Pat's statement when visiting the A&E in Kilkenny

Labour’s plan for ending the chaos in A&E, which we are highlighting today, sets out a comprehensive and deliverable set of measures to improve conditions in A&E and across the health service. In drawing up our plan, we taken on board many of the lessons learned in St Lukes Hospital in Kilkenny. St Lukes is known throughout the health service as a hospital that works, and which has avoided the worst problems experienced in A&E units across the country. As I have seen on my previous visits to Kilkenny, there are a number of elements in making A&E departments function effectively, that we need to replicate.
As I have repeatedly emphasised, bed capacity is critical, both in terms of acute in-patient beds, and in respect of step-down facilities. That is why Labour is committed to building 2300 hospital beds and 1500 step-down beds.
We also need better organisation of A&E units and better liaison with local medical practitioners. A particular feature of St Luke’s is its Medical Assessment Unit, where patients can be seen, assessed and if necessary admitted to hospital without having to spend hours in A&E. Equally, it is important to have strong relationships with local GPs, to speed up admission to hospital based on a diagnosis made in the GP’s surgery. Too many people are spending too much time sitting in A&E, waiting to be seen by a less experienced doctor, when their GP has already assessed their condition.
Of course, we cannot exactly replicate the St Luke’s model in every hospital in every particular, but we can learn the lessons. Labour’s A&E plan sets out a series of measures to be put in place in A&E units across the country. These include medical assessment units, separate queues to treat minor injuries, better liaison with GPs and better facilities for GPs to diagnose problems before people go into hospital in the first instance.
We also need rigorous enforcement of cleaning protocols to end the phenomenon of dirty hospitals.
With these changes, and with the team-work approach which is so evident in St Luke’s, we can make a real difference to the A&E situation.

Mobile O'Brien

A Photo of my mobile advertising trailer. A nice idea that my campaign team thought up.




Behind this fencing is the sewage tank for a housing scheme in Gowran in Kilkenny. The developer is using a 40ft container to take the sewage for a new development in the village. This is not the only time this has happened in Kilkenny.

Any way we are off, a busy week canvasing, spent the week across Kilkenny.

Sunday was out with my poster teams getting the posters up. In most places we were the first party and in Kilkenny City it was ourselves and FF.

Monday was in Kilkenny with the City guys knocking doors.

Tuesday was in Thomastown and Graignamanagh, with Wednesday in Ferrybank in South Kilkenny.

Thursday was back into the City and Friday we covered Clogh and Moonenroe. I formally registered as a candidate on Friday as well.

Today it was back into the City with the City branch canvassing. Overall a very busy week getting out early and back to base very late at night. However the party members all over the county have been great turning out in force to help with the canvasing teams. A special thanks to my posters team who worked all day Sunday to make sure we got our posters out and up well before the other parties.

Marking Seamus Pattison's Retirement

In the coming week, we will see the dissolution of the government and an election called. For many of us this means the campaign to win a seat in the next Dáil, enters it final stages. However in Carlow / Kilkenny we are also marking the retirement after 46 years of Seamus Pattison.

Seamus has served both the Labour Party and people of Carlow / Kilkenny with great honour and dignity over these years. It is a credit to him that he was elected continually over many elections and through good and bad times for the Labour Party. I am proud to have worked on many of his campaigns and we had many long nights waiting for results to come in, but no matter what Seamus always pulled through.

It is only fitting that we thank Seamus and I personally am proud to be running as part of a strong team on behalf of the Labour Party to retain Seamus' seat and work for the people of Carlow / Kilkenny as he has done for many years.

It is popular now for varying vested interests to say that the people in each county should only vote and transfer to candidates living within their own counties. However Seamus is proof, if proof is needed, that it is the calibre of the person elected and not where they live that is important.

Seamus, thanks for the good years and I am grateful to you for the help and advice you have given so far in my campaign.

