Kieran’s Motions and Question to the City Manager, Cork City Council Meeting, 24 September 2012

Kieran's Council Work, Uncategorized

 

To ask the Manager for information on the following:

1. Number of dogs taken into CSPCA for the first 6 months of 2012?

2. Number of dogs reclaimed during this same period?

3. Number of dogs surrendered by members of public?

4. Number of dogs put to sleep?

5. Number of dogs that died of natural causes?

6. Number of dog Licences issued by CSPCA?

7. Number of dogs seized by Dog warden?

8. Number of dogs given to other Dog charities?

9. Number of dogs rehomed during this period?

10.When dog licences were €12.70 each the CSPCA was allowed to retain €2.70 for issuing licence. Now that the licences have been increased to €20 each what amount is retained by the CSPCA?

11. What was the total cost to the public of retaining the dog service for the above 6 months, including Wardens van maintenance, wages, amount per dog per night etc.?

12. Details of any other sums of money given to the CSPCA by City Council?

13. Of the 2,823 dog licences issued last year by the City Council how many were sold by 1. Post Office 2. Dog Warden  3. CSPCA?

(Cllr Kieran McCarthy)

 

Motions:

 

That the ‘parking only’ of motor bikes in the motor bike parking spaces on Emmett Place outside the Crawford Art Gallery be enforced (Cllr Kieran McCarthy).

 

In light of the recent re-opening of the Coal Quay, that its rich history, through the pictures and information that were on display on the day, be drawn together and placed on permanent display panels on Corn Market Street itself (Cllr Kieran McCarthy).

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, Discover Cork: Schools’ Heritage Project 2012-13

Cork History, Landscapes, Uncategorized

659a. Page from class project 2012 on the history of shops in Cork City

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, Cork Independent 

Discover Cork: Schools’ Heritage Project 2012-13

20 September 2012

 

Founded in the school year 2002/ 2003, the year 2012-13 coincides with the tenth year of the Discover Cork: Schools’ Heritage Project. Now launched for the new school term, The Project is open to schools in Cork; at primary level to the pupils of fourth, fifth and sixth class and at post-primary from first to sixth years. There are two sub categories within the post primary section, Junior Certificate and Leaving Certificate. A student may enter as an individual or as part of a group or a part of a class entry.

 

One of the key aims of the project is to allow students to explore, investigate and debate their local heritage (built, archaeological, cultural and natural) in a constructive, active and fun way. Projects on any aspect of Cork’s rich heritage can be submitted to an adjudication panel. Prizes are awarded for best projects and certificates are given to each participant. A cross-section of projects submitted from the last school season can be gleamed from this link on my website, http://corkheritage.ie/?page_id=2838 plus there are other resources and entry information as well on my website, www.corkhertage.ie.

 

 Students produce a project on their local area using primary and secondary sources. Each participating student within their class receives a visit and workshop from the co-ordinator in October 2012. The workshop comprises a guide to how to put a project together. Project material must be gathered in an A4/ A3 size Project book. The project may be as large as the student wishes but minimum 20 pages (text + pictures + sketches).  Projects must also meet five elements. Projects must be colourful, creative, have personal opinion, imagination and gain publicity before submission. These elements form the basis of a student friendly narrative analysis approach where the student explores their project topic in an interactive and task oriented way. In particular students are encouraged to attain primary material generating primary material through engaging with fieldwork, interviews with local people, making models, photographing, cartoon creating, making DVDs of their area. Re-enacting is also a feature of several projects.

 

 Since 2003, the project has evolved in how students actually pursue local history. The project attempts to provide the student with a hands-on and interactive activity that is all about learning not only about heritage in your local area (in all its forms) but also about the process of learning by participating students. The project is about thinking about, understanding, appreciating and making relevant in today’s society the role of our heritage- our landmarks, our oral histories, our scenery in our modern world for upcoming citizens. So the project is about splicing together activity on issues of local history and heritage such as thinking, exploring, observing, discovering, researching, uncovering, revealing, interpreting and resolving.

 

The importance of doing a project in local history is reflected in the educational aims of the history curricula of primary and post-primary schools. Local heritage is a mould, which helps the student to become familiar with their local environment and to learn the value of it in their lives. Learning to appreciate the elements of a locality, can also give students a sense of place in their locality or a sense of identity. Hence the Project can also become a youth forum for students to do research and offer their opinions on important decisions being made on their heritage in their locality and how they affect the lives of people locally. Over the years, I know a number of students that have been involved in the project in schools over the years who have took their interest further and have gone on to become professional tour guides, and into other related college work.

