Green Party select filmmaker and environmental campaigner Johnny Gogan as Local Election candidate
FILMMAKER and longtime environmental campaigner Johnny Gogan has been ratified by the Green Party to contest the
Sligo-Strandhill electoral area in the forthcoming Local Elections.
A founder of the Green Party's North West constituency group in 2003, Gogan is recognised as a key campaigner in the passing of Dáil legislation in 2017 blocking Shale Gas extraction (“fracking”) in Sligo and Leitrim.
Johnny Gogan is an award-winning filmmaker whose internationally-distributed works include Netflix titles Black Ice (filmed in Strandhill) and Hubert Butler Witness to the Future. He is currently working on Behind the Lines, a documentary film about Ruth Ormsby, the Sligo nurse who saw distinguished service in the Spanish Civil War.
Gogan has put together a comprehensive policy platform embracing what he sees as “the key challenges for Sligo in the years ahead”.
He believes that a Green voice in local government “is essential and can contribute hugely as Sligo fulfils its potential as the leading city in the North West and Border region.
Housing
“We are looking at a projected population growth of three-thousand in the city area over the period of the next local government.” This makes Housing for Gogan the number one issue for Sligo. “We need to build more housing, as a state and a local authority.
“We need a diverse supply of houses and apartments to suit different generations and family sizes as well as a rental market that employs the affordable costrental model championed by the Green Party in government.”
Transport
The second major challenge will be to achieve population growth “in a way that is consistent with our international obligations to reduce CO2 emissions”. Public Transport is key to that. “The rapid growth of public transport in the Sligo region is energising the city and connecting it to the wider hinterland. The Green Party in government, he confidently asserts, “is responsible for this key social inclusion measure and wants to build on that”.
Gogan will seek “increased active travel options in the urban area, a re-design of Sligo's central transportation hub, including an active travel focussed bridge over the N4 connecting bus and train stations - and the West of the city cut off by the major N4 route - to the city centre. The use of bridges was promised when the Mid-Block route was first built but was never delivered upon. The local authority must deliver on that broken promise).
A Longford-Sligo commuter service
Gogan acknowledges that the Sligo-Dublin train journey time needs to be cut drastically “for the modal shift from cars to be fully achieved”. The public bus service to Galway, including access to UHG, is far too slow. We need more Sligo-Galway direct services.
Gogan will be campaigning for the introduction of a new Longford-Sligo early morning commuter rail service. “With people increasingly accessing Sligo for work, study and leisure it is not acceptable that the first train in the morning arrives into MacDiarmada Station at 10.17am!
Allied to this I will be working with Green Party colleagues and fellow councillors to seek the reopening of Ballysadare Station as part of this local commuter service. Gogan has learned that Iarnród Éireann will take delivery of forty new carriages later this year. “We need to stake our claim for new and existing rolling stock for this new service I am proposing.”
Eastern Garavogue Bridge Gogan has been critical of “the scale and the design” of the proposed Eastern Garavogue Bridge and has argued for its prioritisation for Active Travel, Public Transport and SUH Emergency access. “I am confident from discussions with some of the key stakeholders that changes to the design are achievable to make it less impactful visually and to maintain unimpeded access for walkers to Doorly Park”, says Gogan.
“Furthermore, if the Council is serious about its proposed plan to make the South East of the city a test bed for “decarbonisation” county-wide, as published in its recent draft Climate Action Plan for Sligo, then directing more private motoring and heavy goods across the new bridge contradicts that policy.”
Western Rail Corridor vs Greenway
Gogan is a supporter of the reopening of the Western Rail
Corridor. He believes that Sligo and Mayo County Councils should develop a joint case to Government, incorporating Knock Airport. He does not believe that the whole Permanent Way from Claremorris to Collooney needs to be given over to cycling and walking.
“By all means use stretches of the Permanent Way for cycling and walking, particularly in areas adjacent to villages and towns where local amenity take-up is guaranteed and while the rail project is designed, financed and built – a minimum ten-year project.”
A supporter of the ‘Rothar Roads'campaign which Gogan notes has successfully promoted safe-cycling through the shared use of little-used country roads “of which there's no shortage of along the Western Corridor and which often make for more interesting cycling”. Having clocked up three and a half thousand kilometers in commuter and utility cycling in the past year Gogan claims to know what he's talking
A Strong Community
Gogan believes that Sligo can grow while strengthening its sense of community. “We can see this happening with the renewed vibrancy of a growing ATU and the newly announced adjacent PLC College, both pioneering vocational learning and apprenticeships, long-neglected aspects of the Irish higher-level education system.”
Johnny Gogan, who was for four years a director of the country's national film development agency Screen Ireland believes he can bring his Arts development experience to bear in building up Sligo's sports and arts facilities. As part of the city's increased cultural diversity Gogan, who has produced many films for TG4, believes that Sligo would benefit from a designated home for the Irish language along the lines of a cultúrlann or a Gaeltacht Quarter. “If we can have an Italian Quarter, surely there is a home for the language in the city!”