FINGLAS-BALLYMUN WARD:Crime and jobs are key issues in the mainly working class Finglas-Ballymun ward in Dublin, writes
“LISTEN, COULD you do something about the vandalism?” asks a woman in her 70s in Finglas west, Dublin.
Fianna Fáil’s Cllr Liam Kelly has just knocked on her door looking for her vote and the pensioner is determined to make him work for it.
“They burnt out a car right there last night,” she says, pointing to a patch of blackened concrete not far from her driveway.
“Last week they drove another car up that lane and set in on fire under the window of a woman in her 80s. See that wall? Knocked down twice by robbed cars, that was.”
If Friday’s elections are a referendum on the Government you’d never guess it in Finglas west.
When serious antisocial behaviour – drugs, stolen cars, vandalism – is taking place on your doorstep it doesn’t seem to matter how much money the Government wants to give Anglo Irish Bank this week.
“I’m a great believer in giving the community ownership,” says Kelly. “I think by letting the community manage clubs and facilities it empowers them and gives them pride. And obviously kids who get involved are less likely to be hanging around, getting involved in crime.”
Kelly, has been a councillor for six years and cites the case of Finglas Celtic football club. It applied for funding to build a new clubhouse on a green space off Kilshane Rd in Finglas west.
But over a year later the impressive pristine facility is still not in use because the adjoining pitch, which Dublin City Council was responsible for putting in place, is unplayable.
It flooded because of poor drainage and is now bumpy and overgrown with weeds. The council is still considering a consultant’s report on the problems.
“You have to ask yourself did the locals perform well on their end of the project; and the answer is ‘yes they did’. You couldn’t say the same about the council. There’s too much red tape, too much [council] control,” said Kelly.
On Dunsink Rd in Finglas west, Sinn Féin candidate Cllr Dessie Ellis is doing his last checks on a map pinned on his clinic wall. Red marker denotes the streets he has already covered. Sinn Féin’s strategy in the area seems more cohesive than Fianna Fáil’s.
While Kelly is running against other nominee’s from his party – Paul McAuliffe and Niall McCullagh – and an independent formerly linked to Fianna Fáil – Conor Sludds – Sinn Féin has put forward only their sitting councillors, Dessie Ellis and Ray Corcoran.
The other candidates in the Ballymun-Finglas ward are: John Dunne (WP), John Lyons (Lab), Owen Martin (WP), John O’Neill (Ind), John Redmond (Lab) and Dr Bill Tormey (FG).
Sinn Féin has decided Ballymun is Corcoran territory and are pushing constituents to give him their first preference vote. Finglas is Ellis’s stomping ground and he is being pushed as Sinn Féin’s first preference man there.
Every door Ellis calls to on the mixed working and middle-class Glasnevin Ave gets the pitch for the party.
He promotes himself first, then Corcoran followed by a brief pitch for Mary Lou McDonald for Europe.
“I got the lanes blocked off at the back of these houses so we should be okay here,” he says. “They tried to put a mobile-phone mast up the road a few years back and I fought that with the residents and won.”
Ellis runs his campaign from his constituency office built on to the side of his mother’s house on Dunsink Rd. He believes Fianna Fáil will suffer badly in Friday’s election and that Sinn Féin will gain in the Finglas-Ballymun ward.
Ellis, a former IRA member, has been a full-time councillor for 10 years.
He says the people he meets value the work the party has done against drug dealing and in continuing to get treatment for drug users.
“We led the [anti-drugs] marches years ago but I wouldn’t do that now. There’s too many weapons around. You’d only be putting people’s lives at risk.”
“An awful lot of people have lost their jobs. This is the first local election I’ve fought where people are talking about national issues rather than just local ones.”