Billboards every where

Just a quick foot note on the last blog entry. I am now told that the guys putting up the posters made another mistake. One of our billboard's with Jim and myself was put up in Cork City about two week's ago.

Goes to show you that we get our message around.

Any way Pat Rabbitte is visiting us tomorrow and I will blog an update over the weekend

Election Bill Board's

Thanks to the people who have complimented us on our bill boards. They have been very effective in raising our profiles across both counties. The fact that the person putting up the posters for our ad agency made a mistake and put one of my bill boards up in Carlow and one of Jim's bill boards up in Kilkenny has been fun as well. It is amazing the conspiracy theories that this has caused. I have enjoyed listening to people explain to me that they had it on "good information" that this was a secret Labour Party strategy to show favour for one candidate over another. One of the local newspaper reporters was printing this as fact this week. I now know what the expression savaged by a dead sheep feels like.

If we had known the mistake the guys made was going to cause so much fun, we would have had all the bill broads put up in the wrong places. Just goes to show that the truth should never stand in the way of a good story.

Are you happy

I have included links to Pat's webcast explaining our commitments to the voters, log on a see for yourself on what Labour in government are committed to delivering.

http://www.makeachange.ie/index3.html Pat video
http://www.makeachange.ie/commit1.html Labour commitments

Would you post a letter in this

Would you post a letter in this post box, by the looks of this box it would seem to be out of commission. However it is the post box serving one of the busy areas in Kilkenny City. After contacing An Post, I have received a positive response from An Post following my request for improved maintenance of letterboxes throughout Kilkenny and Carlow. In a letter from the Leinster Area Operations Manager in Naas, I have been assured that painting and replacement of nameplates will be undertaken 'early in 2007'

It is unacceptable practice for the postal service to allow its equipment to deteriorate to its present state. We are entitled to be assured of the integrity of the mail service, in what claims to be a leading country in the communication age.

Health Survey

Over the weekend Seamus Pattison and I took part in the local launch of the Labour Party’s health survey. Nationally Labour is distributing 52,000 questionnaires to households asking for peoples’ opinions and experience of our health system. Locally Labour members are distributing 5,000 leaflets to homes across the electoral areas in Carlow / Kilkenny. In Kilkenny I want to personally thank my council colleagues, Seán Ó hArgáin, Marie Fitzpatrick, Maurice Shortall, Anne Phelan and Tomas Breathnach for organising the questionnaires to be delivered in their local area. People will tell you that no one is interested in politics any more, well to see Labour members braving the elements to hand deliver 5,000 surveys to homes across Carlow / Kilkenny proves otherwise.

It was also great to launch the surveys with Seamus Pattison, Seamus has given 45 years strong and loyal service to the public in this constituency and I am proud that he is helping and advising me in my campaign, to also offer the same level of service to hard working families across both counties.

http://www.labour.ie/policy/listing/20060424121433.html

Time for the government to admit their mistake.

Spent Saturday back on the canvas, which was my first day back after the holidays. My fellow Labour Councillor Anne Phelan joined me on the canvas in the village of Goresbridge. Goresbridge is within the local election area which both Anne and I represent. We both take pride in the fact that the Labour Party has the highest number of councillors in this area.

The main issue on the doors steps in Goresbridge was the closure of the local secondary school, St. Brigid's, a few years back. The local parents to their credit ran a very positive campaign to save the school and are now being proven correct in the fact that the school was needed. The schools in the surrounding areas are reaching full capacity and there is a need to cater for the increase numbers over the next few years. I am glad to say that both Anne and I were very strong in support for keeping the school open. However the Department of Education and government TD’s from the area did not listen to the people, invest in the school and keep it open.

Frankly, to this day I cannot see any sense in closing a great school like St. Brigid’s. It is quite clear to me as well as everyone in the local area that a school now needs to be rebuilt in Goresbridge. Needless to say government TD’s will be falling over each other offering to lobby on the matter closer to the election.

