People living in all the estates around Nowlan Park in St. John’s Parish have been bawled out by Green Party councillor Malcolm Noonan as being “haters” and “racists” because of their genuine objection to the proposed mosque being built on their doorsteps.

Noonan stated that he is so ashamed of such Kilkenny people that he wished he was born in somewhere like Ballaghadereen rather than in Kilkenny! He went on to say that such people as objected to the mosque made him ashamed of his native city of Kilkenny. He condemned those who opposed the siting of the mosque in St. John’s as xenophobic.

Yet Councillor Noonan wasn’t even present at the controversial meeting about the mosque that he condemned so bitterly. BTW he was absent from the mayoral election in City hall also last week. Basically he condemned things he never saw or heard at first hand! Thus he has gotten it all so horribly wrong.

For nobody at the meeting actually condemned the mosque at all. It was the actual siting of the proposed mosque that was criticised so strenuously and genuinely by residents who are continuously subjected to the highest traffic levels in Kilkenny and are thus long suffering in such a badly congested area. Yet Noonan has no sympathy with them at all, in fact he savagely attacks the people of St. John’s parish in the MSM.

If the city Green candidate keeps this up he can hardly expect a vote across john’s Bridge in the local elections next May! For he fails to see that the objectors have, as long suffering residents, a genuine gripe against excessive traffic. He fails to see the valid points that they make at all.

Many actually favour the mosque but not in the Hebron estate, many would support it if built on the Freshford road where the current mosque is in a rented house.

Noonan is living across the river in a nice cul de sac in Loughboy miles away from the proposed site of the mosque.

Up on the Ballyfoyle Road John & Andrew McGuinness are well sheltered away from it all in their tree-lined grove as well.

It’s easy for such councillors to talk., they don’t ever walk the walk, as the objectors’ leader Eugene McGuinness says. And it’s looking more than likely that Eugene will be elected next year as long as he keep the mosque away. And this he is determined to do all the way to the steps of the high Court in Dublin if needs be.

[Photos: Cllr. Malcolm Noonan , top.

Eugene McGuinness, bottom.]

