"Green" policies are destroying this country

Great to see the Green Grinch foiled. Despite their best efforts Christmas is back to Dublin.

Irish Times today

Live crib finds new home in St Stephen’s Green

VIVIENNE CLARKE and

SARAH BURNS

The Green Party Lord Mayor of Dublin has been accused of playing politics with Christmas tradition after a new home was found for the live animal crib.Fine Gael councillor James Geoghegan, who represents the Pembroke district, said he was “delighted” that the event had been restored. “There was never any credible justification to take away the live crib in the first place. The Lord Mayor should never have used a Christmas tradition to make a political statement.”

It was confirmed yesterday that a new home has been found for the live crib in St Stephen’s Green. Featuring a donkey, two sheep and a goat gathered around a scene which depicts the nativity, it will be hosted at the Summer House in the city centre park from December 8th.

The decision to abandon the tradition at the Mansion House, which had been in place since 1995, was made by Lord Mayor of Dublin Caroline Conroy, a Green Party councillor.

Several Green Party councillors did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. Speaking privately, one party source conceded that Fine Gael had comprehensively maximised the situation to its benefit – saying it was “top notch trolling”.

Following discussions with the Irish Farmers’ Association, the Office of Public Works announced that it would return in a new location. The shelter will be installed in line with the Farm Animal Welfare Advisory Council’s guidelines and animals will be tended to onsite every day by their owner and will return to their farm in Wicklow each afternoon.

‘Bumper numbers’

Minister of State with responsibility for the Office of Public Works Patrick O’Donovan welcomed the announcement. He said on RTÉ’s Claire Byrne radio programme that he believed he was “standing up for tradition”.

Mr O’Donovan said that he anticipated “bumper numbers in attendance” due to the response from ordinary Dubliners and from people around the country who were “horrified when the concept of the crib was being reduced in the fashion that it was”.

“This is about me standing up for my way of life, the people I represent, rural Ireland, farmers and as well as that the children of Dublin who want to see a live crib . . . the IFA reached out to us, the vast majority of people value tradition and value the Christmas message and they value the crib,” said the Minister.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin told the Dáil the Government had paid “particularly acute attention” to “the methodology” of the campaign to have the live animal crib back in Dublin for Christmas.

He was responding to Fine Gael TD Alan Farrell who raised the controversy about the crib when he highlighted concerns about the importance of the “provision of information to the general public” on decisions that affect them.

Live crib finds new home in St Stephen’s Green

...its a lot more complicated than that, modern society has been effectively designed around the private car, society has been pressurized so much that now, most struggle with 'time poverty', whereby people simply dont have the resources available to them to achieve their needs, including the time to do so, this potentially could be one of the major failings of the newly introduced plastic bottle/can recycling system....

effectively forcing people out of their private car onto public transport potentially could increase the time required to achieve goals and needs, as the public transport option sometimes requires a considerable amount of more time from the individual to do so....

if we encouraged, possible even enforced radical work practices such as 4 day week etc, this may offset the potential negative effects of the forced reduction of private transport towards public, simply enforcing the reduction of private transport alone wont work, its just gonna continue to p1ss people off, such polices and approaches are very short sighted, our political institutions cant seem to grasp this at all...

...if you re into facts, be into facts!

true, but you may need to revise some previous comments such as,

'Funny how countries spending the most on wind are the dirtiest polluters, while the nuclear states remain the greenest

2/3rds Irelands installed wind is doing nothing this morning'

yes movements such as green movements are wrong about nuclear, if we want to have stable energy supplies, nuclear must be a part of that, but ireland may never do so, requiring us to outsource this need, i.e. uk and france etc

'Funny how countries spending the most on wind are the dirtiest polluters, while the nuclear states remain the greenest

2/3rds Irelands installed wind is doing nothing this morning'

noting, germany is a nuclear state, yes its in the process of winding it down, but....

can you provide us with data to support your claims about irelands wind operations?

yes, again, nuclear must be a part of our future energy needs or we ll simply end up fcuked, but ireland may never accept this reality, instead opting for outsourcing, which means remaining exposed to external energy market shocks....

yup, we re stuck, with the refusal of government parties to engage in viability studies for nuclear power, it probably wont ever happen here, again, we ve opted for outsourcing, this is making getting off fossil fuels almost impossible..... we d probably also need to have referenda in order to remove the anti-nuclear treaties

we re a strongly anti-nuclear country, its deeply embedded in our political institutions and society at large, this will be extremely difficult to change, and we may have to wait until these exposures seriously undermine our society and economy to even consider this

apologies, you are correct, a dail vote is only required to lift the bans that are in place, mentioned on this site