 

The project is open to many directions of delivery. Students are pressed to engage with their topic -in order to make sense of it, understand and work with it. Students continue to experiment with the overall design and plan of their work. For example in general, students who have entered before might engage with the attaining of primary information through oral histories. The methodologies that the students create provide interesting ways to approach the study of local heritage. Students are asked to choose one of two extra methods (apart from a booklet) to represent their work. The first option is making a model whilst the second option is making a DVD. It is great to see students using modern up todate technology to present their findings. This works in broadening their view of approaching their project.

 

This project is kindly funded by Cork Civic Trust (viz the help of John X. Miller), Cork City Council (viz the help of Niamh Twomey), and the Heritage Council. Prizes are also provided by the Lifetime Lab, Lee Road and Sean Kelly of Lucky Meadows Equestrian Centre, Watergrasshill (www.seankellyhorse.com). Overall, the Schools’ Heritage Project for the last ten years has attempted to build a new concerned generation of Cork people, pushing them forward, growing their self-development empowering them to connect to their world and their local heritage. Spread the word please.

 

Don’t forget, Blackrock historical walking tour, Saturday, 22 September, 2012, 2pm from Blackrock Castle.

 

 

Caption:

 

659a. Page from class project 2012 on the history of shops in Cork City (source: project page from Padre Pio, Churchfield)

Tramore Valley Draft Masterplan, 22 September 2012

Kieran's Council Work, Landscapes, S.E. Ward Local History, Uncategorized

Letter Recently Circulated to Houses on South Douglas and Adjoining Estates

 

22 September 2012

 

 

Re: Tramore Valley Draft Masterplan

 

Dear Resident,

The attached is an overview of the development of Tramore Valley Park or the former dump into a municipal park. Many resident groups in the area, as well as current and former councillors and TDs, have lobbied hard to get the ‘dump’ closed and ready for the next phase of development. The next stage can be read amongst the pages attached. The project, I feel is an exciting and positive one, but you the resident will have to live adjacent to it. There are a number of issues that need to be thrashed out including the regulation of the access points to the park through the adjacent estates. Have a read of the attached. The full draft masterplan document in colour can be viewed at:

 

http://www.corkcity.ie/services/environmentrecreation/tramorevalleyparkmasterplan/5890_Tramore_Valley_Park_Masterplan%20final_opt1.pdf

 

 

Comments and submissions from the public on the Masterplan are welcome to the following email address: tramorevalleypark@corkcity.ie Or by post to: Environment and Recreation Directorate, Cork City Council, Angelsea Street Cork. Please have submissions for consideration in by Friday 5 October 2012.

 

I would also like to ask for any stories or pictures residents may have of the Black Ash before its development as a dump, in particular in light of a new historical walking tour I am developing across the site, which focuses in on the physical views from the new park and the area’s local history.

Yours sincerely,

____________________

Cllr Kieran McCarthy

Objections to Development of Tesco Express, Douglas Road

Cork City Events, Kieran's Council Work, Uncategorized, Ward Events

18 September 2012

Dear Resident,

On the site of the Old Renault Garage on Douglas Road, opposite St Finbarr’s Hospital, a planning application is currently before the planners in Cork City Council; the application comprises the change of use of the existing buildings into a Tesco Express, a pharmacy and an off-licence.

For my part, I support the concerns of local residents who have contacted me and I am objecting to these plans on a number of grounds.

·         That these proposals decimate existing traditional local corner shops; the proposal does not show a need for a Tesco Express, nor demonstrate the retail impact of a Tesco Express on local corner shops. Time and again in the city, the big shopping centre has taken out the traditional corner shop, which are at the heart, I feel of our communities.

·         The business of the nearest shop run by Denis Mulcahy will be devastated. He has already in the last year re-opened this age old corner shop, and invested in a shop and deli area. As such he has helped in the recreation of the neighbourhood centre in that area.

·         A glance at the Douglas and South Douglas Road has seen a proliferation of Spars and Centras opened up in previous years. The current Cork City Development Plan notes that support should be given for the retention of traditional corner shops. There are also four corner shops in the wider area, which through this proposal would also come under attack, competition wise.

·         The proposal for an off-licence is one of many that have been proposed for this area in recent years. There are already three off licences in the local vicinity. There is no need for a fourth and the proposal does not demonstrate a need for a fourth one. In addition, one hundred metres away is Arbour House, a Drugs and Alcohol abuse centre for the City. The work of this institution would be compromised by this proposed off-licence as would the provision of a homeless centre located nearby on Boreenmanna Road.

·         There is no provision for traffic exiting onto the Douglas Road from the proposed complex.

