Local election candidate Sean O’ hArgain is an ambitious man. Already he is a sitting local Labour Party councillor on Kilkenny Borough Council, the principal of the city’s Gaelscoil, a father and husband.
However, this year he also has his heart set on a county council seat and into the future - a Dail seat if things go his way. He is not afraid to admit that he is an ambitious man and he firmly believes that the Labour Party has still not had it’s day in recent times and that day will soon come.
Of the economy he says, “the policies that the Labour Party are currently promoting are those that are currently being implemented by Gordon Brown and Barack Obama..
“They are investing money in a stimulus package and if necessary borrowing to do so. Gordon Brown’s package is investing in schools, hospitals and services in a bid to put people back in work. We’ve more than 100,000 people out of work and yet my school is paying more than €50k per annum on rental of pre-fab buildings for classrooms because we can’t get sanction for the building of classrooms. This is insane economics,” he said.
Cutbacks
“Fianna Fail and Fine Gael are caught up in a ‘Thatcherite’ time warp where they believe that all you can do to improve on a situation is cut back rather than stimulate. The budget was simply an indicator of how a government has lost touch with ordinary people. Cutbacks now kicking-in, in the schools for example include a cut in the grant to disadvantaged children who can’t afford books. I know first hand that the children who will lose out are the ones with learning difficulties. Also the cut in class sizes, which we will all feel in September, is the single biggest broken promise to ordinary people and if it is not reversed, the damage will last for a generation.”
Local elections
Cllr O hArgain is confident that the Labour Party can do extremely well in the up-coming Local Elections and he is hopeful that there will be an extra two seats for Labour on the borough council and at least one extra seat on the county council.
“A strong performance is vital for the party. Seamus Pattison is not a member of the Oireachtas anymore but he is very much involved locally as president of the Labour Party. He is still a force and we all rely on his advice. There wasn’t a Pattison on the Labour Party ticket in the last election and nor will there be in this one, and the job is for the rest of us to get elected now.”
“We had a good election in 2004 and it will be tough to top that but I do see Labour doing very well. I don’t think it’s unrealistic to think that we could win an extra two seats on the borough council and an extra one on the county, and my objective is to secure the maximum possible votes for the Labour Party so I hope to secure a seat on the county council this time around too.”
Labour is also running a new candidate in the local election for the city this year in Sean Butler and Cllr O’ hArgain is hopeful that there will also be a candidate running from the Callan area for a seat on the County Council. “We just need to find the right candidate,” he said.
Independent Party
Cllr O’ hArgain is very adamant that the Labour Party is a standalone party and has no voting pact with any other party although the Mullingar Accord is very much evident in the election of the Mayor of Kilkenny.
He believes that the Labour Party has no less right to want to be the biggest party in the city than the other larger parties.
“On the borough council Fianna Fail has four seats, as does Fine Gael while Labour has three and the Greens have one. This is not a big margin.”
Cllr O’ hArgain was slow to give an opinion on whether or not the party would row in with Fianna Fail if the opportunity arose, however, like his party leader, Eamon Gilmore he called for an early general election.
“At this point I want to see Fianna Fail out of government. They have been there too long. Ireland needs a change and Labour can provide that change.”
He also admitted that he would like to think that some day he would make his way into Leinster House.
“I’ve never made any secret of my ambitions, but firstly I want to win a seat on Kilkenny County Council and retain my seat on the borough council. I believe I’ve worked hard enough to merit it but the decision is for the people,” he added.
“We must have Labour representation in the Oireachtas for Carlow Kilkenny - this is the most important thing and whether it is me or someone else isn’t hugely important. I am a newly appointed principal of a school, I love my job, and if I was still here on my retirement at 65, I can safely say I’d be happy, but the ambition will never go away.”
Lisbon
Starting off as a Euro-sceptic, Cllr O’ hArgain has come around to the thinking that Europe is the way forward and that a second vote on Lisbon is absolutely necessary if Ireland is to keep moving forward.
“We had two votes on divorce when we were deciding on this issue and nobody said it was undemocratic. The decision to defeat Lisbon was a vote against the government and the economic situation. I am asking people not to vote like this again. If we had not had the European Central Bank behind us throughout these hard times, things could have been a lot worse. I think the consequences of a no-vote could be disasterous. I saw first-hand when I was working with the Leader programme that if we had not had EU funding, thousands of projects would never have gone ahead in this country. Initially neutrality was a problem for me as was the idea of a European army, however, now I realise that those things never happened and they won’t ever happen. But I also believe that we cannot stand by and let a situation like the genocide that occurred in Kosovo and Bosnia happen on our door-step. We can’t stay of the opinion that it is OK for NATO to be involved but we will not get involved ourselves.
“The international community should also be empowered to protect the people of Gaza from what is going on there at the moment. We cannot sit back and watch genocide on our doorstep,” he reiterated.
Public sector
Although most politicians are blaming the public sector for the problems we are experiencing in our economy at the moment, Cllr O’ hArgain is pointing the finger directly at the private sector and in particular developers and builders.
“The people in the private sector are the culprits in this problem. It was the private sector that got us into this mess and therefore, it’s private sector reform we need not public sector reform. Personally I would have sacked the boards of the top five banks in the country and the financial regulator. However, the agency that the Government gives out about most is the HSE and they are the people who created it and therefore are directly responsible for the mess that is the HSE. In my opinion Fianna Fail is one of the greatest examples of how to waste money. If there is waste and there is - it needs to be eliminated in the public sector.”
Mid West Regional Hospital
Of the recent report on the Mid West Regional Hospital in Limerick and the decision to keep this facility as the only 24-hour accident and emergency facility for the mid west region, Cllr O’ hArgain says it sounds the death knell for our health system.
“To me this is the beginning of the implementation of the Hanley Report by stealth. We need to be extremely vigilant in defending our A+E unit at St Luke’s, because if this is happening elsewhere, there is nothing to stop it from happening on our doorstep. I know there was a committment given but we need to be on our toes in relation to these commitments.”
