Senator Daly was delighted to meet the Kinsale Youth Support Services Group who were in Leinster House today with Cllr. Alan Coleman. The group also met with Minister Kathleen Lynch to discuss the great work they do.
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Monthly Archives: December 2012
Senator Daly delighted to meet Kinsale Youth Support Services Group
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Kerry homeowners cannot afford hefty property taxes – Daly
Fianna Fáil Senator Mark Daly has accused Fine Gael and Labour of attempting to hide behind false claims that they are being forced into introducing property taxes.
The Kerry Senator has voiced his strong opposition to the Government’s plans to hit homeowners with a property tax at a time when so many in people in Kerry and across the country are already in mortgage difficulty and negative equity.
Senator Daly said: “The reality is that many families in Kerry simply cannot afford more taxes on a home that they are already struggling to pay for. The latest figures show that more than a quarter of homeowners are in mortgage difficulty and I have spoken to many people locally who can’t afford their basic household bills as it is, let alone pay extra taxes of hundreds a euro a year on their home.
“Let’s be completely clear about this – no one is forcing Fine Gael and Labour to hit homeowners with property taxes. Fianna Fáil met with Troika officials last month and they could not have been clearer that property taxes are not necessary if we reach our overall savings targets in the Budget. It is completely up to the Government to choose what policies to implement to meet these targets.
“The Government needs to take a step back instead of blindly continuing down this road without considering the massive impact on homeowners at a time of a deepening mortgage crisis. A property tax based on market value is highly discriminatory
and makes no consideration whatsoever of ability to pay. What about a homeowner in Tralee whose house is worth €200,000 but who is in negative equity, struggling to meet mortgage repayments and has already paid stamp duty? Will they be forced to pay out an extra €500 a year in property taxes?
“The reality is that this is the wrong tax at the wrong time and it poses unnecessary hardship on homeowners who already feel they are being squeezed from every angle. Fianna Fáil alternative budget proves that property taxes are not necessary to meet the overall adjustment of €3.5 billion next year. Instead of property taxes, we propose an increase in the Universal Social Charge for people earning over €100,000 a year, a direct levy on earnings in the tobacco industry that would raise €100 million and an increase in Capital Gains Tax and Capital Acquisition Tax. This is a much fairer way towards recovery.”
Senator Daly concluded, “The Government needs to tackle the escalating mortgage crisis before slapping additional hefty bills on hard-pressed families.”
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Senator Mark Daly speaking about Big Tim Sullivan on RTE radio documentary
The story of how New York’s Kenmare St got its name from famine emigrants – AUDIO The legacy of Big Tim Sullivan
By
IrishCentral.com Staff Writer
Published Sunday, December 2, 2012, 11:20 AM
A new RTE radio documentary explores how Kenmare Street in lower Manhattan, was named in memory an Irish immigrant.
The RTE radio doc ‘Kenmare Street’ tells the story of famine, enforced emigration, New York tenements, politics, and how a kid from the slums of the ‘Five Points’ got to name a street in Manhattan after his mother’s home town of Kenmare.
In 1849, the agent for the Lord Lansdowne landlord of the Kenmare Estate recommended the estate could cut costs if they sent a portion of the destitute population to the US and Canada.
The cost of the trip would cost less than food and lodgings for one year in a Kenmare workhouse.
Thousands of Kenmare residents took up the offer and immigrated to New York, settling in the notorious Five Points neighborhood, made up of Baxter Street, Orange Street and Worth Street.
Living in one of the most notorious slums in NYC the Kenmare Irish found work in tanneries, taverns and selling food on the streets.
One of the residents Tim Sullivan, was the son of Kenmare immigrants Daniel O’Sullivan and Catherine Connelly. Sullivan started off as shining shoes and paper rounds. He soon began running the newspaper distribution, before developing bars and theatres and ending up in politics.
Known as Big Tim or Big Feller, he was one of the citys most powerful politicians in the first decade of the 20th century.
Richard F. Welch, a New York historian, who wrote “King of the Bowery: Big Tim Sullivan, Tammany Hall, and New York City From the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era” describes his legacy.
“Profoundly Irish by birth, heritage and experience, the new district leader held little in the way of ethno-religious prejudices and took people as he found them.
