Speaking in Castlebar today Independent General Election candidate Councillor Michael Kilcoyne has expressed his deep concern at the number of sub-contractors in Mayo who have been deprived of their money by the main contractor on public works projects.
He said that on a number of Mayo County Council projects the main contractor has been paid his money in full by the County Council and this has also happened on a number of other public work projects. “While the sub-contractors who did all the work have been forced out of business, because the main contractor didn’t pay them. The result is that many of these sub-contractors have not been able to pay staff their wages,” he added.
Cllr Kilcoyne stated that this is not acceptable and is an abuse of sub-contractors and their staff. He also said it wasn’t acceptable for Mayo County Council or Castlebar Town Council to say that they have no responsibility to sub-contractors.
Cllr Kilcoyne is demanding immediate change in this practice at local authority level and so he is proposing the following motion at the next meeting of Castlebar Town Council which is due to take place on February 10 and at the Mayo County Council meeting on February 14.
“That this council resolves that contracts awarded by the council have a clause inserted making it obligatory for the principal contractor (to whom the contract is awarded ) to have full and final payment made to all sub-contractors (and evidence of same received from the sub-contractors ) involved in the project, before final payment to the principal contractor is issued by Castlebar Town Council/ Mayo County Council .”
He is calling on Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to support this proposal so that the policy of the Mayo Local Authorities is changed to prevent what he described as “the legalised robbery of the working man”.
