Sunday, December 03, 2006

Does it ever stop raining




Does it ever stop raining is a question I asked myself this week. Had a good start to the week canvassing, with Tomas Breathnach in South Kilkenny. We canvassed in Piltown and Fiddown and got a great reception on the doorsteps. Fiddown is a typical ‘New Ireland’ village, once a quiet rural village; it has seen four housing developments of varying sizes built over the last few years. A new housing development is just about to start as you drive into the village as well. It is great to see new life expanding into rural villages, however the services to support the population growth needs to keep up with the speed of development.

I was delighted to see CIE have carried out upgrade work on the rail line running through the village. Fiddown used to have a station, however while the beautiful station house is still there, the train no longer stops in the village.

Later in the week I travelled to Dublin, where the Labour Party were marking Seamus Pattison’s 45 years service as a sitting T.D. A fitting tribute to Seamus who is now the longest serving T.D. in the State. Once I get the pictures of the night, I will post some of them on the Blog.

During the week, Grennan College invited me to an evening engagement, which I enjoyed greatly. This was a benefit night organised by the domestic science students to raise much-needed funds for the Carlow/ Kilkenny homecare team. A wonderful four-course meal, well done to the students and from what I hear well done on the amount you raised for this worthy cause.

Had great plans for later in the week to take a day off the canvas trail to get a round of golf in at my local golf club, Mountain View. Election campaigning is bad for the old golf game and I have not had the chance to get many rounds in this year. Anyone who has seen my golf game will tell you that I could do with as many practice rounds as possible.
With the amount of rain and high winds, these plans went out the window and so did canvassing as well. All the same got the chance to catch up on some of my day-to-day business as a local councillor.

3 comments:

Seán Ó hArgáin said...

What a modest man. He drives it straight down the middle. It's giving lessons he should be, not taking them. About time they thought about reopening some of those stations in South Kilkenny Michael. If they can provide a commuter service from Cobh and now Middleton into Cork, why not a Waterford commuter service as well?

Gar U. Luss. said...

Well done Mike, with the new blog. Don't worry about the rain. As my old mother used to say to me, "it'll help you grow."

If they don't built the rail infrastructure now, they'll be spending our hard earned cash for carbon credits before too long.

This government, particularly the PD element, are INCAPABLE of thinking past next week.

Anonymous said...

Hi Mike,

We should be re opening the station and getting south kilkenny linked up to the national railway. Good for tourism and jobs