Speech to Greenhills College Graduation

Apologies for being so quiet on the blog over the last few weeks and months. It's not been high on the priorities but as soon as a new dermotlooney.com site is up and running, a blog feature will be an integral part.

I was honoured to have been asked to speak to the 6th year students of my former school, Greenhills College, at their graduation in "The Comp" tonight. I have served as Chairperson of the Greenhills College Board of Management for two years now and am constantly inspired by the efforts of the staff and the decency of the students. Tonight's group were no different - by all accounts a great bunch of lads, generated a fantastic feel-good atmosphere in the room. Congrats to all involved and good luck to the lads in their exams.

Find below a copy of my written speech as requested on Twitter - although the final, delivered version differed somewhat. I have put italics around a couple of lines which weren't delivered but were written anyway.

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Speech to Greenhills College Graduation, Tuesday May 24th 2011

A chairde,

Is mór an ónóir dom a bheith anseo mar iar-dhalta agus mar Cathaoirleach an Bhord Bhainistíochta Choláiste na Cnoc nGlas. Go raibh míle maith agaibh as ucht an cuireadh chuig an Searmanas seo. Bíonn sé i gcónaí deas tagann ar ais ar an halla seo, ina bhfuil a lán cuimhní dearfach agamsa, go háirithe ar oíche speisialta ar nós anocht.

It’s a huge honour to have been asked to speak to the graduating students of Greenhills College tonight. I’m proud to do so not just as Chairperson of the Board of Management here at the Comp, but as a past pupil too in the Class of ’01.

Since then I’ve had something of an interesting decade. I studied Social Policy, Politics and Sociology as part of a Social Science Degree in UCD. I covered the League of Ireland as a football journalist for a while before realising that I could never be impartial about my beloved St Patrick’s Athletic. I busked at night in Temple Bar for a while before realising that there’s only so many times you can belt out Wonderwall before wrecking the heads of the residents who live there. I dressed up as an elf for a children’s Christmas show but the kids were frightened by the fact that Santa was half the size of one of his helpers.

I tried my hands at a few jobs but only later on did I decide on a career – and so, six years out of Greenhills College, I studied for a postgrad in primary teaching and am now finishing my third year as a teacher. It’s a job I love but it seemed to take me a long time to realise it. For those of you unsure about your career path, don’t worry.

To paraphrase a song that was popular “back in my day” - don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you wanna do with your life; the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 18 what they wanted to do with their lives; some of the most interesting 30 and 40 year olds I know still don’t.

Somewhere along the line, I got involved in politics. Greenhills College and this community always inspired a message of social justice and equality. That led me to want to speak up for my community, and in particular for those whose voices are rarely heard, and to stand for election. I’m proud to represent our community on the County Council and to sit on the VEC – and through that, be involved again in this college, being able to give something back to a place and to people from whom I gained so much.

Greenhills College is 40 years old. It is a credit to the staff of this college that thousands of young men have been educated in an institution that is at the very heart of the community of Greenhills. If ever anyone challenges public servants about flexibility and transformation, I point them to the teaching staff of Greenhills College who have coped with roles between traditional Junior and Senior Cycle, LCA, LCVP, Special Needs Teaching, PLC and further education. I'm honoured to serve on a Board of Management of such a school and would like you all to give a bualadh bos in recognition of the staff, led by Principal JJ Walsh.

Ten years ago, I sat out there, watching some other past-pupil of the time – watching, but not really listening. No doubt whoever it was was more noteworthy than me, but regardless, at the time, I, like most of you now, just wanted to get the grad over with and the session begun.

We couldn’t wait to go out on the town, couldn’t wait to make our mark on the world – couldn’t wait to grow up. But now, ten years on, and us grown mostly up - and sometimes out – marriages left, right and centre, kids at many of our feet, jobs and no jobs to deal with – it’s the Class of 2011 that most of the Class of 01 feel most jealous of.