It is time for the government and the department to admit they were wrong and start the plans to reopen the school; of course they will in the process waste millions replacing the school they closed in the first place. Not that wasting hard working families tax money matters to this government, wasting money is something they are very good at.

My New Years Resolution

Well the festive season is over and we now face into the election some five or six months away. From here on in it is back to campaigning hard to make sure Carlow / Kilkenny has strong representation by a Labour Party T.D. after the next election.

On a non political point, we all have made New Year resolutions and I am going to share with you one of mine. The resolution is to buy more “Fair Trade” products in 2007 and help support ethical business in the developing world. The Fair Trade organisations are doing excellent work supporting fair prices to local independent producers in developing countries. As the saying goes “a help up not a hand out” and Kilkenny City can be proud in the fact that it is leading the way by becoming a Fair Trade City.

I would urge everyone to support Fair Trade by looking for their symbol when shopping and lend your support to prove that ethical business in the developing world can be a success. For more information on finding Fair Trade products the website address is www.fairtrade.ie. Particularly, I would ask the local farm families within Carlow / Kilkenny to support their colleagues in developing countries to make a liveable wage from their farms.

A happy New Year to you all and see you all on the door steps over the next few months.

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.

Time to end homelessness

It never ceases to amaze me that we still have people without homes in this Celtic Tiger economy. When the Simon community started in Ireland in the sixties, homeless people, and they were almost all men, were confined to the big cities, and mostly Dublin. I also saw my fair share of Irish people who fell on hard times in London, where I first became a Labour Party member. Indeed I should say congratulations to Emmet Stagg TD who has done so much to highlight the ongoing difficulties these people face in England, despite havcing contributed so much to our economy.

I am glad to support a new campaign on the issue called Make Room, a joint initiative of the Saint Vincent de Paul, Threshold, Simon and Focus Ireland who are demanding an end to homelessness by 2010. This will mean that homeless people in this city and county should be catered for, and that we should provide homes for those who need them. Public housing is always built when Labour are in Government, and ignored when we're not. It needs a Labour Minister in charge of this area again, before the spiralling waiting lsits for housing will finally be cleared, and biulders and developers made to liove up to their responsibilities once and for all.

Log on here to support the campaign.

Climate Change

Attended the documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, staring AL Gore during the week and I would recommend everyone to go see the film. This is truly an outstanding production and really brings home the effect we are having on the climate through our actions.

When you see the government allow the Sugar plant in Carlow be demolished, when with proper investment, the plant could have been converted to produce Bio ethanol, which can be used as a fuel source for transportation.

Using sugar beet to produce the eco friendly fuels, would have had a positive impact not only on the environment, but also on local jobs and local agriculture. The potential of this industry to create jobs locally should not be under rated. However, without the foresight to see the potential we will merely repeat the mistakes of the past.

The best example of this has to be the railways, nationally we are spending millions to replace lines we destroyed in the past. In years to come, we will have to build bio fuel plants to replace the sugar factory's we demolished in the past. Will we as a nation never learn.

A Fair Pension For All

Another interesting week on the election campaign trail, so far I have been out canvassing for six months. It would look like Bertie is going to call the election for some time in May, so I am nearly half way through the campaign.

Glad to see that the papers covered my support for the pension rights for farm women. For a country awash with money, the government does not seem to be focusing on real issues. The pension right's of farm women is not just a farming issue. It goes to heart of what we should stand for, both urban and rural, it is about citizens being protected and cared for by the state. To see hard working families having to campaign for basic pension rights in a booming economy, shows up the huge weakness we still have in social infrastructure.

On a brighter note, I was delighted to be present at the formal launch of the rural walkway from Kilkenny City to Inistoge. The walkway cuts through some of the most beautiful countryside in Carlow / Kilkenny. Seeing the countryside opened up in an agreed manner is good news for all and will most certainly boost tourist numbers in the area. Hopefully, this is only the start of such projects for Carlow / Kilkenny.