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SINN FÉIN HAS expelled three councillors from the party following an unresolved row at Wicklow County Council.
Gerry O’Neill, John Snell, and Oliver O’Brien have been confirmed as the three councillors who have been expelled as of 11am today.
In a statement released this afternoon, Sinn Féin said that it had “sought over the past 18 months to resolve a dispute in the Sinn Féin council team on Wicklow County Council”.
A resolution has not been possible and the Sinn Féin Ard Chomhairle has moved to expel from the party three councillors who have failed to attend council team meetings over the past 18 months.
But Gerry O’Neill, councillor for Baltinglass, told TheJournal.ie that this was a “barrage of lies” and “codology”.
He said that he along with other councillors had been rowing with the party over the process for appointing who would replace John Brady on the council after he was elected as a TD in 2016.
“After John Brady was elected, there was a vacancy on the council and everyone assumed Rossa Murray would be the candidate,” he said.
He said that at two separate meetings of Sinn Féin members, Murray was proposed as one of three candidates, but Murray only got three votes.
“Another chap got one vote, and another got 23 votes.”
Councillor Nicola Lawless received the 23 votes and was appointed to the position, but concerns remained among party members about the vote, which was held in secret.
Since then, O’Neill and others have raised the issue with the party; O’Neill says he’s written to Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams and deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald raising his concerns but hasn’t heard back from them.
“Bit of a surprise that I get a phone call from RTÉ saying that I have been expelled from the party. I’ve seen the email [sent by the party to the press] and it’s a barrage of lies that say I didn’t attend meetings – codology. None of the issues that we had raised were referred to.”
As far as O’Neill knew, the three councillors had lost the party whip, but there was no mention of expulsion.
O’Neill says that the Sinn Féin member who is quoted in the email making the announcement, Waterford TD David Cullinane, has “never been in contact with me, never lifted the phone”.
When Sinn Féin was asked about whether the three councillors had been notified before the email to the press was sent out, a spokesperson said they had been notified through a letter.
This adds to the number of public resignations, retirements or expulsions from the party in recent times. Two weeks ago, Sinn Féin’s youngest councillor Lisa Marie Sheehy resigned from Limerick’s council, claiming that bullying within the party had forced her to leave.
In April, five Sinn Féin members resigned over bullying allegations; in February last year a Cork TD Sandra McLellan gave a similar reason as Sheehy as to why she didn’t seek reelection.
O’Neill says that morale has been low within the party as a consequence.
“It’s huge. Fifty members have resigned in Wicklow since this all started two years ago,” he says.
I joined Sinn Féin in 1971, I’m 46 years there. I was there when it wasn’t popular, and I was their only candidate in 1985.
He said that he’s “surprised” and “disappointed” with what has happened, and is still trying to get his head around it.
We tried to do it through the proper channels. So disappointed with what has gone down.
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Would have been nice to have even a single comment from a sex worker rather than Ruhama (an organisation rooted in Catholicism with a definite agenda) or the Gardai. Poor quality journalism
@Eoin Silke: Except this is about trafficked women who are being clearly exploited.
“The brothels used by these gangs are staffed almost exclusively by a transient workforce of sex workers trafficked into Ireland. ”
This isn’t about someone choosing to become a sex worker for whatever reason they choose. This is about people with no say in the process.
@Tricia G:
The quote
“The brothels used by these gangs are staffed almost exclusively by a transient workforce of sex workers trafficked into Ireland” is attributed only to “Sources with a knowledge of the investigations” which is meaningless in terms of evidence, any time I have tried to chase up similar statements in the past they turn out to be anonymous opinions with no factual basis.
I am a source with knowledge of the investigations, I even took that a step further by conducting my own investigations today and establishing that €1000 pw for self catering accommodation can be quite a bargain in many areas. Not only do you have my real name to go with that, you can find the evidence yourself on booking com and airbnb.
The only way to know an facts about coercive sex trafficking is to stop using it as an excuse for laws that harm and endanger everyone who sells sex (including coerced victims) and start to think of it, and investigate it, as the serious crime it is, on par with kidnap for ransom. So far, nobody ever seems to have even tried to do that, with the result that if someone is being coerced into selling sex there is little to no hope of anyone identifying and locating them let alone doing anything to help them.
https://mymythbuster.wordpress.com/victims-of-the-same-fiction/
Legalisation and start demanding that our government starts treating us as adults.
@Robert Halvey: remember the article is about trafficked women who are not choosing to be sex workers but subjected to daily rapes by their ‘customers’ and violent coercion by the gangs controlling these operations.
@e: Amazing how people completely ignore the victims in all this. Even the article refers to them as sex workers, they’re not workers. They’re sex trafficking victims being horribly exploited by ruthless criminals who think people can be treated like property. Sadly I’m not even surprised some landlords are fine with what’s going on in their properties.
@Rui Firmino: look at the article again, there are no specifics from verifiable sources and unsubstantiated opinions expressed by an unverifiable and anonymous source.
The headline is spun into clickbait around what turns out to be a scary, but, currently, perfectly normal, charge for any self catering accommodation.
The only way to care about any victim is to go looking for the hard facts of their circumstances rather than blindly following expedient, agenda driven fiction for appearance sake.