Not that it’s easy for you. You’ve come through what I hope have been five enjoyable years at Greenhills College. But I know for many of you not all of your time has been easy. Be it problems at home, issues with teachers, difficulties with classmates – I know it hasn’t been plain sailing.

Graduation night isn’t a night for regrets. It’s the night where you celebrate overcoming those difficulties – the nights when you kept going on a project when it would have been easier to give up, the mornings when putting your head under the duvet would have been an easier option than facing what was ahead in school.

But Grad night can be a night when you can put some of your regrets to bed. Where you can take a moment to shake hands with that chap who used to get on your nerves, but who you now realise is alright, actually. Where you can take a moment to say a genuine word of thanks to a teacher who you might not have always seen eye to eye with, but who you now know is alright, actually. Grad night is the night for you to thank your mates for being mates, your school community for bringing you through, and your family for being there.

Many of you will be feeling the pressure ahead of the Leaving Cert. Realise that the next few weeks will be tough, but the worst is over. Do all you can to ensure you’ve no regrets at the end of your exams. In the words of the motto that once upon a time adorned our homework journals here at the Comp, be the best that you can be, do the best that you can do.

What you have learned here is so much more than the subjects you are taking in exam form next month. Greenhills College aims for something different than what Pádraig Pearse knew as an academic 'murder machine.' The young men who graduate from the Comp come from a system much more along the lines of Martin Luther King’s famous line about the goal of true education – intelligence plus character.

You graduate into an unsure future. Many of you will find work or attend third-level and PLC courses – but it’s despicable that those who have gone before you have now burdened your generation with scandalous levels of unemployment and forced emigration. I really wish you could all stay and help rebuild this society in the coming decade, so that one or more of you can stand in front of the Class of ’21 and tell them how you did it. Some of you may leave us for warmer shores but we know how much easier staying in touch is, and we know that you will be back.

Your schooling ends here, but your education is only beginning. WB Yeats, a poet who many of you will have studied, put it right when he said;

"Education is not the filling of a pail; but the lighting of a fire."

May all of your flames burn on.

Speech Proposing Review of Derelict Sites Legislation

Here is the speech I gave on my motion on Derelict Sites at today's Council meeting. The motion was unanimously agreed by the members of the Council. I'll be sure to update this blog with any reply from Minister Gormley.

Motion 4: Cllr Dermot Looney
"That this Council, in light of existing derelict sites in the county, including the McHugh's Site in Greenhills, and the likelihood of further sites in the coming months and years, notes that existing legislation, including the 1990 Derelict Sites Act, fails to empower local authorities and communities in appropriately resolving the dereliction and neglect caused by these eyesores. This Council calls on the Minister for Environment, Heritage and Local Government to conduct a review of the relevant legislation and practice in the area and, on the basis of such a review, to introduce changes to redress the balance between the interest of developers and those of local communities."

The purpose of this motion is to set in place an historic review of the legislation governing derelict sites in this county and across Ireland. It is timely given the likely onset of dereliction across the grey swathes of NAMAland. But it is equally relevant to the extant eyesores which already pollute our area.

The citizens we represent are entitled to have their communities protected within, by and through the public sphere. That notion of a public sphere was under constant attack throughout the so-called boom. Developers and their developments, no matter how unsuitable or impracticable, were lauded in the name of progress.

Those of us who dared to question the landgrabs, the gazumpers, the get-rich-quick overdevelopment and the greedy hanging on to sites in the hope of further price inflation, were accused of begrudgery and drudgery. Now, as the bubble lies burst on so many of their properties, they’re the ones being bailed out by their Government friends, and as those developers retreat into comfortable obscurity, or scarper out of Ireland altogether, the ghost estates and other kips left behind continue to haunt our communities.

The existing legislation and practice have failed, and failed miserably, to protect the communities we represent. The legislation is out-of-date – as well as the 20 year old Derelict Sites Act, much of the role of our councils relies on a Local Government (Sanitary Services) Act from 1964. The legislation is overly-complicated – the myriad processes remain a mystery to communities after years of involvement in seeking cleanups and repairs. And the legislation is clearly pro-developer and anti-community.

