Candidate Web Site North & East Ward   Kieran Cunnane
	East of the River
Renmore..  Mervue..  Ballybane..  Ballybritt..  Doughiska..  City Centre..  Tirellan..  Menlo..  Sandy Rd..  Riverside..  Castlegar..

If we leave the present Government in power, what we can expect to see is:

• Privatisation of water, waste management, public transport, education and healthcare.

• Battles with the Unions who will reject the privatisation agenda.

• Erosions of freedom of the press and democracy leading to more corruption and profiteering.

• Kyoto fines are now imminent due to the carte blanche being given to our top Industries to pollute.

• Multiple knock cutbacks. For example, how can you cut back education while trying to make us a high-cost high-skill economy..

• High service costs due to privatisation. The profiteers have to get their cut (return on investment at cost to the taxpayer).

• Toll roads. A ridiculous example of this is the Corrib outer bypass is now proposed as a toll road.

• Lack of R & D investment leading to more job losses.

• Greater social divide. Widening of the healthcare gap between rich and poor.

• Stealth taxes and increased cost of living. Our income tax will remain the same but our services and goods will continue to cost more.

• Crime, Government disillusionment and initial voter apathy.

• More planning led fiascos like the Dublin Port Tunnel and Red Cow Roundabout and disasters like Derrybrien.

• Developer led suburbia. The problem here is that the new developments is that social centres such as schools, churches, pubs, Community Centres and sports pitches and facilities lag many years (sometimes decades) behind. This method perpetuates pollution and wastes oil (a hugely valuable resource). It continues the obsession with the motor car as the mode of transport. . This despite the fact that we are very shortly heading towards the "peak oil" crisis, a fact that very few of our Ministers actually realise.

The makeup of future Governments is a question of vision. With wrong vision, good managers train the workers, build their muscles and show them how to work efficiently cutting their way through the forest of work to their final desired destination. However, they fail to get there because they don't realise that they are busy working in the wrong forest. Leaders are those who climb the highest tree, survey all around them and yell "wrong forest". Being busy is completely futile and a waste of energy - unless the right vision and leadership is present.

This lack of vision and leadership is being compounded much further by corruption and cronyism. Government cannot do the right thing, because they are too much in bed with developers. This Government has also been in power for far too long and is arrogant. It is time the people take democracy back. I firmly believe this will happen, but hope that it will be sooner rather than later, when they have most of the damage done.