We thought after the last elections in 2014 we were very fortunate in that we had 12 Councillors representing us at Council.    This was because Knocklyon was divided into two Wards.   Half of Knocklyon was included in Rathfarnham-Terenure.  The other half was Templeogue-Knocklyon-Firhouse.     Unfortunately, it has been our experience that unless the Councillor lives in your area, they are not very active for your area.   This is possibly because it does not require a lot of first preference votes to get elected.   So if a Councillor looks after his patch he will probably be re-elected.     We are going to show you photographs of the 12 Councillors who represented you for the last 5 years.    How many have you heard of?   Don’t be persuaded by all the action of meetings over the last  three months as we go into election mode.

We are not blaming the Councillors.   The salary paid is not enough to support a person or family with a mortgage.   So most have the “Day” job to live on and this has to be a priority.   So combining the two is not easy.  Add a family and the normal comittments of schools, clubs , etc then it does not leave much time for Politics and Council meetings.   However, they looked for the position.

So we think that you should consider some questions for your Candidates.     It will help if you are familiar with them and have seen the work they do for the Community.

  1. What does the Candidate currently do within the Community?
  2. Are they involved in any Voluntary Organisations in our Community.
  3. What are their priorities for Knocklyon/ Rathfarnham.
  4. What will they do about the lack of amenities in our area.    No Community Centre, Playground, Library, Health Centre, Pool, no Park.
  5. What will they do about Planning.  More houses.   No road planning , no school planning, no transport and traffic planning
  6. What about local issues.  Orlagh Roundabout, Knocklyon United Pitches. Cosgrave Lands.

We hope some of these questions will help you.

So here are the dozen politicians representing us. Photographs in no particular order.   but here are the names in order of the photos.  How many can attach photos to names?

Brian Lawlor, Deirdre O’Donovan, Emma Murphy, Francis Duffy, Paula Donovan, Paul Foley,Ronan Mc Mahon, Sarah Holland, Conor Mc Mahon, Dermot Looney,Pamela Kearns, Robert Russell

More on the election over the coming three weeks.