As part of Heritage Week, Sandymount Tidy Towns have organised a talk entitled “Joycean Sandymount” for 23rd August in the Sandymount Hotel at 6pm. The talk will be followed by a guided walk.

Another event “History of Sandymount Green” has been organised for Wednesday 5th September, this is also a guided tour with illustrated maps and begins at 6.30pm in Railway Union.

For full information on these upcoming events, click Sandymount Guided Walks

Met Éireann has forecast heavy rain and high winds in Dublin today, Wednesday 15th August.

As a precaution the tide gates on the River Dodder have been closed . All rivers and streams will be monitored throughout the day and crews will be in place to respond to any localised flooding.

For flooding and drainage issues please contact Dublin City Council Drainage Department on 01 222 2155.

Met Éireann has forecast heavy rain and high winds in Dublin today, Wednesday 15th August.

As a precaution the tide gates on the River Dodder have been closed . All rivers and streams will be monitored throughout the day and crews will be in place to respond to any localised flooding.

For flooding and drainage issues please contact Dublin City Council Drainage Department on 01 222 2155.

Dublin’s Lord Mayor, Naoise Ó Muirí and Minister of State for Tourism and Sport, Michael Ring, T.D., will welcome members of Team Ireland to a Homecoming reception at the Mansion House, Dublin, on Wednesday, 15^th August at 1pm.

The athletes will take to a stage specially erected for the occasion across Dawson Street. Dawson Street will be closed to traffic from 6am to 5pm. The Lord Mayor will bring the event to a close at 2pm.

“I am sure I am speaking for all Dubliners when I say how proud I will be to welcome home Ireland’s Olympic heroes. We have all watched, waited and cheered on our world class athletes over the past weeks. Their performances have inspired us all and lifted the spirits of the nation. It will give me enormous pleasure to welcome them here on Wednesday”, said the Lord Mayor.

Entry to the event will be via Nassau Street and St. Stephen’s Green North only. Those wishing to attend are advised to arrive early to avoid disappointment and acquire a good vantage point.

The Heritage Council have announced their programme of events for National Heritage Week 2012. In Dublin City, there will be host of events such as:

• Tours of Dublin landmarks such as St. Patrick’s Cathedral and St. Audeon’s Church,
• Archaeological seminars and walking tours,
• Access to National Archives,
• Traditional Music exhibitions and recitals,
• Folklore Shows,

There will also be events surrounding the Inland Waterways, Dublin’s Georgian Squares, Dublin Genealogy and Forest Woodlands.

Many events are free of charge but in some cases booking is strongly recommended for certain events as places are limited.

For the full list of events planned in Dublin and around the country, click www.heritageweek.ie

You may have heard last week that Dublinbikes is going to expand. Readers of this website will have been following this story for a number of months here and I’ve been receiving a number of emails about possible locations, timelines, etc.

In case you missed it: the first phase will see the number of bikes increased from 500 to 1,500 and the number of stands from which they can be rented from 44 to 100. This is expansion phase 2A and 2B, moving east and west of Trinity College. The next phase will then see the bikes move outside of the canals.

Overall, the expansion plan will see the number of bikes available increase to 5,000 which will be accessible from 300 stands. The project will ultimately see bikes available in areas such as UCD and Sandymount. It is partly being funded by a grant from the National Transport Authority. However the bulk of financing has not yet been agreed meaning that the full expansion will still take some time. Design work is already under way however.

Dublin City Council have also announced that they are continuing to develop cycle paths along Dublin’s Canals, with designs nearly completed for a new section of the Grand Canal from Portobello to the Nass Road.

As a Councillor, I was very excited when we first unveiled Dublin Bikes back in 2009. It quickly became one of the most successful schemes in Europe and I always believed the initiative should develop outside the immediate city. This latest announcement will see more people gaining access to the system and demonstrates how Dublin can take ownership of and lead new ideas for city living.

On Monday, 6th August, over 40 people gathered in Dublin’s Merrion Square, to mark the 67th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. Approximately 80,000 people were killed directly by the bomb blast, with the death toll rising to 140,000 within a year.

The commemoration was addressed by the Deputy Lord Mayor of Dublin, Cllr Clare Byrne, Patrick Comerford, President of the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and Mr Kojiro Uchiyama, Counsellor and Deputy Head of Mission of the Japanese Embassy in Ireland.

Opening the commemoration, Cllr Byrne reaffirmed the commitment of the city of Dublin to Mayors for Peace, the organisation founded by the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to campaign for the abolition of nuclear weapons, with the aim of ensuring that no other city should ever suffer the horrors experienced by their citizens. Dublin was the first Irish city to join Mayors for Peace, in 1994.

Patrick Comerford welcomed the recent reiteration by Minister for Foreign Affairs, Eamonn Gilmore, of Ireland’s strong commitment to nuclear disarmament, and repeated Irish CND’s call for legislation to ban Irish state investments in companies involved in the nuclear weapons industry.

“While Irish foreign policy has always strongly endorsed nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, these commitments are not matched by Irish financial policies, he said. “The National Pension Reserve Fund, according to its 2011 report, has investments of at least €23 million in international arms companies that produce single-use components for the nuclear weapons industry. AIB, which is in majority state ownership, lent $28 million to a US company involved in the nuclear weapons industry in 2010. People are being refused mortgages; small businesses are being bled to death because their overdraft facilities are being called in. But Irish money is available to make nuclear weapons. This is outrageous.

“Other countries that play a leading role in support of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament – such as Norway and New Zealand – prohibit the investment of state funds in companies involved in the nuclear weapons industry, he continued. “There is a similar ban in Ireland on investments in companies engaged in the landmine and cluster munitions industries. Why is the government not ensuring a similar ban when it comes to the nuclear weapons industry?”

The Japanese Counsellor, Mr Uchiyama, spoke of the responsibility felt by Japan, as the only country to have experienced the devastation of an attack using nuclear weapons, to work for total nuclear disarmament, and stressed the importance of working with like-minded members of the international community, including Ireland, to achieve this goal.
Japanese harpist Junchi Morikami performed several pieces of traditional music at the ceremony, and poet Hugh McFadden read his poem, ‘Empire of Shadows’, the title work of his forthcoming anthology. After the laying of a wreath at the memorial cherry tree planted by Irish CND in 1980, a minute’s silence was observed by those present.

Read Patrick Comerford’s speech in full here.

The Seniors Garden Party & Book Fair is taking place on Sandymount Green this Thursday,the 26th of July. For more information click July Garden Party Sandymount Green

I submitted two questions to the Minister for Justice on the issue of anti-social behaviour and public substance abuse in the Temple Bar area and regarding policing numbers around O’Connell Street. He outlined for me the measures that are being implemented by senior Garda management to tackle issues in these areas.

You can view the full replies here. There’s actually quite a bit going on.

I also submitted PQ’s to the Minister for the Environment regarding the proposed names for the new Dáil constituencies, to the Tanaiste about Ireland and the Open Government Partnership and the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation about his plans to expand Ireland’s trade relationship with Turkey.

To read the replies, click here.