The 1990 Derelict Sites Act tells us that “It shall be the duty of a local authority to take all reasonable steps (including the exercise of any appropriate statutory powers) to ensure that any land situate in their functional area does not become or continue to be a derelict site.”

Regarding the McHugh’s site in Greenhills I refer to in the motion, many of these steps and powers have been taken. But rather than a neighbourhood centre providing services to our community, or even a cleaned-up patch of open space, we are left with the neglect, the eyesore, the dumping and the rats. Up ‘til recently we also suffered vast scrawls of graffiti, an unsecured entrance, so-called antisocial behaviour within the site and the danger of bonfires at Hallowe’en. This Council called, as part of the statutory powers spoken of, for the provision of a brick wall at the site. Instead, the developer threw up a few sheets of MDF hoarding in a job that would make a cowboy builder blush.

The long, drawn-out process taken against McHughs and its sister derelict site less than a mile away at the Burmah Garage in Wellington, and the drip-drip of action and inaction, have led to almost 20 years of dereliction on these sites alone. There is no more damning evidence of the failure of derelict sites legislation than the failure to deal with those who own those sites. As Seán McHugh sits in the Spanish sun, the communities left without a neighbourhood centre, a Post Office for old age pensions or a pharmacy for medicines stay behind as victims of pro-developer legislation.

Speech Given to IAWM Demonstration Against the Slaughter in Gaza, Tuesday January 7th

The given version of this speech at the Israeli Embassy was shorter than the text version and spoken without notes. The only significant differences are the brief tribute I paid to Tony Gregory and his human rights record in the given speech which does not appear below, and the fact that I did not get a chance to use the concluding part of the speech in which I quote Chris Hedges.

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A chairde,

My name is Dermot Looney. I am a Labour Party candidate in next year’s local elections in Tallaght and have been asked to speak to you on behalf of the Labour Party. I would like to give the apologies of our relevant Oireachtas spokespeople, who I understand are attending the funeral of the late Tony Gregory tonight.

I want to be brief with you because I know we will have many speakers with different insights to this slaughter.

I am here to speak on behalf of and for the Labour Party to express our complete and total solidarity with the Palestinian people. That solidarity is rooted in the membership of the Labour Party, who have at successive Party Conferences and meetings expressed a desire for the self-determination of the Palestinian people and a just peace in the Middle East.

And that same solidarity is led by our Party President and Spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, Michael D Higgins, who is a true friend of Palestine and of a just peace, in the face of vicious opposition from Zionists, imperialists and neocons at home and abroad.

Let us be clear. The Israeli government, represented in this embassy, have no respect for international law or the most basic of human rights. Their backers in the United States administration have just as little.

Both have continually flouted, broken, stymied and undermined the will of the United Nations. And they have done so not just in the past week, with the Israeli invasion of Gaza and the United States’ blocking of a UN resolution which simply called for a ceasefire. They’ve been at it for more than 60 years, right back to UN Resolution 194 in 1948 which called for the right of return.

As my party colleague Michael D Higgins has pointed out, the US has armed Israel to a point that has gone well past self defence. It has turned this nuclear-armed state into the greatest prospect for regional and global destruction, as it canvasses for US permission to make a strike against Iran.

This latest attack on the people of Gaza has already led to the slaughter of more than 500 people. It is just the latest in years of savage attacks on Palestine, be they bombs from the sky, invasions on foot, the blocking of food, cash and fuel, or any other of the series of Israeli interventions to deprive the Palestinian people of their basic human rights.

On behalf of the Labour Party I unreservedly condemn and oppose the attacks on Gaza and call for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire. Such a ceasefire can’t merely be a lull to allow the Israeli war machine pause for breath. Nor can it be a substitute for meaningful talks to resolve the wider issues of which there are too many to name.

It is no coincidence that the Israeli elections are scheduled for next month. The actions of the so-called Labour Party Minister for so-called Defence, Ehud Barak, and the Kadima leaders are particularly despicable, and seem to be made to shore up electoral support against the increasingly disgusting Benjamin Netanyahu in opposition.

