpayer”, according to the economist Stiglitz. It is the most corrupt piece of legislation ever conceived of in Ireland.

ENDS

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2 Comments

  1. Hmmm… that’s quite a litany alright. Not an impressive one either.

    John Gormley also promised that the Greens would end fluoridation within six months if they ever got into Government. That has yet to happen.

    “one ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind them”. I used to think Tolkien was talking about money… but maybe he was talking about what drives people to pursue money: the illusion that if they had “power” they’d make a difference.

    But, from your list and my own perceptions, it seems the greens are now bound in the darkness. Time will tell.

    Although what it will tell might not be a pretty story. And I feel sorry for those who gave so much of their lives, energy, faith and love into building the party… only to see it come to this.

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