“Brought up in abject poverty himself his worldview was refracted through a prism of class-consciousness that owed nothing to theory or ideology and everything to experience and practicality.”
“Sullivan was a master of mass politics in an age when personal contact was everything,” he writes. “The loyalty he engendered in the multiethnic population below 14th Street was based on his big hearted solicitude for his constituents.”
Sullivan founded Kenmare street in 1911, in memory of the town his mother emigrated from.
He died aged 51, when he was killed on August 31, 1913, by a train near Pelham Parkway, New York .
As part of the radio documentary, Producer Yvonne Judge travelled spoke with Senator Mark Daly and historian Ger Lyne. She also spoke with descendants of Big Tim Sullivan among others.
Click here to listen to the ‘Kenmare Street’ documentary on RTE.
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Senator Mark Daly questions Minister for Justice on bank’s role in the Insolvency Bill
Senator Mark Daly: My colleague opposite has raised a curious question which was raised here a number of weeks ago by Senator Jim Walsh and myself concerning the engagement by the banks. The banks are already ahead of the curve in going out to meet these personal insolvency people to get them on side. There seems to have been a lot of meetings between the banks and the Department on how this will work. If the banks are part of the problem, they had better be part of the solution. Can the minutes of the lobbying done by the banks on their own behalf be made available so that we can know what they were looking for and, in the end, what was or was not included in the Bill? Perhaps the Minister could clarify that.
Deputy Alan Shatter: Senator Daly raised the issue of contacts with financial institutions. The Government has had substantial contact with financial institutions dealing with debt to discuss their approach to debt issues, including the enormous difficulties impacting on those in mortgage arrears. In that context, over 80,000 people are currently benefiting from debt forbearance arrangements that the financial institutions have entered into. Despite the enormous fiscal and economic cataclysm that has hit the country, including the collapse in property values since the Celtic tiger and – taking heed of Senator Crown’s comment earlier – the encouragement given by financial institutions and previous Governments to people to purchase properties at exorbitant prices, there has been a surprisingly small number of cases of repossession of homes.
We are anxious to ensure that the architecture provided in this legislation is properly worked by the financial institutions. As I mentioned on Second Stage, there is express provision in the personal insolvency arrangement to try to protect people living in reasonable family homes to ensure that if they are insolvent, arrangements can be agreed and mechanisms entered into that create the possibility for them to retain their homes. All these issues have been the subject of conversation with the financial institutions to ensure that they properly prepare themselves for the workings of this legislation. It is very important that they either retrain existing staff or acquire staff who have the skills to engage in the sort of processes that the legislation envisages in the context of the debt settlement resolution provisions. That is essentially what has been going on. I want to thank Senators for supporting this proposal, which is a prelude to the new Part 5 to be inserted in the Bill.
Senator Mark Daly: I thank the Minister for his reply and I understand what he is saying about the engagement with the banks. My specific question was about the engagement with the banks on this particular Bill and what they asked to have put in, so that we could discern what elements were, or were not, put in at the banks’ request. That information is not available to the public so perhaps the Minister will tell the House if it is to be made public. We do not want to feel the banks wrote the legislation. My colleague, Senator Conway, pointed out that the banks are already engaging about section 9. They knew it is going to be included, they were ahead of the curve and they are already canvassing these guys.
Deputy Alan Shatter: Does the Senator have any idea what he is talking about as regards section 9 and the banks? He has not a notion of what he is talking about.
Senator Mark Daly: The Minister is making an accusation but I am trying to convey that Senator Conway pointed out that he discussed this with the banks. We have raised the issue of the banks in the Seanad.
Deputy Alan Shatter: This section is about the regulation of the personal insolvency agency.
Senator Mark Daly: Is the Minister saying the information will not be made available outlining what the banks tried to have included in the Bill and what they did not want included in the Bill?
Senator Mark Daly: Will the Minister not answer?
Deputy Alan Shatter: I have answered the question in morbid detail.
Senator Mark Daly: I would like the answer in writing. I would rather await the morbid detail and get it in writing.
Deputy Alan Shatter: This is Government legislation, not the banks’ legislation.
Senator Mark Daly: What did the banks ask to have included in the Bill…Will the Minister provide that information?
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