MATT CARTHY TD

Carthy impressed by high standards at BT Young Scientists as Monaghan and Cavan students shine

Sinn Fein’s Matt Carthy was in attendance at the 2020 BT Young Scientists Exhibition in Dublin’s RDS on Thursday last. The Midlands Northwest MEP had high praise for the students who took park.

“These brilliant young minds will shape the Island of Ireland in years to come. Some of the ideas, studies and inventions were incredible. It was an honour to meet so many of Ireland’s brightest students. Our future really is in good hands”

Having perused hundreds of stalls Carthy met in person with many students from Schools across the the country. “It’s inspiring to meet so many confident young people with such progressive ideas. I really enjoyed chatting to the students and their teachers and I wholeheartedly congratulate them on what really was a brilliant event.”

Carthy reserved particular praise for students from the Monaghan, Cavan and Meath areas. “I was delighted to see my homelands so well represented. I saw lots of familiar faces from Schools in Carrickmacross, Castleblayney, Clones, Monaghan, Kingscourt, Bawnboy, Cavan, Kells and Navan. These students, their parents and their teachers deserve great praise.”

The Young Scientist Exhibition has been growing from strength to strength since it’s inception in 1965 with the 2020 edition again attracting record numbers. ENDS

————– Photos from Event—————————-

Matt Carthy MEP meets Niall Murnaghan from Patrician High School, Carrickmacross

Matt Carthy MEP chatting to Castleblayney College students Katie and Sarah Mooney

James O’Harte of Largy College, Clones impressed MEP Carthy with his economic findings on the uncertainty surrounding Brexit

Sinn Féin MEP Matt Carthy pictured with Shanice Alwell of Coláiste Dún an Rí, Kingscourt, Co Cavan

Sinn Féin MEP calls for uniform phone chargers

Sinn Féin MEP Matt Carthy has called on the EU Commission to stop dragging its feet and to implement rules to force phone manufacturers to make all phones in the EU chargeable with a common charger.

The issue will be debated next week in Strasbourg with MEP expected to call on the European Commission to adopt rules forcing companies to make all phones compatible with a common charger.

MEP Carthy said:

“I am calling on the new European Commission to show they have consumers’ interest at heart by stopping the foot-dragging and to act to enforce a common charger.

“Most companies already apply common standards with the exception of Apple.  It is not in the interest of consumers that one brand requires specific chargers to be charged.

“It is believed the Commission is reluctant to stand up to Apple given the trade tension between the USA and Europe but consumer rights, (and particularly the rights of parents suffering daily battles over chargers!) must triumph here.

“The new rules would also mean less electronic waste when taken alongside the proposal to allow chargers to be sold separately.

“I am adding my voice to the call or a common charger to be made the law as soon as possible.”

NOTE:

• The Radio Equipment Directive was adopted in 2014 and gives the opportunity to the Commission to introduce, through a delegated act, a requirement to produce common chargers. This would mean that any mobile phone on the European market would be charged with the same charger. The Commission reportedly examining possibilities to adopt such delegated act.
• Many producers already participate in a voluntary scheme, only 18% of the market is not harmonised at present.  This 18% is the exact market share of Apple.  Apple has been actively lobbying against a delegated act to introduce a mandatory common charger.
• An impact assessment is ongoing and the results should be presented by the Commission in the coming months.
• This Oral question and Commission statement will be used to pressure the Commission to introduce the common charger as this is better for consumers.  In combination with new rules on decoupling (not automatically receiving a new charger with every newly bought phone), the common charger could also greatly decrease the amount of electronic waste.
• A European Parliament resolution will be drafted for later in January.

Mining cannot proceed without community acceptance – Matt Carthy MEP

Local MEP, Matt Carthy, has stated that mining licences should not be granted in the absence of community acceptance.  The Sinn Féin representative was speaking after it emerged that Adventus Zinc Ltd has applied for a renewal of their prospecting licence, which covers much of South Monaghan.

