Speaking in Castlebar this week, Independent candidate in Mayo County Council and Castlebar Town Council elections Michael Kilcoyne urged the people of Mayo to exercise their democratic right and go out and vote. He said: “It is our right if not our obligation to have our say in the election of those people we want to represent us and we should use our vote.” But he warned: “Think carefully before casting your vote. The person you select will represent you for the next five years.”
“Are you satisfied,” he asked “with the progress made in Mayo in the past five years when Fine Gael/Labour held the power in Mayo County Council and the Fine Gael/Fianna Fail coalition held the power in Castlebar Town Council? Were you one of the people who was visited by the Celtic Tiger, like the auctioneers, developers, and bankers, or were you like the people I meet in my clinic who didn’t even see the Tiger’s tail as he fled past?
“Over the past five years the rates collected in Castlebar and Mayo were the highest since the foundation of the State. Was this money spent wisely? We can blame the Government for many things and rightly so, but in this case the councillors on Mayo County Council and Castlebar Town Council have the power and say on how the rates money collected in our town and county is spent. How was it spent you might well ask. Wisely? I’ll let you be the judge of that.”
Kilcoyne continued: “Over the past five years Castlebar Town Council sold off the refuse service for nil. Our esteemed town mayor and the cosy cartel of Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael, with one dissenting Fianna Fáil voice, agreed to hand over the refuse service to private operators free gratis and for nothing, and in doing so deprived the elderly and the less well off of the waiver scheme, thus increasing the cost to them of having their refuse disposed of by up to 40 per cent. The same thing happened in Mayo County Council. Is it not time for change?” Kilcoyne asked.
He advised the electorate to change from the “right wing politics of the Civil War that has dogged the chambers of Mayo County Council and Castlebar Town Council for longer than we care to remember.” He asked: “Are you brave enough to make that change to a new type of representative who is not afraid to speak his mind, to think issues through, to come up with proposals to improve conditions for the people of our town and county and be led and said by a party?”
