Castlebar Town Council withdrew part of the planning permission for McHale Park at its monthly meeting last Thursday. The meeting, which was attended by a large number of the residents of McHale Road, but not by members of the Mayo County Board, saw a motion put forward by independent councillor Frank Durcan and seconded by fellow independent councillor and Mayor of the town Michael Kilcoyne passed by six votes to three in the chamber.
The motion put forward by Cllr Durcan called for the council to withdraw planning permission for the media tower and the toilet blocks on the McHale Road side of the multi million euro development at the ground. The motion uses section 44 of the Planning and Development act 2000, which grants the members of a local authority the power to withdraw planning permission for a development if it does not comply with the development plan for the town. Part of the development plan is that all developments comply with planning permission as granted, in the opinion of the members who voted for the motion. The issue over the non compliance with the planning permission relates to the media tower which is one metre higher and three metres wider than what was granted on the planning permission, and the toilet blocks which were not included in certain drawings on the planning application.
Town manager Seamus Granahan warned the elected members that if they passed the motion they could leave the council open to legal action and possible compensation, because he believes that they do not have the legal basis to revoke it as the development plan relates to zoning issues and the zoning for the development is correct. The vote on the motion saw three of the four Fine Gael councillors vote against it, with only Cllr Brendan Heneghan breaking party ranks to support the motion alongside Sinn Féin councillor Therésè Ruane, Labour councillor Harry Barrett, Fianna Fáil councillor Blackie Gavin, and the independent councillors Frank Durcan and Michael Kilcoyne.
While a application for retention of the planning permission has been lodged with the town council for the disputed parts of the development, five members of the council at the meeting signed a letter calling for a special meeting to be held on September 21 to get the manager to refuse to grant the retention application at the elected members’ wishes. The members have the power to do this under section 140 of the Local Government Act 2001, if a simple majority of the elected members vote to direct the town manager to do so.
