Tom Fortune still harbouring doubts?

Elected to Greystones Town Council for the first time is Tom Fortune, a redoubtable Labour politician who was at the heart of the anti-harbour campaign that put half a million on the bill and which delayed the project for two years bringing on two public inquiries.

There is nothing wrong with that. 

Democracy was well served by those investigations.

 From them came recommendations for structural changes to residential quarters on the shore-side. But Fortune continues to rail on about the subject, doubting and discrediting the work being done through the harshest of economic climates. 

During the harbour debacle, Fortune took it upon himself to email the Wicklow Times correspondent to denounce her reports as “unfair.” This was in the heat of battle when half-truths poured out by the anti-harbour campaigners were being mopped up by the Irish Times and served up as fact. Unintimidated, the Wicklow Times correspondent stuck to checking the facts and balancing the arguments in a fair manner. But the anti-harbour group by then believed their own propaganda.

Let us note that the harbour was a total wreck and that now it is being given one of the biggest face lifts of any harbour of its size in the Republic.

So what will Fortune bring to the old round mahogany table in the Greystones—more of the same? We hope not. When new political elements enter the arena we look to them for good ideas, civilised debate and the truth.