A public meeting concerning local mining developments is to be held in Magheracloone next Monday.  Speaking in advance of the event, which is organised by the Drumgossatt/Knocknacran Residents’ Group, Matt Carthy said that if companies were forced to secure the approval of those living close to mining operations before they were granted licences then many of the problems faced by local communities would not emerge.

He said:  “Many people have been surprised to learn that Adventus Zinc have applied for a renewal of their prospecting licence.  This licence covers areas in Drummond Otra, Magheross, Magheraboy and Lisanisk and therefore many residents are likely to have views on the matter.  But, rather than engage with residents, the company submitted their application in the days prior to Christmas.  It is easy to assume that this was an effort to ensure minimum public engagement with the process.

“It is these types of antics that lead to public distrust in mining and prospecting companies.  That Monday’s meeting on the impact of Mining developments takes place in Magheracloone is apt.  That community has been at the brunt of mining failures where families have been displaced, facilities lost and entire areas discommoded due to the massive sink holes that appeared overnight.

“For years the concerns of residents who expressed fears of such incidents were dismissed, not just by the company involved but by the statutory agencies responsible for monitoring them.  Now Gyproc plan to expand their existing open case mining operations. 

“For me the solution is clear.  In other to secure prospecting licences or permission to mine, companies should be first obliged to garner the support of the local community.  The track record of previous operations should also be taken into account.  That would force the companies involved to proactively engage with concerns of residents.

“At the moment the planning and licencing processes are skewed in favour of the companies rather than the communities.  We in Sinn Féin are committed to correcting that imbalance.

“I commend the Drumgossatt/Knocknacran Residents’ Group for organising next Monday’s meeting and I encourage people to attend.  With the deadline for submissions to the Adventus Zinc proposal closing on the 18th January this is an ideal opportunity for the public to be informed of the proposals but also to hear from residents who live beside the current Gyrpoc mines and other communities involved in battles with mining companies”.

ENDS

Sinn Féin MEP calls on government to cancel RIC commemoration

The government plan to ‘commemorate’ the RIC on January 17 is ‘an insult to those who fought for Irish freedom’ and should be cancelled according to MEP Matt Carthy.

The event, which is due to be held at Dublin Castle, is planned as part of the government’s programme marking a decade of centenaries.

The Midlands North West MEP said the All Party Consultation Group on Commemorations were not consulted on this event and would likely have ‘dismissed it out of hand’ if they had been because ‘it is an insult to those who fought for Irish freedom’.

Matt Carthy said: “Since the plans for this event were first revealed last week public opposition has intensified and several elected representatives, from various shades of political opinion, have publicly stated they will not attend the event.

“The role of the RIC and the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) was not merely, as indicated by senior Fine Gael representatives, to act as normal police services.  Instead, they had a specific role of upholding British rule in Ireland, which often manifested itself through instilling terror in the populace particularly in their attempts to break the democratic will of the Irish people for independence.

“In no other State that has emerged from anti-colonial struggle would they celebrate the deeds of the oppressors.

“This is Fine Gael revisionism in action – this has been evident at several points during these commemorative years.  The commemorations have often been partitionist and more concerned with commemorating those who tried to suppress the Irish Freedom struggle than those who fought for their own country.  They have been almost apologetic of the Easter Rising and the subsequent armed struggle despite the fact that these events were responses to British aggression in Ireland.

“Fine Gael, by being more interested in commemorating the enforcers of British rule in Ireland than ordinary citizens who bore the brunt of British forces, have drastically misjudged the public mood.

“Yes, all those who died in conflict should be remembered and we should acknowledge all who were killed during the pivotal period from 1914.

“But there should be no tolerance for any attempt to equate those who died for Irish freedom with the ones who were paid to oppress it.  The RIC commemoration must be cancelled” he concluded.

ENDS

Unprecedented hospital waiting lists the inevitable outcome of FF & FG policies – Matt Carthy MEP

Sinn Féin rep says removal of services from hospitals like Monaghan ‘key component’ of current crisis

Fine Gael this week achieved a new record when, on Monday, 760 patients were awaiting admission to hospitals across the state, the highest number ever.  This has been described by local Sinn Féin MEP, Matt Carthy, as the “inevitable outcome of the health policies pursued by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael over the past two decades”.

