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Active Citizenship to promote democracy
by Martin Ryan

An initiative aimed at encouraging people to vote in the local elections next year has been started by the Active Citizenship group. The inaugural meeting was held recently at Mulhuddart Community Centre, with local community workers, Moira Hyland-Doyle and Ann Osborne speaking about the voting process and how local problems can be addressed if people are willing to engage with the political process.

It is one of the great paradoxes of political life that those who tend to have most to complain about with regard to our politicians often tend to be the same people who are least likely to vote. Certainly in Ireland there has been a significant drop-off in voter turnout. In the 1987 General Election the turnout was 73%. This has dropped steadily in each election since and was just 62% at the most recent poll last May.

This is the trend the Active Citizenship initiative is seeking to turn around. The speakers cited many local issues which need to be addressed, among them the Women’s Refuge, anti-social behaviour, public drinking and of course the scourge of drugs. They quoted the upsurge in the number of small-time drug dealers in the Dublin 15 area in the past few years yet suggested that it is a problem which is not being adequately tackled.

The meeting was told that number of deaths from cocaine in the locality in recent years has not been sufficiently recognised and that there seems to be a view among people that it is “only cocaine” which is seen as relatively harmless compared to heroin. However when mixed with alcohol the drug provides a lethal cocktail for many people.

Both speakers - who are established community activists - also nominated insufficient affordable housing, lack of support for special needs children and inadequate health and education services generally as significant problems. Homelessness is a factor in the community which they claimed is much understated as apparently there are many people in the community who merely move from friend to friend with no regular accommodation available to them and are not considered to be ‘technically homeless’.

The meeting was attempting to not only highlight the multitude of societal problems which are evident in parts of Dublin 15 but also to encourage people to see that the solutions are in their own hands. It is intended to pursue this initiative further in the coming weeks and months. Another information meeting will be held at the Fortlawn community facility on the 19th May between 9.30-12.pm. With the amount of information available both on the history of the voting franchise as well as the wealth of local knowledge among the presenters it is a morning well with putting aside.

It is planned towards the end of May to organise open meetings between citizens and politicians. On the basis that nothing concentrates a politician’s mind quite like the shadow of a ballot box on the horizon, it may be an opportune time to raise many of the local issues of concern.

As the Active Citizenship group is keen to emphasise, local elections are elections in which all can vote including the “new Irish” in the area so the next twelve months represents on opportunity of a captive political audience that may not come around for a few years again.

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