People Before Profit has announced the selection of candidates for the 2024 local elections for the areas of Lucan, Clondalkin and Palmerstown-Fonthill. The candidates were selected by the Dublin Midwest branch of People Before Profit on Saturday 8th July. Sitting councillor Madeleine Johansson was selected for the Palmerstown-Fonthill LEA, Mark Kerins was selected for the Lucan LEA and Darragh Adelaide had already been selected in 2021 for the Clondalkin LEA.
Cllr Madeleine Johansson said: “I am honoured to have been selected by my branch to represent People Before Profit in the local elections in 2024. I have been a councillor since 2016 and have worked tirelessly to represent constituents and raised issues such as the housing crisis, data centres, cycle lanes, public transport and more. I’m hoping to continue that work and campaign for socialist change after 2024.”
Mark Kerins commented: “I grew up in Lucan and I live here with my young family. I put myself forward as a candidate because I want to provide people in Lucan with a radical alternative in the local elections. I’m a care worker, a trade union activist and a Forsa shop steward.
“Next year I will be 20 years working as a care worker supporting people with intellectual and physical disabilities. It’s an overused saying but the measure of a society is how they treat their most vulnerable and Ireland is failing miserably. Care workers and families of people with disabilities were the first to see the brutal results of austerity. We see the inequality in Ireland firsthand and the hypocrisy of the government and HSE management who enact Neoliberal policies. Neoliberalism and the market do not work for people with disabilities.
Public transport, housing and infrastructure in Lucan have all been planned with the aim of making developers maximum profits. Housing is out of the reach of people who have grown up here due to the commodification of a human right and childcare in Lucan is a shambles. The privatisation of this essential service makes Ireland an outlier in Europe with its structure and insane costs. The system at present does not work for childcare workers, parents or kids.”
Darragh Adelaide said: “I have been a member of People Before Profit for more than 5 years and I put myself forward for the local elections in Clondalkin because I’m sick of how the establishment keep letting working class people down. We have a housing crisis, a health crisis and a climate crisis. We need political will and people power to change this.”
Pictured L-R Mark Kerins (Lucan LEA), Darragh Adelaide (Clondalkin LEA) and Cllr Madeleine Johansson (Palmerstown-Fonthill LEA)
