Plastic waste is proving more and more of a problem, it doesn't break down and has a negative impact on the environment. If we install drinking fountains and water bottle filling stations at certain places in the town for example the park it may encourage people to ditch single use plastics like plastic water bottles and move towards more environmentally friendly alternatives like reusable water canteens.

This waste dump has for the last 21 years polluted one of our Countries most important Wildlife Habitats. The Inch Island Wildlife Reserve is an SAC and is home to an abundance of protected species of animals and birds. It is most significant in its position at the foot of Grianan of Aileach from which visitors can see the spectacular beauty of Lough Swilly and the flash of white of the swans, whom alongside the otters and migratory birds share this place as their protected home. This habitat is at risk of being assigned to history, if action is not taken soon. There is no planet B.....

166 properties (minimum) will be impacted by the project on Route 13, with removal of parking spaces in Shankill village, 330 roadside trees removed and new bus lanes introduced in acquired land spaces such as gardens and green areas. All for a maximum of 10 minutes (which we believe is exaggerated) saved bus time from Bray to City Centre. The proposals impact local businesses, parking for elderly and disabled, damage and destruction of local heritage such as the old railway bridge, safety issues for school children, environmental damage and harm to local wildlife and not least, impacting local's gardens, green areas and quality of life. Sign this petition, familiarise yourself with the plans on the busconnects.ie website, and send in your objection through their online form here: Route 13 Bray to City Centre Proposal Brochure: https://www.busconnects.ie/media/1479/busconnects-cbc13-bray-to-city-centre-180219-fa-web.pdf Objection: https://busconnects.ie/initiatives/core-bus-corridors-project-public-consultation-submission-form/

It’s important that this building is used so that the local authority’s plans to redevelop Limerick city’s waterfront can begin. It’s currently casting a shadow on any plans to further develop as per Limerick 2030. It lies vacant as a housing crisis continues unabated.

County councils around Ireland have been felling hundreds of healthy roadside trees with no consultation and no prior notice to local residents according to numerous reports and photos like the one above from Waterford. It is claimed that this is at the behest of insurance companies and for fear of insurance claims.* Though statistics show that your chances of being killed by a falling tree in a public space are 1 in 20,000,000.* Dublin City Council's Tree Strategy notes roadside trees as being vital for many reasons. "Trees clean the air, provide natural flood defences, mask noise and promote a general sense of wellbeing. Within the higher density areas of the city trees have considerable beneficial impacts on the lives of those who do not have immediate access to other more traditional types of open space. Trees, for example, can add colour, interest and beauty to our busy streets. Within the city, urban trees contribute significantly towards many environmental and social benefits, such as journey quality, biodiversity, temperature regulation and habitat." Extinction threat: Over the past few decades we have lost 75% of all insect life globally. Recent research shows that insects in Ireland are dying off even faster than the alarming global average, for some species it's over three times as fast*. One in four of all species of wildlife in Ireland is also threatened with extinction. Without insects we will have ecosystem collapse and our ability to grow enough food to feed ourselves will be drastically affected. Trees support a multitude of the insect species that are under threat in Ireland. Oak trees support over *423 species* of insects and mites. Though it is unthinkable today, felling hundreds of healthy trees now is making it almost inevitable that crops will fail and we will experience food shortages in Ireland in the not so distant future. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/rigorous-policy-of-cutting-down-trees-prompts-protest-in-tipperary-1.3781964?mode=amp https://naturenet.net/blogs/2007/02/19/killed-by-a-falling-tree-what-are-the-chances/ https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/irish-butterfly-and-bumblebee-numbers-slump-905119.html http://www.countrysideinfo.co.uk/woodland_manage/tree_value.htm https://www.facebook.com/SaveIrelandsTrees/

