Have you been included in the decisions affecting you? It says a lot about peoples opinion of themselves if they include others in decisions. I’ve seen three examples of different approaches in the past week. One was my first time on the National Advisory Group to Public Participation Networks. By their nature NAGs are just … More Public Participation or Control
I’m sharing this insight because the dark side of community development does need to be acknowledged. Others who experience this pain will know they are not alone in it. It happens. We get over it. We move on. … More Burning Bright or Burning Out?
This is a follow up to last weeks post on the proposed direct provision centre in Lisdoonvarna. You can read that here. Last week we held a vote on the direct provision centre contract. We spent time on the wording because it wasn’t the asylum seekers we were voting on. Since then we’ve had a … More Lisdoonvarna Direct Provision week 2
I headed to the green schools expo last Wednesday soon after news of the proposed Direct Provision centre for Lisdoonvarna broke. I missed the first community meeting and given my recent burnout was happy to be away from it all to be honest. I got the feeling things were not going well at home so … More Lisdoonvarna and the Direct Provision Contract
I was invited to speak at the Clare Womens Network International Womens Day event in Ennis on March 8th. Someone else was talking about Clare PPN so that left me free to talk about the reason I am involved with any of this – Climate Change. I read my poem Inheritance, one of the many UN … More Women in Climate Action
As a woman engaged in policy for almost 10 years at local, national and EU level I have a lot of insight into the policy and decision making process in Ireland. I have sat on a county development board and strategic policy committees at local authority level and represented the Environmental Pillar of social partnership … More National Women’s Strategy 2017-2020 Submission
Just as they do in energy, healthcare, education etc there is a “Social Housing Summit” purporting to cover: “Planning, Building & Delivering Our Social Housing Needs This event will be of real interest to all housing specialists, local authorities, consultants, social workers, housing agencies, government departments, regulators, universities, suppliers and manufacturers to the sector. A one-day conference … More For €395 You Too Can Discuss Homelessness but thankfully the reduced rate is €295! Plus VAT of course
I gave an official report from my Strategic Policy Committee SPC meeting last Monday but here I will give you a little glimpse of life as a committee member amongst elected councillors and civil servants. Why? Well, I used think that the people running the country must be really intelligent and capable – why else would they be elected! I thought they must … More Shenanigans from the SPC Jan 2017
I left my children on Monday November 3rd before heading to Dublin. When I eventually left Dublin Wednesday morning I drove home with tears streaming down my face. I cried for about two hours. It reminded me of that day in February 2013 when I started writing in rhyme following a realisation that just left … More Empowering the Disempowered
