The Candidates: J J Power, Greens

“Could you imagine if somebody in Croke Park was picking the Kilcullen football team? Wouldn’t that be madness?”



Cllr J J Power has a facility in illustrating national issues in a local way, and his comment about the football team is his way of demonstrating the Green Party attitude that decisions affecting a local area should be made locally.

“The Green Party is more about families, and people, and small communities,” this eldest scion of one of Kildare’s most political families says. “For instance, the people of Kilcullen should be able to make decisions that affect the people of Kilcullen, and it shouldn’t be Michael McDowell or Dick Roche doing it.”

And he figures that ‘if the world was right’, all tax and levies revenues raised in Kildare should in the first instance be available for spending in Kildare. “I believe that central Government should have to come cap in hand to the constituencies and make their case for funding for Government.”

All that apart, J J Power in his quest to gain a Green Party seat in Kildare South is concentrating on three key issues. “Education, health and crime. I’d be foolish to run on green issues only, you have to be led by the people on these things and these are the issues that have been most important to them for the last five years or so.”

The health issue he sees as mainly a problem with A&E. “If you can get into the system you’re looked after great, but as far as I can see, if you have to bring someone to A&E you might as well pack a lunch and a flask of coffee for while you’re waiting.”

He’s blunt about the Government mantra that they’ve never ‘thrown’ as much money at the problem. “I’ve looked at the figures, and while the numbers of nurses and doctors have risen a little, the number of administrators has gone up by a huge amount. And they’re working shorter hours and getting paid more than front line people. Just throwing money to get more administrators is not the answer.”

On public transport, J J envisages a greater support of developing rural transport initiatives like those piloted by ASK and the OAK partnership, especilly important to prevent isolation for elderly people in rural communities.

“For commutters, I’d want to see the railways getting serious, and extending their four-track improvement all the way to Athy. The Arrow service is not frequent enough as it is.”

Growing up in a family where his father was, literally, a power in Fianna Fail politics for so long, and his brother Sean currently serving as a junior minister in the Government, J J could either have gone the FF route many years ago of could have foresworn politics completely.

“My father did ask me to run for Fianna Fail, as I was the eldest, but I didn’t. I suppose I’m a bit of late developer, and when I was coopted to Kildare County Council about ten years ago to replace Sean English of the Green Party, I got a start.”

He didn’t get re-elected, on his own admission because ‘I didn’t have a clue how to run a campaign’. But in subsequent outings he did get back to Kildare County Council in his own right, as well as onto Naas Town Council. A contesting of the last by-election in Kildare North didn’t win him a seat.

These days, after working for the Post & Telegraphs for 30 years and subsequently taking a redundancy package, J J is in the middle of a Civil Engineering course at Carlow IT. He is also, following experience of serious illness in his family, living to a different agenda, where 'things that seemed so important aren't any more'. One of which is that he is no longer concerned about 'the fear of failure'.

“I suppose I’m a late developer. I’m running in Kildare South because it is important to have a Green presence, and if you want to have Green policies implemented, you have to be where the power is. There will eventually be a Green seat here, hopefully this time, but if not, in the next one.”

It’s all a case of the locality picking its own team …

Brian Byrne.

THE FULL INTERVIEW: This story is based on one of a series of Kilcullen Diary interviews with the General Election candidates in Kildare South. The interview itself is available here as a QuickTime streaming audio.