If you wish to voice your own concerns, the planning file number is 12/ 35372. It can be viewed at the planning counter in Cork City Hall or from Denis Mulcahy’s Shop on Douglas Road by St Finbarr’s Hospital. The final date for objections is Wednesday, 26 September 2012, at 4pm to the planning counter in Cork City Hall.

Yours sincerely,

___________________

Cllr Kieran McCarthy

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, Blackrock Historical Walking Tour, Saturday 22 September 2012

Cork City Events, Cork History, Kieran's Council Work, Landscapes, S.E. Ward Local History, Uncategorized, Ward Events

Blackrock Castle, Cork

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 

Cork Independent

Blackrock Historical Walking Tour, Saturday 22 September

13 September 2012

 

Earlier this year, I ran a walking tour of Blackrock village. On Saturday 22 September 2012, I will run this venture again (meet 2pm, Blackrock Castle, approx two hours). One of the themes I presented during my recent heritage week tours is that within every space in Cork, there is an interesting story to tell about the legacy of a former piece or way of life.

There is much to discover within a short space about Blackrock and its role in the wider city. Dealing with the human experience in this corner of the city, there is a strong legacy in terms of its sense of place and identity; how that was constructed and what clues remain are objects of this tour. Within the story of Blackrock and its environs, one can speak about a myriad of topics from its connection to the river and the harbour to its former mini demesne type landscape in the nineteenth century to its heart of a small village of hard working labourers and fishermen whose struggled to survive.

Within the heart of Convent Avenue, there is a lovely stone wall, which has always impressed me and which separates higher ground from the avenue itself. Random rubble in its nature, it is impressive and adds to the aesthetics of a once very populous area. Around it is a series of modern day houses, but amidst these are a series of cottages, their present day paintwork belying their true nature of times gone by. With more and more British government reports and antiquarian accounts of Ireland, coming online, recently I stumbled across a report from 1843, which focussed on this area and helps to reconstruct life there at that time. The report entitled the “Physical and Moral Condition of the Working Classes in the Parish of St Michael Blackrock near Cork” was read by North Ludlow Beamish, President of the Cork Scientific and Literary Society, before the statistical section of the British Association of the Advancement of Science at Cork August 1843. Of course, this data describes the pre-famine world of Blackrock.

In 1845, the British Association was invited by the Royal Cork Institution, to hold its thirteenth meeting in the Imperial Hotel in Cork. Its comprehensive programme for Cork is now in pdf form on the Association’s website. The Blackrock paper was one of several papers that were read. Some of the science topics included the action of air and water, whether fresh or salt, clear or foul, and of various temperatures, upon cast iron, wrought, iron, and steel, experiments on steam-engines, a series of observations on tidal movement, the physiological action of medicines and even a report on the fauna of Ireland.

North Ludlow Beamish’s paper is full of insights into the area surrounding Convent Avenue. He notes that population of Blackrock and its immediate environs in April 1843 was 2,630 consisting of families living in 413 houses. A total of 61 houses were uninhabited and 9 were in the progress of building. Of the population 2,181 are Roman Catholics and 443 Protestants including dissenters. There were 557 families. Ninety families were living in one roomed houses, 260 in two rooms and 207 in three or more rooms.  The whole number of the gentry was 372 leaving that of the working classes numbering 2,258, and of these 1,125 were males and 1,133 females.

The trades Beamish listed were varied; brick makers (numbering 56), cabinet makers (2), carpenters (15), coopers (3), farmers (53), fishermen (111), gardeners (32), gingle drivers (13, generally owners), lime burners (18), masons (14),  male servants (79), shoemakers (14), slaters (12), smiths (9), tailors (10). Male children numbered 426.  As for females, their total was 1133 with 372 employed as servants in work in fields. Female children, aged and infirm numbered 453 whilst 305 were unemployed.

Beamish further described that 113 of the working classes hold land varying from a quarter of an acre to seven acres each. They pay an average yearly rent of £3 per acre exclusive of poor rate and county rate. The soil was generally excellent and capable of bearing the ‘finest’ wheat crops. The course of tillage was potatoes and wheat alternately, the former being manured. However, the general preparation of the land was not performed well by the working farmer, so that the potato crop seldom yielded more than seven tons or the wheat more than six barrels of 20 stone or about 3 ½ English quarters per acre. This amounted to about two thirds of the same produce that could be produced if the same description of land was under a proper system of tillage. Beamish noted that wages for tradesmen’s were on average 20s per week; labouring men received 5s 10d; women 3s and children 2s per week but many able bodied men worked for 5s a week. In time of harvest, good reapers could be got at the ordinary wages of 1s a day. The Beamish report goes on for pages. A further breakdown is given on the walking tour!

 

Caption:

658a. Blackrock Castle (picture: Kieran McCarthy)