The Louth Sinn Féin team pictured at last night’s local election campaign launch in The Fairways Hotel. Back row from left: JJ Quigley, Cllr Pearse McGeough, Cllr Tomás Sharkey, Cllr Kevin Meenan, Tom Cunningham, Cllr Jim Loughran, Alan Cassidy, Kenneth Flood. Front row from left: Matt Carthy (EU candidate), Cllr Jennifer Green, Cllr Imelda Munster, Louth TD and party president Deputy Gerry Adams and Cllr Edel Corrigan
Sinn Féin is putting forward its largest ever team of local government candidates in Louth for this May’s elections.
The party launched its campaign at an event in The Fairways Hotel in Dundalk last night with president and local TD Gerry Adams addressing a packed meeting of candidates and party activists.
The event, which was attended by Sinn Féin’s EU candidate Matt Carthy, encouraged people to get behind the party’s 11 candidates who will stand for election on May 23rd.
Speaking at the event, Deputy Adams said the large number of candidates being put forward by Sinn Féin in Louth was a statement of intent as to the direction the party wanted to go in.
“Sinn Féin is going into to the Local and European elections in May as a party on the rise, not just in Louth but throughout this state. Since the 2011 General election Sinn Féin TDs and Senators have been holding the Fine Gael/Labour Government to account,” he said.
“They have been working hard to challenge and to change the toxic political culture which has led to the series of political scandals we have witnessed recently and to the bad political decisions which has seen ordinary citizens penalised while those at the top of society have been untouched by the consequences of the economic crisis.
“Sinn Féin is the only all-Ireland party. We will be fighting local government and European elections in the north on May 22nd and local government and European elections in this state the following day.
“In the 2011 General Election, the best so far for Sinn Féin in this state, the party topped the poll in Louth with 15,072 votes.
“We have a dynamic republican team contesting the local elections in this county with Jim Loughran, Edel Corrigan and JJ Quigley in Dundalk-Carlingford, Jennifer Green, Kevin Meenan and Tomás Sharkey in Dundalk South, Pearse McGeough and Tom Cunningham in Mid-Loutd and Imelda Munster, Alan Cassidy and Kenneth Flood in Drogheda.”
Deputy Adams said that health and justice issues were two of the biggest problems facing the county at present.
“As we face into these elections, there are major issues facing people in Louth. We are dealing with an unacceptable depletion of services at the Louth Hospital. The current crisis at Our Lady of Lourdes in Drogheda is due is its under-resourcing resulting in an inability to cope with the volume of patients they are dealing with.
“Ambulance cover in Louth is totally inadequate and has led directly to fatalities.
“Garda cover throughout the county has been reduced. The Department of Justice is not resourcing or developing the partnerships between the Gardaí and the communities on the ground in the way that it should.
“Louth is also severely disadvantaged as a result of being a border county. There has been no government investment in jobs or capital spend in infrastructure. The failure so far to proceed with the Narrow Water Bridge project has been a huge blow. Sinn Féin will not let this issue fall by the wayside.
“The Narrow Water Bridge project is needed for Louth, for South Down and it is needed as part of our national infrastructure.
“We have seen no innovation or imaginative proposals from the Fine Gael/Labour government to deal with the specific issues faced by border counties.
“Sinn Féin has been actively pursuing the cross-border sharing of local services, north/south and the establishment of specific EU Units as a means of drawing down investment from Europe in a more strategic way.
“There is a housing crisis in Louth with 4,800 people on the waiting list in this county.
“Thousands of families throughout this county are suffering as a result of planning irregularities and unfinished estates, built with no corresponding amenities.
“Citizens in Louth deserve better representation. They need real republican representation and increasingly they are looking to Sinn Féin to provide that,” he said.
The full list of Sinn Féin candidates going forward for election is:
- Dundalk-Carlingford: Cllr Jim Loughran, Cllr Edel Corrigan, JJ Quigley
- Dundalk South: Cllr Jennifer Green, Cllr Kevin Meenan, Cllr Tomás Sharkey
- Mid-Louth: Cllr Pearse McGeough, Tom Cunningham
- Drogheda: Cllr Imelda Munster, Alan Cassidy, Kenneth Flood
Talk of the Town 