Independent Castlebar town councillor Michael Kilcoyne said he was disappointed with the turn out of councillors for what he described as “one of the most important issues for this council to deal with” this week. The council this week held a special meeting to discuss and amend the Draft Anti Social Behaviour Strategy 2010-2014 for Castlebar. The meeting was attend by only five of the nine members for the majority of the meeting, with it taking place with only four members present for a period of time also. Those members present were Mayor Ger Deere, councillors Harry Barrett, Blackie Gavin, Therese Ruane, and Michael Kilcoyne. Independent councillor Frank Durcan left the meeting before it began in protest, after no prayer was said at its outset.
The new draft strategy was passed by the members at the meeting following a lengthy debate, with a number of amendments made. While happy with the policy in comparison to the older one, Kilcoyne was still disappointed with a number of items in the policy in relation to what is deemed anti-social behaviour and nuisance behaviour. “There were a number of things which in the strategy are called nuisance behaviour rather than the more serious anti-social behaviour, which I think should be included. I didn’t get the support from the other members and the management said that we couldn’t move things over, but I asked for the relevant legislation to say that we couldn’t do it and I wasn’t told what that legislation was. People who don’t live beside people like this who cause this kind of behaviour don’t know what it’s like, and it’s not nuisance it’s anti-social.”
Kilcoyne was happy that he got a number of changes made to the draft policy including the number of times that a council tenant will be written to about a complaint from three to two and that all letters would be sent by registered post so there would be a record of the letter being sent out and received. However a number of ideas raised, such as the eviction of the tenants from a house if there were drugs being sold from the house, were shot down. It was pointed out that there could be a situation in a household where a family is living in the house and it was son or daughter involved in that behaviour and it would be unfair to evict the whole family. In that case an exclusion order on the property could be served on the individual rather than the family. A suggestion by Cllr Harry Barrett about supplying recording equipment to people from the council to record incidents of anti-social behaviour was also not contained in the adopted draft.
Cllr Kilcoyne also raised the issue of the possibility of the council being able to start its own investigations even if it did not receive a complaint from a member of the public. Town clerk Marie Crowley told the meeting that the council does act when it sees something that needs to be investigated.
