Picture: Valerie O’Sullivan
It’s the season for making lists; compiling specific requests to be dispatched to the North Pole and adding the turkey foil and AA batteries to the festive necessities to be liberated from the frenetic supermarket rush.
But one crucial list that should most definitely be occupying the minds of the people of Killarney from now until the clock chimes 10 bells tomorrow night is what the town they call home needs and which of the seventeen eager general election candidates are best positioned to deliver?
The list of Killarney’s pressing needs is a long one, actually growing out of all proportions and in existence so long at this stage that the paper it is written on is becoming faded.
The issues contained therein are in urgent need of being addressed to stop the town sliding further into the land that time forgot.
So what, in fact, does Killarney really require?
Housing has to be priority number one. The new 249-unit development at Cronin’s Wood and 224 residential units at Port Road – planning permission has been granted for both – will be a very significant help but a massive investment is needed to regain ground on already missed targets in terms of social housing.
A roof over one’s head is and always has been a basic requirement and, with the country currently awash with Apple cash, those elevated to power after Friday’s poll should never be forgiven if they fail to deliver in that regard.
While tourism remains Killarney’s lifeblood, with the exception of thriving firms like Liebherr Container Cranes and Tricel Killarney has become a rather dismal industrial wasteland. And yet, all the while, the former Pretty Polly plant on Park Road remains a derelict playground for rats, despite long-time promises of establishing a third level college for the hospitality sector.
Can somebody please explain the lack of urgency on this key development that would serve a dual purpose of providing valuable education opportunities for young people and helping to stem the haemorrhage of brain power to Sydney or Toronto.
And then there’s the gridlock, the desperate, daily grind with motorists at the end of their tether sitting frustrated in a long trail of exhaust fumes, on every approach road and on every street in the town, as Killarney continues to be a victim of its own success.
Build it and they will come is a mantra often repeated by the best business brains in the town who realised a long time ago that if the product they offer genuinely matches the gifts God bestowed on the town on a day in which he was in a particularly good mood, then silver can turn to gold.
But the Government has failed miserably in its supporting role to the town’s business community by neglecting to provide the necessary infrastructure in terms of proper roads and more direct access via air and rail.
Despite repeated promises, ad nauseam pledges and personal assurances, Killarney has been left choking on its own success and without the N22 bypass, more strategically thought out inner-relief roads and a multi-storey car park, the suffering will continue.
If health is wealth then Killarney is flat broke and on life support. If you told anybody not familiar with the place that a town with a permanent population of over 15,000 people and numbers multiplying four-fold for four months of the year, has no walk-in accident and emergency unit, imagine the ‘go-way-outa-that’ glance you would get.
Successive governments appear to have formed the opinion that it is perfectly acceptable for those that fall ill in Killarney and can’t secure a GP appointment to have to make an hour-long round trip and sit, for hours on end on a hard chair in a room packed with other sick people, before they are seen to. They luckier ones, at least, get to leave their dignity at the front door and lay their heads on a trolley along a busy corridor for up to 24 hours – on a good week.
Third world standards in a wealthy and allegedly progressive country.
It has to be acknowledged, to give credit to the local lobbyists, that a minor injuries clinic has been pledged for Killarney. But when? And where? And what facilities will it have? And are there staff to run it? Or should we all just include it in our Christmas wish-list?
And all the aforementioned issues are only a warm-up session in terms of Killarney’s current needs.
Are the Land Development Agency officials on their knees and lighting candles in the hope that the derelict St Finan’s Hospital building will be struck by lightning and crumble to the ground to finally enable something to be done with such an incredible parcel of land?
Does the department with responsibility for sport genuinely reckon that a once-off payment of €6 million – with no pledge of future support – is really sufficient to rescue the priceless asset that is Fitzgerald Stadium from dereliction?
At a recent meeting with outgoing Finance Minister, Jack Chambers, local business leaders said a town of Killarney’s importance needs to have its interests adequately and constantly brought to the cabinet table. And they have to be heeded.
Some food for thought, perhaps, before a single vote is cast this Friday.
The best advice KillarneyToday.com can offer is not to consign the literature popping through your letterbox with great frequency to the recycling bin.
Read it. Study it. Read it again. Consider it. And then make an informed decision, based on the pledges each individual candidate is making, on who you most trust to deliver what it is you want to be delivered.
But whatever you do on Friday, please vote. One scratch could make all the difference but if you neglect to exercise your democratic right, your opinion counts for nothing.
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