Carthy said that the removal of services from centres such as Monaghan Hospital was a key component in the dangerous situation that has regularly emerged in other hospitals that have been expected to pick up the pieces.

The Trolley Watch figures, complied by the Irish Nurses’ and Midwives’  Organisation (INMO) revealed on Monday that the record 760 people waiting on admission to a hospital bed included 15 in Cavan General and 13 at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.

The Midlands North West MEP said the figures, which are the highest since the nursing union started compiling them in 2004, ‘laid bare the utter inability of Fine Gael, along with the HSE, to properly manage the State’s health service’.

Carthy said: “Behind all these figures are individual patients, waiting and suffering because of a lack of beds being available in almost every hospital across the State.

“Just last month, the INMO figures revealed that 10,003 admitted patients waited to get a bed in hospitals in December and that 231 of these were children. Last Friday January, there were 620 people waiting for a bed in the State’s hospitals before this figure jumped again to a record-breaking 760 on Monday.

“The government and the HSE know there is a bigger demand on ED services at this time of the year, but instead of properly planning for it, they choose to put their heads in the sand, only for government spokespeople to act dumbfounded.

“In addition, there are very worrying reports about ambulances being held up at emergency departments for between three and seven hours because they are waiting to safely hand over patients to nursing staff.

“People in counties like Monaghan have to rely on already over-stretched nurses and doctors in Cavan and Drogheda, after successive governments have spent nearly 20 years decimating services at Monaghan General.  These record-breaking patient waiting figures are what happens when services are stripped from local hospitals and are the inevitable outcome of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael health policies.

“The cause of this most recent crisis is the failure of Health Minister Simon Harris to get to grips with his job.  He is only there because Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil TDs keep him in situ.

“In the short term the Minister needs to look beyond his own propaganda and begin an immediate crisis intervention package that will alleviate the pressure on services.  This means lifting the recruitment embargo on frontline staff and expanding capacity in our hospitals.

“In the longer term though we require a radical overhaul of the health system as advocated by Sinn Féin.  This must mean the restoration and development of services at hospitals such as Monaghan in order to ease the pressures on other centres”.

ENDS

“Homelessness is as a result of political choices”

Carthy addresses EU Housing conference

The Sinn Féin MEP for the Midlands, North-West, Matt Carthy, has said that the levels of homelessness experienced throughout Ireland and in many EU states are a direct result of the political choices taking by governments and EU institutions.

Carthy was invited to deliver the opening address at a conference hosted by FEANTSA, the European Federation of National Organisations working with the Homeless, in Brussels last week.  The conference saw the launch by the Housing Solutions Platform of a compendium document detailing some of the most innovative and daring examples of housing solutions for the locked out in Europe.

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The selected projects in the paper entitled “50m Out-of-the-box Solutions for the Locked-Out” focus on providing safe, decent, and affordable housing through many different means including innovative construction, novel legal mechanisms, new forms of inter-agency collaboration, and more.  The innovative housing solutions selected in the paper also provide ways to overcome financial and political barriers within the European housing market.

During his opening remarks at the conference held in European Parliament organised Matt Carthy said:

“In the past decade homelessness has increased throughout the EU by 70%.

“In Ireland, the number of those homeless has trebled in the past five years alone.  Many families, who during any other generation would be purchasing their own home, instead find that they cannot even find affordable rental accomodation.

“All of this is as a result of political choices.

“The scandalous rise in homelessness is not accidental.  Governments were told by parties like Sinn Féin that the implementation of austerity policies, their privatization agenda and the de-financing of public bodies would lead us to where we are today.

“In particular, the retreat from public housing provision by governments such as those lead by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and the drive to allow ‘the market’ to played the key role in house building are the route causes of the crisis we see in Ireland and elsewhere”.

Carthy asserted that it is only through the delivery of public housing provision that the current crisis will be addressed.

