The Green Party's candidate in the forthcoming local election in Crumlin-Kimmage is John Goodwillie, the secretary of the Party's Dublin South-Central constituency organisation, who lives in Crumlin. Born in 1944, John has lived the majority of his life in Dublin.
He was the Green Party candidate for Dublin South-Central in the 1994 by-election and in the 1997 general election.
Outside the Green Party, John is employed as a librarian by Trinity College. He is Chairperson of Crumlin Community Development Project (awaiting funding) and was active in Crumlin Road and District Residents' Association for several years and was involved in the campaign to get Dingle's Field turned into a public park.
He is currently Vice-Chairperson of the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and in the past he has been active in organisations such as Earthwatch, the National Lesbian and Gay Federation, the Divorce Action Group, and the Dublin Clean Seas Campaign.
He is a member of the collective chair of the Green Party nationally and is a former policy convenor for the Party on decentralisation and local government. He has also been active in policy formation on economic matters, foreign affairs, Northern Ireland, and constitutional reform, and the development of political philosophy within the wider green movement.
A key issue in this election is, he feels, the development of a city environment based on people and not on traffic. "There is an immense inertia," he says, "even when ideas like Luas and the bus corridors have been accepted in principle. Public transport should be answerable to a Greater Dublin Authority. Dubliners should be able to run the city without being held back by the national government.
"The traffic problem can't be tackled unless traffic and planning are integrated. High-density housing should be allowed along public transport routes, and the present growth of housing near to the city centre must be intensified.
"We still have decisions being imposed on local communities by government or local government bodies that are out of touch. We need local government that is closer to the people: a structure into which bodies like the KWCD Partnership and the Dublin 12 Drugs Task Force would fit instead of having to be built from scratch. Decisions on building houses, on calming traffic, on building new shopping centres, are not taken by the people in the immediate area. We need a local government system which allows decisions to be made by people in their own communities.
"And we need the provision of better information about what public services are available. Often different parts of the public service can't even send people to the right address. With computer technology, it should be possible for most information needed to be produced where the citizen needs it, instead of where the official is."
John Goodwillie believes that the Green Party has made a contribution to Dublin City Council over the past 8 years and hopes that this election will see greater support in order to ensure that the Corporation does not turn away from green issues.