Kinsale Habour is one of the jewels in the Wild Atlantic Way's crown, and among the most famous locations for tourists who appreciate the history, culture, and pristine environment. The area around the town is often speckled with sailboats, busy fishing vessels, marine life, and tourists. Kinsale is a community that looks to the future while maintaining a deep sense of connection to its roots, and it the people take great pride in their town and its surroundings. Now the town's habour is under threat from a toxic and disruptive form of aquaculture called mussel dredging, which recently left a region of the Dublin Bay smelling like corpses [1]. Outside of Ireland, mussel dredging has had equally devastating effects in places like Vietnam where local fishermen discovered that the seabed had become a "graveyard" [2]. The knock on effects that this sort of rancid activity could have on Kinsale's tourism economy would be devastating for the town -- and for so little in return. It's also well known that mussel dredging can wreak havoc on the marine life around it [3]. Unlike more sustainable mussel harvesting practices, mussel dredging disrupts all of the seafloor life around it, leaving little left but jellyfish. Dolores Smith, a Dalkey resident who runs an inshore fishing and boat-hire company, summed up the effects on her livelihood: "The damage caused by the dredgers is absolutely enormous, there are stretches of seabed that have been obliterated." Therefore, we are asking the Aquaculture Licensing office of the Department of Agriculture to deny all mussel dredging licenses in the Kinsale Harbour. [1] https://afloat.ie/port-news/fishing/item/34164-mussel-dredgers-leave-dublin-coastline-smelling-like-corpses [2] https://newsable.asianetnews.com/south/vizhinjam-dredging-seabed-turns-graveyard-for-mussels [3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267035134_Mussel_dredging_impact_on_epifauna

Part of the investment will include a tour "which will celebrate the life and times of Charles Stewart Parnell at Avondale House" This is a worthy and worthwhile initiative. On the other hand it could create a situation where 2 Irish women who did immense campaigning for Womens rights in Ireland Anna and Fanny Parnell get erased from history. Anna Parnell was an Irish nationalist who founded the Ladies Land League in 1880. The Ladies Land League took over the work of the Irish Land League when its male leaders were jailed. The Ladies Land League continued the Land League campaigns against landlordism in Ireland and was organised in 6 countries with 321 branches. Anna Parnell was its effective leader and lead it in many campaigns providing welfare and assistance to many Irish people. Fanny Parnell was an Irish nationalist and poet who wrote extensive about Irish nationalism and poverty in Ireland. She cofounded the Ladies Land League with her Sister Anna in 1880. In investing 8 million in a tourist attraction "which will celebrate the life and times of Charles Stewart Parnell at Avondale House" it is really important not to erase the important legacy of his Sisters. Pictures of Anna and Fanny Parnell above Further information on Anna and Fanny Parnell https://www.historyireland.com/home-rule/anna-fanny-parnell/ http://www.countywicklowheritage.org/page_id__93_path__0p3p.aspx

RTE allows the AA to broadcast its “Roadwatch” segment on national radio 150 times per week. This is deeply inappropriate and unethical and is in breach of RTE’s own rules on sponsorship. RTE must end the practice immediately. The AA is not an impartial provider of neutral information. It is a political lobbyist on behalf of the car industry - its primary function is to lobby Government. It is also a multi-national insurance company with annual revenue of over €1 billion. AA Roadwatch performs no useful function. It serves only as an advertisement for the AA and the normalisation of car culture. Its prevalence on the airwaves suggests sitting in daily gridlock is a normal and inevitable part of the human experience. Every day, numerous times an hour, our national broadcaster places the reporting of daily rush hour traffic next to news items of national and international significance. Besides the fact that the “service” provided by AA Roadwatch is of little or no value (“it’s slow but moving at the Jack Lynch Tunnel”), it is a clear breach of RTE’s sponsorship guidelines (sponsorship is defined a contribution made in return for promotion of the sponsor’s name). 1. No sponsorship of news programmes is allowed. 2. “A sponsor must not have any editorial input or involvement in programming” 3. “Any body whose intents are wholly or mainly political in nature may not be a sponsor”. RTE must end the broadcast of AA Roadwatch immediately. Many thanks to William Campbell of Here's How for his work on this. I highly recommend his podcast on this topic.

