Michael D goes international

What can you say Michael D takes his campaign to France. For some unknown reason, a Michael D poster has appeared in bus stop in Brittany. Good old Michael D always looking for the international angle.

Any way we are down to one day to go, I have been on the campaign trail for 16 months now and it all comes down to one day.

I spent this afternoon in Thomastown and the evening with a large canvas team in Kilkenny City. Seamus Pattison joined me on the canvas again this evening.

The Kilkenny Voice has tipped Labour to be battling for the last seat, so get out an vote we need every number 1 possible.

Over 3,000 and thanks

The hits on my blog have really taken off over the last few weeks, at the last count tonight 3,017 hits have come onto my site since I started. Over 60 so far today alone. Thanks to everyone for visiting and I hope it gives you a small idea of what goes on behind the scenes of a campaign.

You will hear it said that Irish people are not interested in politics, however come election time we Irish like to talk about nothing else. Thanks to everyone who have greeted me at the door and promised the No.1. (I just hope enough people follow through with their promise).

Also thanks to my many canvas teams across Kilkenny. Tonight we had seven different canvas team knocking on doors ranging for Glemore to Castlecomer.

Thanks to my poster team who were out again yesterday and finally to my back off team for organising. With out the back off guys the campaign would not happen.

We are in a dog fight for that last seat, so come Thursday lets get out the vote

Hope everyone is enjoying the campaign and just over two days to go, lets keep it up.

The final days

We are now down to the final days of the campaign. Friday was spent in North Kilkenny in and around Casltecomer with the local branch. On Saturday I spent the day with one of the Canvas teams covering the City area. I have included a few of the guys who were canvasing with me to the end on Saturday. Sorry for not including everyone, however some of the guys had to head off early. On Sunday, I joined the guys in South Kilkenny canvasing FerryBank.

Only one week left

Well we are in the final straight, with one week left. Over the last week, Pat Rabbitte was down on Monday to visit Kilkenny and Thomastown. We visited the A&e in St. Lukes, which LAbour want to us as a model for A&E's for other hopsitals.

On Tuesday, we canvased areas in Thomastown and Inistoge during the day. That evening, I canvased with our City members.

On Wednesday, I spent the day in Mooncoin and Piltown with some of our South Kilkenny members and Tomás Breathnach. Thanks for the guys for the cup of tea after the canvas in Piltown.

Today was spent in Thomastown and Graignamanagh with Cllr Anne Phelan and then onto KCLR FM to be interviewed on the Farming Show.

On the door steps, there is a real feel for a change in Government made up of Labour and Fine Geal. The one thing that I have noticed in the last week is a fall off in the Green vote because people considering voting Green not sure if that vote will put FF back in power.

The next week is going to be fun

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.

Party Political Broadcast

Some people have being asking about the Labour Party Political Broadcast, which was direct and to the point.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEQNbKdh1



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVcyO1DTpHk

Labours Battle Bus visit's Carlow Kilkenny

Pat Rabbitte and the Labour Battle Bus will be visiting Thomastown and Kilkenny City on Monday morning. So if you around on Monday look out for us and call over to us for a quick chat.

http://www.labour.ie/manifesto/

Backing the nurses

I was delighted to support the local members of the Irish Nurses Organisation and the Psychiatric Nurses Association in their work stoppage on Wednesday outside St. Luke's Hospital. It sems ludicrous that Mary Harney, who's turning into a fine replacement for Thatcher, and the so-called negotiator we have for a Taoiseach have led us all to this mad point where virtually all the workers in our hospitals, from doctors down to ancillary staff are either engaged in or threatening industrail action. I stated plainly to the nurses that I fully support their claim for a 35 hour week, something that is long overdue. I see this evening that the Taoiseach is offering to carry out a feasibility study into providing this- nearly 20 years too late!!

What a joke that one of our most respected groups of workers are offered a study into a 20 year old demand. I also told the nurses that I support their demand for decent pay although not be easy to acieve while the nurses stay outside benchmarking. I agree with Michael D. Higgins that it is vital for bith the ICTU and the Taoiseach to get involved to ensure this dispute does not lead to long-term damage to the industrial relations climate. Hopefully we'll see Liz MacManus as the next Minister for Health to sort this out first-hand.

Mr Tayto

http://www.mrtayto.ie/


Taking a small break this morning from my campaign, I am across Mr Tayto and his election campaign. Great to see Tayto Crips bring a bit of fun to the campaign and we all look forward to Mr Tayto visiting Carlow / Kilkenny. Now to call and see if they are interested in talking about a vote transfer agreement.

