The West Mayo Municipal District will hold a special meeting on Monday, March 1, to discuss housing and capital projects.
The special meeting will come about on foot of a request from Westport-based Fine Gael councillor Peter Flynn, who said: "We adopted at our previous meeting that we would have a report on shovel-ready projects in our municipal district. My main concern is that the part eight has gone in relation to the Golf Course Road project (Westport ), the one thing that concerns me is that my understanding pre that part eight going in, is that we were to get a report back in terms of what the options were around improving traffic management on the Golf Course Road, be it some sort of slip road on the golf course road, a roundabout or a throughway through the industrial park. I have received nothing. I now find myself backed into a corner on this because we will have the part eight in a few weeks. I would request a special meeting to be held before Friday, March 5, to discuss this. This is a key piece of infrastructure for our town, it is going to have serious repercussions if we don't get this right. I would like three specific people at it, I would like the head of roads, Paul Hyland, to tell us how he sees it in terms of the various traffic management issues, the director of housing Simon Shevlin, to give us an overview of how this will all operate, who will be allocated these houses - not the individuals - but in terms of where they are being targeted; and I would like either John Mc Myler or Alan De Lucia - one of the senior planners, to advise from a planning perspective how all this will proceed. This is the same as if a private developer went in, except that we, councillors, have to make a decision on this."
Cllr Flynn concluded, saying: "I want housing and I want as much of it as anybody in Westport, but I want to make sure our infrastructure is correct - we want to do what is right for our town in the long term." Cllr Christy Hyland seconded the motion for the special meeting.
