Preliminary results from our attempt to engage our political leaders

You know we're apolitical at ThinkIrish.ie.  Our campaign supporters are from every walk of life, every race, religion and political persuasion.  We like it that way.  And we'll engage with anyone who is willing to help us.
Over the last couple of weeks we wrote via email to 164 TDs (are we missing two?) asking for their help to generate the 20,000 new jobs we're targeting.  We thought you might be interested in what that's resulted in so far.
How many replies would you have expected to get?  Let's remind ourselves that we're talking about job creation in an economy that desperately needs it and a reply that involves no more effort than simply hitting "reply" on the screen and penning a couple of lines.
Would all of them see fit to acknowledge our request?  Surely half of them at least?
How about just 24 to date.  That's just 15%! And of the 24 that did reply, 15 did so with plenty of "well-dones" and "keep it ups" but no concrete engagement to date.  No firm proposal on what they could do to help move the campaign forward.

Which leaves us (to date) with 9.  Nine elected leaders who have engaged with us and have offered assistance.  For most it's an undertaking to get the word out locally within their constituency. For a few, it's real and demonstrable support.  Notables in this elite pile include Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey (Fianna Fail TD for Meath West) who provided a link on his site (see pic).  Fine Gael's Sean Barrett for Dunlaoghaire who asked his parliamentary secretary to pay a visit to us here at ThinkIrish.ie and collected a box of car stickers for his clinic.  Thomas Byrne, Fianna Fail TD from Meath East who met with us and has offered to put his support behind the campaign and Arthur Morgan, Sinn Fein TD for Louth who we also met with and is promising support.  We'll keep you posted on what transpires.   But our supporter of the week award must surely go to the independent TD for Dublin North Central, Finian McGrath who took our cause to the floor of Dail Eireann this week - all captured in this video link   


Now we recognise that it's early days.  It could well be the case that we have a number of political leaders working up a comprehensive reply and plan of support that they'll get across to us in the next week or so.  Happy to give them the benefit of the doubt for now.  It would be pretty shameful however if the end result of our political appeal was the 5% who have actually done something for us.
In a few weeks time, we'll circulate a "Final Results" sheet so you can see the detail around the actual responses by each of our political leaders on both sides of the house.  In the meantime, if you come across one of your elected representatives - you might ask them what they're doing to help you make a success of ThinkIrish.ie - and let us know!

There's a new competition live on the Win! tab of our facebook page.  Lots of goodies from Green Angel to be won if you can find the Star Product within the product directory.
Sunday and Monday look like being the best days (weather wise) over the bank holiday - so enjoy!

ThinkIrish.ie