Why I will be voting Green

In Ireland over the last 10 years, the economy has been well run, but our society has not. Now we have the resources to rebalance our priorities. That is why, for me, the main issues in this election need to revolve around improving our quality of life.

Forget global warming. That is certainly not the only reason you should consider the Greens, it just so happens that the factors which damage our environment are also behind the damage to our society, and in the long run, our economy.

Improvements to our quality of life don't have to involve big projects and spending lots of money, sometimes it just means planning for the future, having having the desire to see changes happen. Over the period of the next government, many of us will graduate from college, join the workforce and look at buying a house. Soon, these same quality of life issues will begin to hit us. What are they?

Currently, first time house buyers can only afford to live in satellite towns in Meath, Wicklow and Kildare. Vast amounts of housing estates are being built onto the edges of towns/villages in these areas. While the populations of these towns grows with young families, there has been no associated increase in community services. As a result there are: over-crowded schools, no child care services, inadequate sewage and water systems. Housing often has no footpaths to local village. There are no shops and services near and this creates a reliance on the car, and anti-social problems. Also, no public transport means parents must drive to work, which is often in Dublin. Famously, this creates traffic gridlock, and means parents can spend 4 or 5 hours a day commuting and this is time lost with their families. At the end of the day, this means there is no real community.

Is this the way we should be living our lives? Do you think its acceptable that in 2007 the government is still allowing these mistakes to happen? Imagine life as a kid in your area without any DART or Buses? Why the hell are houses being built in these places, do you think we've run out of space in Dublin?

Rather than spending all our time trying to fix the symptoms of bad planning, why don't we do more to fix it at source, through proper urban planning! We need to stop letting developers decide where houses will be built! This is where the current government has failed miserably.

The Green Party are the only party who I believe would deliver a better Dublin. They propose introducing an new authority to take control of planning. They also are one of the only parties who care about making small changes, like removing cars from our city centre, making it a nicer environment for pedestrians. Small changes lead to big improvements.

Also I feel not enough attention is paid to the greens economic proposals. The greens have by far the most responsible manifesto when it comes to running our economy. They have not been promising everything to everyone. Other parties will reduce income tax, well the Greens will reduce VAT which is one of the most "regressive" taxes around (because it takes no account of peoples ability to pay). The greens say they will actually increase Capital Gains Tax because it is currently lower than income tax, and is a bit of a loophole. It is through methods like this that they can pay for their proposals, unlike other parties who say they will cut taxes and then pay for their policies through unrealistic economic growth predictions.

At the end of the day, I really can't think why anyone would dismiss the Green Party, other than because of ignorant presumptions. I hope others will think about voting for them.

P.S. I also think our local TD Ciaran Cuffe is very good, you can see his youtube page here and his blog here.