Statement from Clontarf Business Association - Local Elections 2014

The Clontarf Business Association would like to make the following statement in advance of Friday's local elections.

As our members are aware are association is non-political in that we don't seek to favour one political party over another. We have close working relationships with all of our public representatives and we hope for this to continue into future.

That said, we feel that we have an obligation to acknowledge the support received from specific public representatives in relation to the flood defence campaign in 2011. This issue was the single biggest issue to face Clontarf in recent years. A catastrophic and unwanted promenade development plan was about to proceed to development stage and it appeared at the time there that nothing could be done about it.

The CBA would like to acknowledge the extraordinary work carried out by our local representatives during the campaign and two local councillors in particular stood out for their efforts.

Cllr. Damian O’ Farrell immediately rallied support on the ground and crucially agreed to allow his own protest on the promenade to be subsumed into a larger community protest which had the effect of getting the issue national attention.

Cllr. Jane Horgan-Jones was able to leverage the power of her party colleagues on the council to both lobby the council itself and then ultimately to secure a resounding victory in a pivotal council vote in December 2011.

It is not an exaggeration to say that, without the interventions of these two councillors in particular, the development plan would have in fact have proceeded and the work now be finished.

We would also like to acknowledge all of the support received over the last 5 years from all of our other councillors including Cllr. Naoise O’ Muiri, Cllr. Deirdre Heney and outgoing Cllr. for the area Gerry Breen.

Again we wish to reiterate that we have no particular affiliation with any party or specific candidate in tomorrow’s elections however we would like to acknowledge with thanks the work of these councillors over the last five years in Clontarf. 

Clontarf Business Association Committee