Imagine if Ireland was able to implement a single policy that could reduce traffic, combat climate change, let people take up jobs they couldn’t before, make life in rural Ireland easier and reduce the cost of living all at once. And it only took a year or two to get it up and running. It may sound too good to be true but free public transport could do all this and we want to pilot it in Galway during 2020. Dear Minister Ross, Minister Bruton, and Minister Donohue, We, the people of Galway, ask you to trial free-fare public transport in Galway during 2020. This a policy that has been piloted across Europe and is working. In Aubagne, a French city of 100,000 people, public transport ridership increased by 142% and car trips decreased by 10% once free public transport was introduced. Overall, there was a reduction in public expenditure per journey of 48% from €3.93 to €2.04. This policy of fare-free public transport could allow the following outcomes across Ireland: * Reduction in traffic and commute time in cities and counties * Reducing our climate emissions and contributing towards our stated ambition to make Ireland a leader in tackling climate change * Increased economic activity and lower social welfare costs through improved social mobility and access to jobs and lower cost housing * Improved rural mobility with better public transport options in rural Ireland * Reduced cost of living through lower fares and giving families the option of giving up second cars With Galway welcoming the world to the European Capital of Culture in 2020, and our well-documented traffic problems, Galway 2020 is the perfect place and time to pilot this policy. We respectfully request that the Department of Transport and Department of Climate Action would immediately begin design and costing a pilot for free-fare public transport in Galway during 2020 and that the Department of Finance would allocate for this pilot in the 2020 Finance Bill or as part of the Climate Action Fund. We would ask that this pilot allows for: * An increase in bus capacity in Galway city and county so that buses are more frequent and reliable * A redesign of the route network including multiple crossings of the bridges and avoiding all bus traffic going through the city centre * The addition of new buses designs with modern interiors (similar to BRT designs like Glider in Belfast) that make the bus experience more pleasant * A proper study of the economic, environmental and social outcomes of the pilot. We are available to meet with you at your earliest convenience to outline our request and work with you to make it happen. Yours sincerely, Galway Free Public Transport Campaign

In a 2008 native woodland survey conducted by the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), Toon Woods, a patchwork mosaic of various woodland types, was deemed to be the highest scoring unprotected site in the country. Yet large swathes of these woods were destroyed under a felling license that has now been revoked. The Dept of Agriculture issued a replanting order in March 2019. Toon Woods contain one of Ireland's strongest surviving colonies of red squirrels, a much-loved protected species who lost their shelter and their winter stores in the felling. This sessile oak woodland, ecologically an extension of the Gearagh, is well-known to sustain other protected species. A nationally important lesser horseshoe bat maternity roost exists only a few hundred metres from the destroyed area, while the pristine Toon river provides habitat for freshwater pearl mussels, a red-listed species. One ecologist who visited the site noted the absence of infrastructure to prevent soil run-off into the Toon river, threatening the freshwater mussel which cannot tolerate silt, as well as the nearby Gearagh, a Natural 2000 site and Special Area of Conservation, into which the Toon flows. Malcolm Noonan has the power to confer full NHA status on the Toon woods, as was proposed by then Chief Scientist Dr John Cross in 2013, following a survey commissioned by NPWS. Climate change poses a major threat to our future well-being and the protection of our oak woodlands is essential if we are to create natural buffers to save our endangered native species. They account for less than 2% of our forests. We can do so much better. Most of Toon woods are still intact but they are in urgent need of your intervention. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/tree-felling-at-ireland-s-finest-undesignated-native-woodland-halted-1.3777868

This is important as we are losing our natural habitat to plastic. Our wildlife, marine life, our plantlife, our oceans, rivers .... our lives are awash with plastic. We must break the cycle and make the changes before it's too late.

Illegal dumping and burning of rubbish is a massive problem for rural dwellers. It’s unsightly and attracts rodents (in the case of dumping) and toxic, raising dioxin levels (in the case of burning). The policing and reporting of it is cumbersome, costly and ineffective. Make it a mandatory requirement. If you’re living in a home and producing waste you must have some legitimate means of getting rid of your waste, similarly for farms and businesses. If you’re using the municipal waste and recycling services then you should be able to prove it with receipts. I realise waste services are expensive but the rubbishing of rural Ireland is a disgrace.