@Gaye Dalton: You sound awfully defensive.
@Rui Firmino:
@Rui Firmino: good point. And a very big difference too.
@Brendan Harlowe:
Alternatively there is reality
https://mymythbuster.wordpress.com/victims-of-the-same-fiction/
Men, stop frequenting these places! The cops should arrest the Johns. The unfortunate women in these situations need our help, not our willies.
Remember folks, criminalising sex work facilitates trafficking. Current anti-sex work laws increase violence against sex workers and victims of trafficking.
Ruhama is NOT a trusted source.
@Conor McK: The Garda Protective Unit believes there are trafficked women forced into prostitution here. Are you saying that should be legalised?
@e: “ Then stop the trafficking, but what about the women who voluntarily do this?
Women should be free to do what they want with their bodies.
@e: Less opportunity for traffickers if there is already a legalised established trade. I don’t think anybody is advocating trafficking here.
@e: There are women forced into marriage.
Should we criminalise all bridegrooms?
Legal to sell, but Illegal to buy… Irish logic
@Stoic Savage: because historically women were blamed and charged. It was changed to blame the people soliciting (so that’s the pimp or the John), in order not to victim blame those doing it, as they often had no other choice. I agree if women want a safe space to engage in sex work it should be legal. But equally there are many women, either literally forced into sex work by threat of violence or for other reasons such as feeding addiction, social isolation or financial insecurity. It needs a whole government response rather than relying on charitable organisations to do these studies.
@e: The only organisation exclusively, and lavishly, funded to research the sake and purchase of sex is SERP at UCD which was founded by the same person who founded and lead the “Turn Off the Red Light” campaign, which aggresively demanded the current legislation over the opposition and concerns of people who sell sex.
So far, since they were founded, they seem to have limited their total consultation with current sex workers to 4, or possibly 5.
We cannot ever understand anything without real, objective and impartial research.
https://mymythbuster.wordpress.com/serp-ucd-transcript/
Open borders,cheered on by the likes of this publication,is a destroyer of Irish society.
This didn’t happen when Irish people went to mass weekly.
@ggg: You’re right. Back then the church looked after the sex on our behalf.
@ggg: Yeah the good old days when you could take advantage of a young woman and know that everyone would keep quiet for shame and she’d end up in a Magdalene laundry if she got pregnant.
@ggg: Yeah, they would just get raped by the priest later. Much better!
@Diarmuid Hunt: We’re talking about prostitution.
@west awake: ggg was talking about the time when all went to mass in Ireland, are you telling him that we’re talking about prostitution?
@west awake:
@west awake: So going back to what ggg was saying and my reply can you see why there would be less demand to pay for sex in a shame controlled society (not that it didn’t happen because it did then too) where it was easier to prey on women? Also how do we know that there was a lower percentage of prostitution per capita, do you think reporting on this topic to either Gardaí or the media happened as often back then?
This seems to be a load of nonsense centred on PR for Ruhama and trying to deflect culpability in the murder of Geila Ibram. away from the 2017 Sexual Offences Act.
Fact: The 2017 Sexual Offences Act forces women who sell sex to work alone, hold large amounts of cash and hide from Gardai to be able to make any money..
Fact: When you force women to work alone, hold large amounts of cash and hide from Gardai to be able to make any money you endanger them.
Fact: The 2017 Sexual Offences Act specifically targets the income source of people who sell sex
Fact: When you attack the only source of a person’s income you do them harm. If it is their last resort survival income you also threaten their life.
Fact: €1000 for one week for one person in self catering accommodation is not even slightly unusual, and, in some areas would be such a bargain you would be tempted to ask if the offer available above is limited to people selling sex, or can anybody apply?
5000?? Fcuking hell.
Once again we see a lucrative business handed to organised crime gangs who run it to squeeze the maximum profit to themselves with no regard for anyone else.
Why do these people have such a large market for their imported slaves ? Large enough to go to the trouble of importing them!
Clearly making the customer a criminal hasn’t destroyed their market – presumably far too few get caught.
To my eye the most unacceptable part of prostitution is the exploitation and control involved. If it is to happen (and it is not for nothing it is known as the oldest profession) it should be by choice and the prostitute should keep her earnings with only the taxman permitted to gouge her for a share. The current setup, while in principle it seems to protect the prostitute working solely for herself, in practice it seems that only the slavers get to operate.
Legalisation and licensing would seem to be the only way to wrest this business from the hands of organised crime and remove the incentive for them to cause so much misery.
Remember a few years ago seeing a young Eastern-European woman looking nervous at Dublin Airport with some late 50’s gangster-looking Dub. The whole scene looked wrong but didn’t know how to intervene. To this day I’m pretty damn sure this was some kind of trafficking situation but even with hindsight not sure what I’d have been able to do. Very sad.
Just wondering if the policy of allowing Ruhamma the ability to vouch for so called Sex workers still is a way to get Irish residency. In other words saying you have been trafficked into this country is a positive in order to gain residency. It’s hard not to be cynical with regards to so called asylum seekers. How are these people coming across our borders, have we no vice squad anymore leaving aside the end user, which is another matter ?
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