There was a special meeting of South Dublin County Council last evening to vote on a proposal by management to sell off a 72 acre site in Clondalkin.

This land will take 900 houses plus a school and shops.

The idea is to sell the land to a developer so that 600 houses will be for sale on the private market and 300 will be bought by the council for social housing.

This site belongs to the council and the instruction to sell it came from Simon Coveney’s department. Council officials have no real say in this. They are little more than puppets of the department.

What was interesting was the attitude of various political parties in the council.
Fine Gael naturally were in favour, after all Coveney is one of their own and selling off assets is government policy. No surprise there.

FF also fell into line. They being the other side of the same coin.

The Labour long abandoned its working class base and reaped a bitter harvest at the last elections. They seem to have learned nothing from that and they too favoured the sale.

What is really interesting though is Sinn Fein. They owe their council seats to the very people most in need of council houses. Yet they thought the loss of 600 homes at a gain of 300 was a good deal. This is the logic of the madhouse.

They made no attempt to put counter proposals. They calmly accepted council officials word that the profits of the sale would go to further land purchase.

But the council already has a substantial land bank. What it doesn’t have is houses.

Sinn Fein’s position is nothing short of treachery towards the very people they were elected to represent.

No doubt they will be trumpeting about the 300 and be as silent as Trappists about the 600 they gave away.

Only the socialists- Ourselves in PBP and Solidarity- voted against the sale. The rag bag of so called independents followed the Fine Gael diktat.