A Westport-based councillor has expressed disappointment that his council colleagues didn't press ahead and discuss fully the Mayo County Development Plan at a special meeting held this week, to consider a report on the plan from council chief executive Kevin Kelly, that included public submissions.
Fine Gael councillor, Peter Flynn, said he was disappointed that the councillors deferred discussing the plan in detail and the moving ahead with the draft plan, after they agreed to adjourn the issue until next month.
Cllr Flynn told the meeting, which took place online last Monday: "I’ll be honest with you, I am really disappointed with this meeting. This document was published in December 2020, which was 13 months ago. All of us had the opportunity to get stuck into this and pick up the document or read it off a computer.
"Here we are today, 13 months on, and we haven’t progressed at all. There’s no point blaming covid, this is down to us as 30 individual councillors, who just simply haven’t been taking the responsibility to get stuck into this document and to move it forward."
He added that he felt the lack of progress on the plan 'has seen a number of people not able to get planning', saying: "I know of multiple people that haven’t been able to get planning in the last number of months, that’s not the planners’ fault, that’s our fault as councillors, who haven’t bothered moving on this. We need to start on this next week, because there’s a huge body of work to get through.
“To be fair to the chief executive and the planners, they have put together a really detailed response for us nearly seven or eight months ago, and yet some people have done absolutely nothing on this. I think it’s really unacceptable that we are not in a position to move this forward. We need to make the changes that are required and stop wasting people’s time."
At the meeting, senior planner for Mayo County Council, John McMyler, told the members that the council had received 1,267 submissions from the public on the plan, including 994 about the potential of building a greenway on the Western Rail Corridor route.
