Your 2008 requests from DCC and DSE

They city manager has to designate a weekly knocking-heads morning where he thinks of some small stupid thing and knocks heads until it is sorted, small things, like, why are there above ground electrical substations on college green, why are there year old temporary signs on o’connell st: I am sure we could supply quite a long list.

Also, return to bag collection for refuse from terraced houses, I hate the bin-scape they have created along otherwise handsome streets.

Removal of low rise building policy + land use policy and more luas lines

Stop using the term mini manhattan or similar

Stop putting local NIMBY issues before national regional importance

Integration with other councils in DUBLIN

Completely seperate cycle lanes from bus/ roads

Do somthing with Dolier and Westmorland Streets

Stop talking about CARBON – make some real choices on how to reduce it – – – Nuclear, Wind Farms etc

Directed more towards Kildare/ Wicklow County Council.

Stop allowing developers to fudge their statutory obligation to provide 20% social housing, by providing cash payments or unsuitable building land in lieu.

Stop putting social housing on the long finger! Cash and land are no good to those on housing lists.

Some of my requests:

200 euro tax offset credit to those who don’t own a car

1,000,000 euro fine to the NRA for every cyclist/pedestrian killed or maimed in Ireland from no fault of there own…

The fine must be used to provide proper road lane width city cycle lane upgrades in city centre main streets.
25% of the fine goes to the victims family.

Dublin City council to increase bike racks by 700% in two years by taking away car parks

All members of the Dail/ministers/ Councilors ect must ride a bike to/from work from homes once in winter (the rain) and once in summer every year in peak hour. If they do not they get a minus pay rise of 20,000 euro every year :p After the event the bikes will be donated to charity.
The winner of the race gets a pay rise the loser get an award the event will be televised on st patricks day before the parade on all channels,,, and repeated at 6:00pm

The greens to leave light bulbs alone… and go and do something more important like fix the internal post system in custom house and provide receipts when requested for all incoming mail.

DOE / SEI
to reverse the following budget allocations
in 2007 SEI spend on grants for Greener homes ( wood pellet boilers , solar panels etc ) SPEND €40 million
in 2007 SEI spend on grants for Warmer homes ( loft insulations , draft stripping , lagging jackets assistance to low income homes ) SPEND €2.6 million

Quote from page 25 and page 32 Table 2 of the document – UCD report “Quantifying the Severity of Fuel Poverty”

http://www.ucd.ie/gpep/gpepinfo/publ…pers/02-05.pdf

From Table 1 , I interpolate that in 2001

14% of household had no lagging jacket
75% of households had no floor insulation
22% of households had no roof insulation
58% of households had no wall insulation
46% of households had no double glazing.
60% of households had no draught stripping.

I believe that the funds spent by the state to subsidise solar panels , wood pellet boilers and heat pumps has been a criminal mis allocation of resources when priority should have been directed towards relieving fuel poverty . Why should anyone be cold in Ireland ?

@sinnerboy wrote:

DOE / SEI
to reverse the following budget allocations
in 2007 SEI spend on grants for Greener homes ( wood pellet boilers , solar panels etc ) SPEND €40 million
in 2007 SEI spend on grants for Warmer homes ( loft insulations , draft stripping , lagging jackets assistance to low income homes ) SPEND €2.6 million

………..

I believe that the funds spent by the state to subsidise solar panels , wood pellet boilers and heat pumps has been a criminal mis allocation of resources when priority should have been directed towards relieving fuel poverty . Why should anyone be cold in Ireland ?

Absolutely agree Sinnerboy. Firms supplying wood pellet boilers, solar panels etc no longer need any government subsidy. With oil now close to $100 those industries should be able to stand alone in the marketplace.

@notjim wrote:

Also, return to bag collection for refuse from terraced houses, I hate the bin-scape they have created along otherwise handsome streets.

I agree – I have bag collection. Although what tends to happen is that people try to avoid paying by robbing the stickers – the binmen never check the address. what also happens is that people stuff as much as possible into one bag which then splits when the binman lifts it and spills all over the pavement and road. Also the green bin still remains.

A bigger gripe that I have is Eircom. – not DCC’s issue but they should make it so in this case. I decided I wanted to clean up my house by removing the myriad of wires that are attached to it and which seem to come from a pole and then dangle uselessly down the facade. Eircom charge – wait for it – 325euro for a survey. This is non-refundable if they say – and who am I to argue – that they can’t be removed!! What this is – in very simple terms – is a price designed to ensure that no-one does it. I had extensive rows with NTL but I eventually managed to get then to take the wire up and along the gutter rather than straight across the front of the building.

DCC should take Eircom – and all these other providers to task over the defacing of elegant period housing.

We got new NTL connections in our area during the summer and they add to the already cluttered wirescape of the average residential area. At least the old wires and boxes came down. One interesting point, NTL compensated householders (like ourselves) which were requred to ‘host’ connecting wires and boxes. This saved them the huge expense of having to put the wires underground.

While we benefited (with free NTL), its a bit if a cope out and I was particularly annoyed by the lack of coherewnt planning for the works. Over the past 18 months the area has had new water metres installed, new gas connections, NTL connections and upgraded telecoms connection. Each time the pavements had to be dug up. Since the idea of flagstones never appealled to DCC that means our ‘pour concrete’ paving is now a patchwork and looks dreadful. I think DCC should have been more proactive and arranged for all companies to pay into a pot, lift the paving, do the various works and relay proper paving. Its a 1930s estate so thinsg like tree planting, attractive street lighting, parking bays and speedbumps area all missing. It needs updating and this seemed like the perfect opportunity.

Keep the buses running 24 hours at the same prices, but at reduced frequency.

Works in London. I rarely have any trouble here. I do in Dublin.

Also, I don’t know if it’s their area, but 24 hour drinking as well.

Don’t want to hijack, but briefly on the matter of warmer homes and various matters domestic, I found it extraordinary passing on the bus during the snow last week just how many houses (in Drumcondra) in this day and age have little or no insulation in their attics.

What’s interesting is that nearly every uninsulated home has replacement windows, in spite of basic loft insulation being a more effective and much cheaper solution for heat retention.

Apologies for the dodginess – curiously white balancing wasn’t top priority at 8 in the morning. Alas some really stark examples didn’t come out either. (Incidentally no photos were taken where roofing materials differed).
By no means do these cases form a majority, but certainly at least 10% of homes passed – if not as much as a quarter which would correlate with the above figure – had roof insulation issues.

Of course another indication of heat loss is the amount of moss growth, particulary at roof joints, or (possibly an old wives’ tale) which roofs birds tend to settle on.

Anyway, back to to the belated Christmas list to DCC for ’08.

@GrahamH wrote:

Don’t want to hijack, but briefly on the matter of warmer homes and various matters domestic, I found it extraordinary passing on the bus during the snow last week just how many houses (in Drumcondra) in this day and age have little or no insulation in their attics.

.

it may just be that they have the insulation laid flat across the ceiling rather than up the pitch. No point in heating the attic if there’s no-one up there

Very few, if any, suburban retrofits have insulation on the roof underside. Not least as it’s pointless as you say, but in any event the effect on the exterior should be roughly similar.

These are clearly examples of central heating going – literally – through the roof, with no insulation I’d bet in nearly all of them. The fact that it was early morning when heating would only have come on further highlights how quickly the snow was melted by escaping heat.

Can we have some trees planted when paths are being repaved and widened? and not just birches!