Toilets are an important public amenity which serve our most basic bodily functions. Access to public toilets isn't just a matter of convenience, it's a matter of dignity and social equality. Mayo's beaches are visited and used all year round, by a wide variety of people, engaged in a multitude of activities, and in all types of weather. People do not stop using the beaches during the Winter. In fact, for many people, the quieter Winter months are a more enjoyable time to visit the beach than during the peak Summer period. Why, then, does Mayo County Council deny access to public toilets at our beaches for half the year? In early October the toilets are locked up, the public bins are removed, and beach users are left without these basic facilities until the following April or May. For some people, access to a public toilet is simply about convenience - it's not necessarily a deal-breaker - but for many more people, a public toilet can be a determining factor in whether they visit a public amenity such as a beach. Women, disabled people, older people, people with children, and many others in our society are unfairly impacted by a lack of public toilets. Where these facilities exist, such as at our beaches, they should be accessible all year round. To be frank, the people least affected by the lack of public toilets are non-disabled men, who can pretty much pee wherever they like (and who don't have a menstrual cycle). For everyone else, if there's no public toilet available, there's a calculation to be made: How long can I spend in this place before I'll need to pee? Can I visit at all? Should I risk my dignity, and potentially my personal safety, by squatting somewhere out-of-the-way just to pee? By denying these facilities for half the year, Mayo County Council is effectively closing the beaches to a broad section of our society, and this is not equitable or acceptable. We call on Mayo County Council to immediately reopen the public toilets at all our beaches, and to keep these essential facilities open all year round.

82% of the Irish people support neutrality in all its aspects.

We need your support: Please sign the petition below! Finding it hard to sleep at night with light glare from street lighting coming into your bedroom? The County Council are going to be upgrading the current street lights in Cloughjordan village and will soon consult with the local community on the type of new lighting arrangements to install. This is your chance to have the kind of lighting you really want installed in your village. We aim to submit a letter to the County Council on behalf of people in the local community, to request that the Council: - Install lights with a warm (Amber) colour temperature with an upper limit of (no more than) 2700 kelvin. - Install light shields or hooded lights with more focused lighting, (thereby improving security by reducing glare through targeted lighting and reducing the impact of light pollution). Why are we making the above request? There is an opportunity here for Cloughjordan village to get smart, modern, high standard, well-designed lighting installed that reduces glare into our houses and bedrooms and yet still keeps our streets safe at night. The right kind of well-designed lighting can help reduce light pollution, helping to protect our health and that of the environment. The upper brightness limit we are asking for will be similar to the existing brightness level of the current sodium lighting on the main street but will have a softer effect as the new lighting will be LED, where 2700 kelvin is on the warmer scale of lighting. Also, if the lights are shielded, as we are requesting, the light is targeted to the ground where it is needed, and doesn’t get wasted in glare. This has been shown to improve security by eliminating the excessive glare that often ‘blinds’ people looking into overly bright street lighting. The truth is that better design equals better and safer lighting. Why be concerned about light pollution? Light pollution is Harmful for our health: Current scientific studies suggest that artificial light at night negatively affects human health by increasing our risks for sleep disorders, depression, diabetes and more. It is proven that artificial lights directly interrupt our circadian rhythm. Circadian rhythms are 24-hour cycles that are part of the body’s internal clock, running in the background to carry out essential functions whilst we sleep: the sleep-wake cycle. Some of these processes include brain wave patterns, hormone production, cell regulation, and other biologic activities. Disruption of the circadian clock is known to have a significant correlation to several medical disorders in humans including depression, insomnia, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Light pollution is harmful to nature: Plants and Animals depend on earth’s daily light and dark cycle to govern life-sustaining behaviours. For hundreds of millions of years, the web of life on earth has been dependent on day and night, light and dark. Research shows that artificial light at night has adverse and even deadly effects on many species. Researchers have already identified harmful impacts on a huge array of species including bats, insects, plants, fish, turtles, marine corals and even primates. Overlighting wastes energy we can’t afford to waste: It is estimated that at least 20% of light is wasted by unshielded and/or poorly aimed outdoor lighting which is about 3 billion euros per years’ worth of energy lost in sky glow. As much as 50% of outdoor lighting globally is wasted, which increases greenhouse gas emissions, contributes to climate change, and renders us all energy-dependent. To offset all that carbon dioxide, we’d have to plant about 875 million trees annually!

Farmland birds are disappearing. We're losing our bees, plants, beautiful wildflowers. Agriculture intensification is wiping them out. Ensuring that Ireland's Common Agriculture Policy Strategic Plan does the minimum for biodiversity is critical to save them. We're running out of time to save wildlife. Please sign.

