Officially Launched

Yet another busy week on the election trail, with Pat’s visit on Monday and my work as a local Councillor, I did not get much canvassing done this week. The weather and dark nights makes it hard to get to as many doors as you can during the summer.

Anyway the main news of this week was Pat Rabbitte officially launching my blog while in Kilkenny City. The blog is turning out to be a real success and I am getting a good reaction with voters able to keep up to date with my campaign.

As for next week, keep on canvassing and look for a new pair of shoes. You would be surprised how quick you can get through shoes on the canvass trail.

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.

Welcome to the O' Brien Blog

Welcome to my first attempt at blogging. As I said in my profile, I'm entering my 23rd year as an elected councillor. Since that time much has changed about politics, but if you had talked about websites, email and particularly blogging when I was first elected, you'd have been taken off to the local psychiatric hospital, now thankfully almost closed.

I believe that politicians must always find new ways to reach out to voters and to communicate with the voters so I hope that you will follow my news and thoughts on life as your local councillor, election candidate and hopefully the next Labour Party TD for Carlow/Kilkenny. Let me know what you think, for better or worse.

Here goes now for my first pic. Here you see me, my party leader Pat Rabbitte TD, Cllr. Seán Ó hArgáin, the quiet lad from Kerry and now Councillor for Kilkenny city, and Cllr.Phil Prendergast, a Kilkenny native and our candidate for South Tipperary. We're at the recent world ploughing championships in Grange, Co. Carlow. Having been reared as the son of a worker on the now world-famous Mount Juliet estate, I have always been close to the land and rural people. You'll see in my next blog that I am playing an active part in the party's policy on rural Ireland.