He said:

“The good news is the solutions are there, and they are simple.  They have been adopted before, indeed my own family was a beneficiary.  They revolve around local-authority led house building programmes and supports for first-time buyers in the private market.

“Just as the problems were caused by political choices so too will the solutions be found.  In Ireland, only Sinn Féin articulates these solutions and only Sinn Féin will have the political guts to implement them.

“So, those who want to resolve the current crisis and ensure that their own children can ever live in their own home need to get behind the policies that will deliver” he concluded.

ENDS

“Big Supermarket chains are fleecing Irish farmers” – Matt Carthy MEP

Big supermarkets are fleecing profits from Irish beef while farmers have to protest to receive even a few every extra cent for their produce, MEP Matt Carthy has said.

The Midlands North West EU Parliament representative made his comments after it was revealed that supermarkets are taking up to 50% of all profits made on fresh meat.

The revelation which was highlighted in Leinster House last week by Sinn Féin’s Brian Stanley, and which came after several days of protests by the IFA outside a number of high-profile retailers, will come as little surprise to farmers, Carthy said adding that “it is not only factories taking advantage of beef farmers but also large supermarket chains”.

The Sinn Féin MEP said: “This leaked information, that reveals supermarkets are pocketing between 33% and 45% of the retail price of meat, is further damning evidence that beef farmers are being fleeced.

“Three large supermarket chains make up 75% of the retail market in Ireland and they dominate the industry by taking advantage of a lack of price transparency in the supply chain.

“Thanks to these documents, farmers now know exactly how much of the retail price supermarkets are taking for themselves and it is almost half in some cases; while many farmers are losing 60 to 70 cents on every kilo produced”.

Carthy said there was “no fairness” in a system wherein farmers rear animals for two years “while the supermarkets have it for two to three days yet bank the bulk of proft”.

“Full transparency throughout the supply chain is the only way in which farmers and consumers could see exactly what the supermarkets are paying factories and what factories are paying farmers” he said “which is why Sinn Féin have prioritised our proposal for a Beef Transparency bill in the Dáil”.

He added: “We also need retailers to be active members of the Beef Taskforce – these leaked documents show the dominance they have on the industry and they must be present at talks to resolve the crisis that faces the Irish beef sector”.

ENDS

ECB review must learn from lessons of Austerity failure – Matt Carthy MEP

Sinn Féin MEP Matt Carthy has commented on the announcement by new European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde that she is to organise the first strategic review of ECB policy since 2003 in the new year.

Carthy, a member of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, was speaking during a parliamentary debate on the appointment of two new members of the ECB’s executive council.

Lagarde has indicated she intends to continue her predecessor Mario Draghi’s dovish position on monetary policy. She has directly called on the governments who have the fiscal space – meaning Germany, the Netherlands and other northern states – to use it, including by investing in infrastructure projects.

Addressing MEPs in the Strasbourg plenary on Monday evening, Carthy said: “We know that the ECB, going into next year’s strategic review, is a house divided.

“I welcome the new president’s call for fiscal stimulus to be used to complement monetary policy. But the irony is not lost on any of us who’ve been on the receiving end of its threats and blackmail that the ECB has been the chief enforcer of austerity over the past decade.

“Now that the manufacturing base in the northern states, and particularly in Germany, is threatened, the tune is changing.

“The Commission is considering ‘reviewing’ the Stability and Growth Pact. The simple fact is these crude and destructive rules should be binned, full stop.

“The ECB review needs to be more than a bun-fight between hawks and doves.

“We need a serious analysis of the consequences of ECB policy and its impact on people across the Eurozone, including the dangerous housing bubbles pricing a generation out of the market.

“Above all, the ECB needs to face the fact that its policies have helped massively inflate the wealth of a tiny minority, while doing nothing for the poorest.

“All options must be on the table going forward, including direct payments to households and direct green investment.” ENDS

Carthy to host Western Rail Corridor public meeting in Athenry this Thursday

The potential European funding available for the Western Rail Corridor will be explored at an important public meeting in Athenry on Thursday evening, hosted by Sinn Féin MEP for Midlands North West Matt Carthy.

