I believe that Waterford will thrive

Waterford is left behind; we can all feel it. No matter how much Mary Butler or John Cummins insist that their parties, in power for 100 years, have benefitted Waterford, we just need to look around to see the reality which their spin obscures. While so many of us have done our best to make Waterford into a place we can love and be proud of, our many successes come despite the inaction and inattention of decades of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael governments.

Independent TD Matt Shanahan has managed to highlight some of the ways in which we are left behind, but has failed to do much else over the past 5 years, other than voting with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael almost half of the time - including on contentious issues such as ending the eviction ban and opposing sanctions for Israel.

My strong belief is that we don’t just need a TD who’s a Minister in Government, or an Independent TD who will ‘deliver for Waterford’ by highlighting how others haven’t delivered. Neither approach has worked. We know the issues; the lack of proper local healthcare, good-quality transport infrastructure, and a full city university among them. What we need is a plan to stop Waterford being left behind; something which many of our current TDs lack.

I am proposing a clear solution; to empower us democratically and to decentralise power away from Dublin, to regional and local level.

Unlike other democracies, we lack the right to elect our local government; while other countries can elect representatives into a local government which directly controls local public services, we elect powerless councillors who must work with an unelected and unaccountable Council CEO and his Directors of Services. The people making decisions on planning, public space, and housing are not accountable to those of us affected by these decisions. That might seem technical or abstract, but it has real and tangible effects; worsening our housing crisis, depriving us of good-quality public spaces to build community, and causing countless terrible planning decisions to be made.

This lack of democratic accountability leads us to be one of the few countries in Europe where we trust local government even less than national government, and has allowed Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to justify decades of centralisation. This decades long powergrab has led to us having one of the most centralised political systems in the EU and in the OECD.

This centralisation, on top of a lack of real local and regional democracy, causes our public services and infrastructure to be unaccountable and inefficient. It also leads to the large regional inequality which causes all of us in Waterford to be left behind.

I will not follow the lead of others who cynically promise to obtain funding for a specific project just to get votes; if elected, I would be just one independent TD and I want to be honest with voters that this single issue, individual approach has not worked. But I believe I have found a better alternative; I am working with other progressive independent candidates across the country on a shared manifesto called the We All Thrive Shared Manifesto (available on www.weallthrive.ie), which is focused on systemic changes which benefit all those across the country who have been left behind. Through working with others in the Dáil, we aim to popularise and implement these systemic changes in order to create a more democratic, decentralised, and decarbonised Ireland.

All candidates must be truthful with voters; Waterford will not magically stop being left behind just because we getalocal TD into government up in Dublin, or get a good advocate for individual issues. We will only stop being left behind and finally be able to thrive when we transform the system into one which empowers us to make decisions ourselves; democratically, locally, and regionally. This is the norm in almost every other democracy on earth. My message for voters this Friday is simple-do you want more of the same old approach which has failed us time and time again, or do you believe in a better way where we all thrive?