Three things for issue 3 💰️ 🪴 ❎

Good Morning and Welcome,

To issue number 3. This week there are campaign priorities from our local election candidates. Innovation from the Ballinskelligs Environmental Action Group. A brief overview of the changes ahead for Cahersiveen thanks to the funding bounty announced this week. Hefty congratulations go to the teams at Waterville House & The Lobster Bar & Restaurant for their stellar performance at the YesChef Ireland Awards. Not forgetting all the best of what’s going on and what will be going on around the place.

South Kerry by the numbers:

• 43: The number of electoral divisions in the Kenmare Local Electoral Authority.

• 17172: The number of houses across the area. That’s an awful lot of doors to be knocking on.

• 180: Visitors per day permitted to land on Sceilg Mhichíl throughout the season. Portmagee will be hopping!

Plants 4 School available at Brownes Ballinskelligs

Thanks to volcanic minds at BEAG you can now buy an assortment of organic plants and flowers at Brownes shop Ballinskelligs. Plant varieties will change daily and proceeds go to support the school garden. More here

Changes ahead for Ca$hersiveen

Much has been reported about the amount of money awarded to Cahersiveen for the plans to rejuvenate the town centre, but little about the actual plans themselves. I’ll attempt to rectify this with a few highlights (depending on how you look at it;

• Introduction of a one-way system on O’Connell Street, Quay Street and Bridge Street.

• Introduction of cycle lanes and enhanced pedestrian facilities on O’Connell Street, Quay Street and Bridge Street.

• Reduce width of the carriageway on the N70 to 6.3m allowing for enhanced pedestrian facilities

• Enhanced Fair green Environs (featuring bandstand!) and introduction of a one-way system between the Library and The Market House.

• New square areas at the Library & Carnegie building.

• Waterfront boardwalk and waterfront site linking to the greenway.

Nowhere in the proposals can I see any suggestion of complete destruction of any inch to park a car, which comes as a surprise having read many articles’ comment sections.

Candidate Responses

If you had been lucky enough to see the first issue of this letter no doubt you’ve spent the last two weeks desperate to hear what our local election candidates are campaigning for. Well, wait no longer. The following responses are listed in the order they were received*;

• Johnny Healy-Rae Independent: “I would like to continue to help people to secure planning, upgrade our infrastructure, to ensure that small businesses are kept open and to increase that as to opposed to what is happening now and to ensure Kerry County Council does everything practically possible to make sure we keep people living and working in our county.

• Cleo Murphy Green Party: Supporting vibrant towns and villages, rural public transport, and protection of our environment.

• Catherina O’Sullivan Aontu: A Clinical Nurse Manager and mother of six, is running for the county council to bring a common-sense approach to addressing pressing community issues like housing, healthcare & immigration.

• Teddy O’Sullivan Casey Fine Gael: The main reason I have decided to stand in the Local Elections in June is we need to secure better services for children with disabilities and their families. Roads in South Kerry are a huge issue also. We will have to invest more in our road network especially in the Local Improvement Scheme for private roads.

• Tim Clifford Social Democrats: If elected, I pledge to fight for affordable housing, local healthcare, volunteer groups, improved public services and promote adventure tourism in South Kerry.

• Michael Cahill Fianna Fáil: I have worked tirelessly for you as a Public Representative for the past 34 years and with your help I will continue to do so for the next five years. Whether it is Health, Housing, Planning, Roads etc., I am here to represent you and your family, to ensure that you and your communities, get your entitlements.

• Patrick Lyne Independent: My priorities for South Kerry are Housing, Planning, Health and Agriculture. I’m looking to better the livelihood of the people in South Kerry. I want the people of south Kerry to be able to return to live and work here, to revitalise the area.

• William O’Brien Irish People Party: I am standing as a candidate in the upcoming local elections because I feel the intrinsic good nature and generosity of most Irish people has been exploited by egregious government, fuelling gombeen greed and a monstrous immigration industry, which has disadvantaged many native people and put us in peril of being displaced in our homeland.

*whilst I think that the candidates responding quickly to a new publication is admirable, it’s also to bear in mind for those not listed above that I started looking for responses in the very early stages of the campaign. It was not as straightforward as anticipated to get contact details for all the candidates and, as we know, they have an awful lot of doors to knock on across a wide geographical area. I’ll continue to reach out to those we’ve not heard from as yet.

Election Advertising

Best of the rest;

• Congratulations to the St Mary’s/Renard/Valentia u15 team that won the division 8 shield final on Wednesday.

• Good luck to Waterville’s David Higgins who is currently leading the field in the Senior PGA Professional Championship in Moor Park.

• Al the best to Valentia’s Keelin O’Shea & Waterville’s Eliza O’Sullivan who continue to represent Munster u16 in the interpro 7s series this weekend. #eaglesabu

• A restorative yoga workshop with a live cellist is on in Tech Amergin, Sunday May 26th from 4pm book here

• Flea market and car boot sale, Cahersiveen Pier on Sunday 19th 10-2pm.

• As part of Kerry Biodiversity Week there’s a bat walk next Friday 24th in Sneem, meet at The Hungry Knight for 9pm.

• Live music all weekend in The Villa, Waterville, Paulie O’Brien Saturday, Ger O’Shea Sunday.

• Tonight @6pm, on Radio Kerry another chance to listen to Joe Mcgill’s documentary '100 Years of Valentia Radio' its definitely worth a listen.

Just Announced;

• Caherdaniel and Castlecove are bringing back the Harvest Festival for the first time in 60+ years, fair play to them.

Thanks

Thanks for reading, for signing up, for following on socials if you know anyone who might like this type of thing send them on this email, they can join below. If there’s anything I’ve missed, you’d like to contribute or think should be covered, just hit reply. Alternatively, you can just tag your posts #skoracle and I’ll pick them up.

Finally, thanks to our election candidates for taking the time to respond, special thanks to Cleo Murphy, for being the first to support this fledgling newsletter.

Good luck, be well

Dave

southkerryoracle.ie