The meeting, entitled: ‘The Western Rail Corridor – Can EU Funding get Athenry on track?’ will feature contributions from the European Parliament member, along with Louis O’Hara, Cllr. Gerry Murray and members of community group FLAG (Forward Looking Athenry Group) who believe the Western Rail Corridor can bring much needed investment and tourism opportunities to the Athenry area.

Mr Carthy will give an update on the current situation with the Western Rail Corridor and will outline potential EU funding streams for the project.

Speaking ahead of the meeting, Mr Carthy said: ‘I would encourage everyone in the Athenry area to come along and support the campaign for the Western Rail Corridor, which was included on the EU’s 10 T map, a core travel network identified as priorities by the EU institutions for connectivity between and within EU member states.

‘We managed to secure overwhelming support from MEPs right across Europe in a vote for the Western Rail Corridor to be included in the core network list. Being included on this list means that governments and regional authorities are able to draw down funding and support from the EU.

‘But during negotiations with the EU Council, which the Irish government was party to, the Western Rail Corridor was removed from the core network list. There has been no explanation for this, but it’s only in the last few weeks that Transport Minister Shane Ross has written to the EU Commission asking for the Western Rail Corridor to be put back on the core network projects list – just months away from a general election here.

‘There has been utter failure from successive governments to commit to the Western Rail Corridor, but the door is now open to EU funding, which will be crucial in getting this much-needed train network up and running’.

The ‘Western Rail Corridor – Can EU Funding get Athenry on track?’ meeting takes place on Thursday December 12 at 8pm in Athenry Town Hall.

Measures urgently required to deliver meaningful Beef price increase – Matt Carthy MEP

The Sinn Féin MEP for the Midlands North West, Matt Carthy, has reiterated his party’s call for urgent measures to be put in place that will secure a meaningful price increase for Beef Farmers.

The Monaghan based representative was speaking this week as IFA protests continued at retailer & distribution centres and following the publication of figures from the Beef Price Index reveal that Irish prices are 50c/kg behind the price in Britain.  Carthy also described the price increased announced by ABP last Friday as ‘minimal and wholly insufficient’.

Matt Carthy said: “I welcome the fact that the Beef Taskforce is up and running. The lifting of injunctions related to the summer beef protests is also to be welcomed but were too late in coming to secure any good will among the farming community.

“The images of further farm protests this week show that the fundamentals of the beef sector remain imbalanced and unfair, farmers continue to operate at a loss and this is entirely unsustainable.  Farmers, and the communities that depend on them, need a substantial and realistic increase in the base price they receive.  The small increase announced by ABP is minimal and wholly insufficient.

“The Beef Price Index has indicated that prices secured by Irish farmers are 20c/kg behind the EU average (€80 per animal) and 50c/kg behind British prices (€180 per animal).  This is happening in a scenario where Irish beef is among the best in the world.

“The differences in the prices secured by Irish family farmers with their counterparts across Europe is the difference between our farmers surviving or being forced out of business.

“The price discrepancies point to margin manipulation by both factories and retailers.  Big money is being made from Irish beef but it is not going to the primary producers.  Instead, retailers and factories are making a killing and it is little wonder that farmers have felt that they have no choice but to take to the picket lines.

“If the Beef Task Force is to deliver then it needs to quickly ensure the removal of arbitrary rules such as the 30-month upper age limit and the four-movement restriction which simply serve to distort the position of the farmer in the market chain.

“Fundamentally, transparency throughout the supply chain is required so that the public can see directly who is making a profit from beef and who is being ripped off.  That is what Sinn Féin’s Beef Price Transparency Bill seeks to deliver by providing such transparency to not only farmers but for consumers too.  I am calling on both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to support our legislation to order to give farmers a level playing field.

“In the meantime Sinn Féin will continue to support those farmers who participate in protests aimed at highlighting the inequalities they face and we will join them in demanding a fair price structure for our family farmers”.

ENDS