People in this nature-deprived and traffic-choked part of Dublin need healthy shared green spaces

Every year we throw away millions of tonnes of plastic - it never disappears, but breaks down into tiny pieces which finds its way into our rivers, seas, soils and air. Here in Northern Ireland 8 out of ten of the most found items on beaches in Northern Ireland were made of plastic. As the plastic breaks down into tiny pieces it’s consumed by marine animals, and scientists have found evidence that we are ingesting it through the food chain. Photo: A grey seal entangled in plastic, photographed by DAERA (2019)

We have seen the success of the campaign. Dublin City Council (DCC) even hinted at it in their social media campaigns with over 300,000 people having enjoyed the pedestrianised. Yet, despite the popularity, DCC are looking to end the pedestrianisation. We want to see it continued as we still need Covid-safe environments to meet with friends going into the winter. Please also email your local councillor to make sure this happens. List here: https://councilmeetings.dublincity.ie/mgCommitteeMailingList.aspx?EM=1&ID=0

Because this affects EVERYBODY in Ireland, it is not something that happens to other people - it will impact all facets of business, enterprise, services and the private lives of individuals. Apart from the imminent and real danger to sick people living at home who require a regular, uninterrupted electricity supply and indeed to hospitals and care homes, just reflect on the effects of a power outage on electrical appliances and internet access. It will be too late to protest when the centres have been allowed to be built, most of which are absorbing energy without allowing any facility to use renewable energy supplies. It isn't just electricity supplies that will be affected, an inordinate amount of water is also required to keep these centre running efficiently. It is also important to note that these centres DO NOT employ many people. Many countries in Europe have put a moratorium on the building of these energy grabbing entities because they realise the devastating effect they have on national energy supplies.

For some years now, Fingal Council has shown very little interest in keeping a clean environment around the Broadmeadow Estuary catchment area. Volunteers in "Swords Pickers" were able to remove truck loads of dumped rubbish from Ward River Valley Park and Broadmeadow Estuary in the first half of 2021 alone. If something is not done to fundamentally correct this, plastic & other waste will continue to travel from the parkland in Swords, through the Estuary and out into the Irish Sea. Development of either the full size all-weather playing pitch and/or the Broadmeadow Greenway in 2021 will obviously add to the problem by multiplying volumes of human traffic.

Glyphosate the main ingredient in Roundup is poisonous to humans, wildlife and the environment. Studies recently found that this toxic weedkiller is in most people's bodies [1]. It is being sprayed on roadsides, paths, in housing estates close to where people live. Ireland has the second highest levels of glyphosate in surface water in the EU whilst other countries are banning it. In 2015 the World Health Organisation concluded that the pesticide was 'probably carcinogenic to humans' and again, [2] Despite this many local councils still use it and it is still being sold on shop shelves as Round Up. The EU re-approved the use of glyphosate in 2017 however, in the last few years it has been banned by countries including France, Germany, Sri Lanka, El Salvador, the Netherlands, Argentina, Columbia, Peru and Mexico. The EU licence renewal was due to happen this July 2022 but it's been pushed down the road again until July 2023. Big lobby’s already swooping in to convince politicians to vote to continue its use, ignoring the devastating effect it has on our biodiversity, water and our health.[3] Sign the petition to join the campaign so we can ban Glyphosate once and for all. Notes: [1] https://www.irishtimes.com/health/2022/07/09/disturbing-weedkiller-ingredient-tied-to-cancer-found-in-80-of-us-urine-samples/ [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/widely-used-herbicide-linked-to-cancer/ [3] Page 83 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/j.efsa.2015.4302/epdf

It’s terrible seeing all these useless face masks ending up polluting the environment and they keep producing more and more and giving them away

In recent years there has been a growing trend in purchasing a cask of whiskey for investment purposes. These casks need to be stored somewhere and distilleries are looking to our countryside to build large warehouses solely for the purpose of storing whiskey. Now West Cork Distillers Ltd. wants to build a whiskey maturation site on 26.5 acres in the heart of West Cork. The floorspace alone for the warehouses amounts to 24,480m2 (6 Acres), a road network is also required around these warehouses. The proposed development is only 1700m from the foot of Carrigfadda, that affords truly the most magnificent panoramic coastal and countryside views in West Cork. On clear days, one can see as far as the Old Head of Kinsale, the Kerry Paps, Hungry Hill and Sherkin Island, to name a few. This Large development doesn’t offer any extra employment into the area as it is mainly manned by CCTV operations or would have a maximum of two people on site. Our country lanes can’t support arctic lorries, the infrastructure is not there to support such a sizeable development. There is a potential for flooding in the area if the development goes ahead. A development of this size will lead to loss of habitat for our wildlife. This is an urban development that is more suited to an urban industrial area. We want to support our local enterprises, but we need our local enterprises to respect our rural communities. And we need your help to help us protect existing rural character and discourage urban style developments.