But we stand tonight in solidarity with those Israeli progressives and peace activists in Israel whose voices may seem lonely in the fearful wilderness of today’s Israel. Those progressives and refuseniks are supported not only by justice and right, but by the billions worldwide who stand for peace over war, and oppressed over oppressors.

To conclude, friends, let us address where we can best channel our support for the Palestinian people and our opposition to Israeli state terror. We must make clear to the people of Gaza that we in Ireland stand in steadfast solidarity with them. To that end, I propose tonight that my own area of Tallaght be twinned with Gaza City, in a display not just of symbolic solidarity, but of material and infrastructural support from the people of Tallaght and South Dublin Council in the time ahead.

Here at home, too, we must pressurise our Government, who talk much about Palestine but do little, to impose sanctions on Israel and to act within the EU to that same goal. As long as Israelis continue to build settlements in the occupied territories and carry out the most heinous military and socioeconomic attacks, no one here can stand idly by or spout the same old platitudes.

Like it or not, Hamas is the democratically-elected government in Gaza. It is time that fact is realised by the Israeli government and the so-called Quartet, that totally spineless institution which has done more to destroy the peace process than aid it.

To finish, my solidarity, and that of the Labour Party, is entirely on the side of the suffering Palestinian people, entirely on the side of those Israelis who oppose their government’s slaughter, and entirely on the side of a just peace.

A journalist called Chris Hedges, who worked for the New York Times in the Middle East, has put it better than I have heard elsewhere. He noted that the Israeli government has said it is engaged in a “war to the bitter end” against Hamas in Gaza.

“A war? Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely crowded refugee camps and slums. Israel attacks a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor, no command and control, no army, and calls it a war. It is not a war. It is murder.”

Press Release - Local Labour Candidate Calls for Twinning of Tallaght and Gaza

This was picked up in today's Metro - full speech to follow.

Dermot Looney, a Labour Party election candidate for South Dublin County Council, has called for the twinning of Tallaght and Gaza City in a speech to Tuesday’s Irish Anti War Movement Demonstration against the Israeli attacks in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Looney (26) has a track record of involvement in Palestinian solidarity, particularly within Labour Youth, and has advocated the boycott of Israeli products and services as a campaigning tactic against Israeli state aggression.

Speaking on behalf of the Labour Party at the demonstration, Looney, a Tallaght-based teacher who is seeking election in the new Tallaght Central Ward, proposed the twinning of the two towns as a display “not just of symbolic solidarity, but of material and infrastructural support from the people of Tallaght and South Dublin Council in the time ahead.”

“I am asking local people and their representatives on the Council to stand in solidarity with the terrorised people of Gaza by making this link,” Looney noted. “The Council already have arrangements with Ethiopian, English and German local authorities, but this would be a real and lasting message of hope for Palestinians from the people of Tallaght.”

“On behalf of the Labour Party I unreservedly condemn and oppose the attacks on Gaza and call for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire. Such a ceasefire can’t merely be a lull to allow the Israeli war machine pause for breath. Nor can it be a substitute for meaningful talks to resolve the wider issues of which there are too many to name.”

“This latest attack on the people of Gaza has already led to the slaughter of more than 500 people. It is just the most recent in years of savage attacks on Palestine, be they bombs from the sky, invasions on foot, the blocking of food, cash and fuel, or any other of the series of Israeli interventions to deprive the Palestinian people of their basic human rights.”

“Here at home, we must pressurise our Government, who talk much about Palestine but do little, to impose sanctions on Israel and to act within the EU to that same goal. As long as Israelis continue to build settlements in the occupied territories and carry out the most heinous military and socioeconomic attacks, no one here can stand idly by or spout the same old platitudes.”

“My solidarity, and that of the Labour Party, is entirely on the side of the suffering Palestinian people, entirely on the side of those Israelis who oppose their government’s slaughter, and entirely on the side of a just peace.”