PLEASE NOTE THAT LATER TODAY A PRINTED COPY OF THIS E-MAIL
WILL TO BE SENT THROUGH THE REGISTERED POST  TO:
Mr. Helmut Betz
Principal Administrator
Directorate for the Planning of Parliamentary Business
L-2929  Luxembourg.

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Also, a copy of the text of this e-mail will be placed at the Internet page address given below (sometime within the coming few days):
http://homepage.eircom.net/~williamfinnerty/petition.htm

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Dear Mr. Betz,

I was very pleased to receive your letter dated September 3rd 2001.

With reference to Rule 174 of the European Parliament's Rules of Procedure, the four items of information you require from me are provided below:
a) NAME:  Mr. William Finnerty.
b) OCCUPATION:  Electronic System Designer
                                                 and
                            Quality Assurance Assessor / Investigator.
c) NATIONALITY:  Republic of Ireland.
d) PERMANENT ADDRESS:  "St Albans", New Inn, Ballinasloe, County Galway,
                                             Republic of Ireland.

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The petition for help which I now wish to make to the European Parliament relates to the following two local environmental matters:

1)  The illegal sewage discharges into the river in the village of New Inn where I live. The situation regarding this ongoing set of problems (which includes air pollution) is outlined at the following Internet page address:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~williamfinnerty/environment.htm

2)  The damage and destruction which ancient Celtic monuments are being subjected to in the east County Galway area (which is where I now live, and where my permanent address is located).  An example of a monument recently destroyed in New Inn is provided at page address:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~williamfinnerty/grange.htm

Assuming it is still intact, an example of an east Galway monument now under threat can be seen at:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~williamfinnerty/esb-proj.htm

A list of the main ongoing threats to Celtic monuments in east Galway is available at:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~williamfinnerty/turoe.htm#threat

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As can be seen from looking through certain parts of my web site, I have now put a very considerable amount of time and effort into working on the above mentioned difficulties. Unfortunately, my efforts do not appear to have produced any useful practical results that I know of; and it is for this reason that I now wish to petition the European Parliament for help regarding these matters.  I feel that I have more-or-less done all that I (as one individual person with just one pair of hands) can do regarding the several issues in question.

Throughout, I have been mindful of the fact that once ancient monuments are destroyed, they are destroyed forever; and consequently I felt it was appropriate for me to take a certain amount of time off work for the purpose of trying to save as much as I could: in circumstances where time seemed to be fast running out for several of the old Celtic sites in the east County Galway region.

I have been self-employed for many years, and it is relatively easy for me to take extra time away from the paid work that I normally do. Unfortunately, as a self-employed person, my income disappears when I take time off work; and consequently I have suffered considerable financial losses as a result of all the time I have had to spend: which has turned out to be far more than I originally anticipated.

Even though my efforts appear to have been unsuccessful so far, I do nevertheless feel that I should be compensated financially for the loss of earnings connected with the time I have spent trying to protect the local environment: particularly when it is the case that I have been doing environmental protection work which numerous other people are already being paid to do (from taxpayers money); but, which they are collectively failing to do in certain areas (for reasons best know to themselves).