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[Press Release: August 18th, 2005] De Burca responds to call by George Jones for Bray politicians to "cop on" to themselvesGreen Party councillor, Deirdre de Burca responded to Cllr Jones comments by describing them as "an opening shot in George’s General Election campaign". She referred to an article in last week’s Bray People which speculated that Cllr Jones would run as a Fine Gael candidate in the next General Election.The Green Party councillor says that while she agrees with Cllr Jones that Bray politicians have been disagreeing frequently in recent months, she argues that this is because the new Green Party councillors elected onto Bray Town Council last June have begun challenging the way things have been done in Bray over the past two decades. "People in the town have been horrified to see the town fall into a state of commercial decay over the past twenty years or so and to witness the and social and environmental neglect that has accompanied it" she says. "Bray people are hugely attached to the town and want to see it run properly so that they can feel pride in it again". De Burca says that since she and her colleagues have been elected to Bray Town Council last year, they have had an uphill battle trying to make positive changes in the town. "We have come up against a combination of bureaucratic inefficiency and cronyism in this town that is hard to believe" she says. "These factors have contributed to the general sense of neglect and decay that applies in the town. The Green Party councillors are doing their best to change old unhealthy practices but we are experiencing huge resistance from certain quarters. However we are determined to continue pushing for what we know will benefit the town and we will not be stopped from doing this, no matter what obstacles are put in our way". The Green Party councillor says that her experience of Cllr Jones on Wicklow County Council would not convince her that he has the commitment to challenge old ways and to drive the necessary changes in the town. "My experience of Councillor Jones is that he, along with certain other long-standing public representatives on Wicklow County Council, has been very resistant to the idea of opening up council business to public scrutiny, bringing in more openness and transparency and challenging council officials when they do not appear to acting in the public interest" she says. "Instead, he prefers to attack those who try to. I believe he would prefer to return to the "good old days" when councillors did not question or challenge what other councillors or council officials were doing, even if it did not appear to be in the public interest. I don’t believe that this is the kind of approach that Bray needs at present in order to turn things in the town around for the better".
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