Election debate

The Kilkenny Chamber of Commerce are hosting an election debate in Kilkenny City this evening. Sue Nunn of KCLR FM will be in the chair directing the questions.

The event starts at 8.00 so if you are around Kilkenny City this evening, pop in and take the opportunity to ask the candidates a question.

Lance Armstrong and a Kilkenny hurling stick

Getting away from politics for a minute, I came across a excellent news story during the weekend. Tony Griffin the Clare hurler is cycling 7000km to raise money for a cancer charity.

http://www.tonygriffinfoundation.com it is a charity worth supporting.

What caught my eye was the photo of Lance Armstrong getting a hurl, which was made by Dowling's of Patricks street in Kilkenny City. Shows you that even the seven times winner of the Tour de France knows class when he sees it.

Log onto Tony's site and donate. I know that I will be.

Now 2,750 hits (2,500 hits)

Just checked the hit rate on my election blog and it broke the 2,500 mark this evening.

So a quick thanks to everyone who has logged onto the blog and I hope is gives a small insight into an election campaign.

Thanks to everyone,
Mike.

Quick update the hit rate to the blog has really jumped this week. I have very good hit rate for http://www.mycandidate.ie.

Thanks to everyone for visiting

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.

A picture tells a thousand words-See the pledge videos here

The Labour Party has really adapted to this whole blogging stuff, and here you see how we're now using Youtube to spread our message. This is my first venture into putting video clips on my site, so here goes. The point of these two video clips is to higlight two of Pat Rabbitte and my pledges to you on the key things we will deliver if you elect us as part of the Government for change. To those of you without broadband in Kilkenny, my apologies if you can't access these.

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.

Call the Day Bertie

We had Pat Rabbitte down to visit last Friday and I would like to thank everyone who we met on the canvas trial. It is always nice to get a warn sunny day to get out and meet people, however the question on every ones limps was when will the big day be.

So come on Bertie call the election and come out and face the voters.

Extend the Line

As a former employee of Irish Rail, I have a great love and interest in railways and am fully supportive of the further development of the rail network in Ireland. However in South Kilkenny we have a situation of timber freight being transported into Waterford train station. It is then off loaded onto trucks and transported by road to the timber processing plant five miles away, near the Bellview Port. What makes this crazy is that the rail line passes within a mile of the timber plant and also when the timber is transported by road it passes through Ferrybank, which is a built up residential area.

It is time that Coillte, Irish Rail and Waterford Port Company to put their heads together and resolve this situation. The solution is so simple; all is needed is a small rail spur to be built directly into the plant. This would eliminate the need for the timber lorries to travel through Ferrybank. The Irish Exporters Association estimate that "One freight train takes 50 40-foot heavy good vehicles off the road, which results in a whole load of savings to the economy in the form of reduced road congestion, pollution and road accidents”

This should be a win win situation for everyone, the people of South Kilkenny get less lorries on the road and there is no need to pay the cost of transporting the timber by road from Waterford Station to the timber plant. Once again all that is lacking is the will and determination to make it happen.

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.

Health Survey Results

During January the as part of Labours National Health Survey we dropped 2,500 surveys into homes across Kilkenny and the results certainly make interesting reading. Seamus Pattison TD and myself launched the survey locally in mid January.

The national survey shows 42% of people wait for over 6 hours in Accident and Emergency services, but this is only 20% in the Kilkenny area. The same applies for those admitted to a hospital bed with 85% of Kilkenny respondents waiting less than 12 hours for a bed, compared with a national figure of 49%. Unfortunately, this seems to lead to Kilkenny being at the bottom of the pile for funding of the facilities we are demanding, rather than being rewarded. The good results are a credit to the staff in the hospital and we should be proud of them, however the government need to address the funding short falls.

The other national figures in the survey are truly shocking. The divide between public and private patients is astonishing. 84% of private patients are seen by a consultant within three months, compared to just 30% of public patients. 98% of private patients virtually all are seen within six months, compared to 58% of public patients. As many as 22% of public patients have to wait longer than a year to see a consultant, compared to 1% of private patients.

This proves to me that in this country wealth and not need determines a person’s access to health care. If there has ever been a reason to change a government this has to be it. Knocking on doors, you meet people on waiting lists and you see the suffering they have to endure because they cannot afford to buy their way up the queue. You cannot but be angry when you see people left to suffer and the state ignoring their suffering.