This monthly meeting of Mayo County Council saw the Fine Gael members of the council launch a scathing attack on the recent budget cutbacks. The remarks of the majority side of the house saw a number of Fianna Fáil councillors admit that they themselves were not happy with the budget. Achill-based Cllr Michael McNamara told the meeting that “there are some aspects of the the budget that I can’t defend”. While Claremorris area councillor Pat McHugh said “I have been a loyal supporter of the Government, but I’m not afraid to say there is no way I can defend this budget. There are many issues that have been raised, and they were discussed at meetings of Fianna Fáil councillors around the country, and a number of areas where a hatchet was used when a scalpel should have been.”
The discussion on the budget itself caused a number of issues when Fine Gael put forward a motion to have standing orders suspended to discuss it. Cllr McHugh asked, “Is this going to be the norm, that we suspend standing orders at the start of every meeting to discuss issues?” County secretary John Condon confirmed that it would require 20 votes of the council to suspend the standing orders. Cllr McHugh remarked that “if that’s the case and this went to a vote the motion would be lost, but we will secede to the other side of the house for the debate.”
Cllr John Cribben opened the debate by talking about the cutbacks that are affecting the farming community, especially the loss of the farm installation grant which would lead to “for sale” signs being placed on a number of farms. He also called on the two Government TDs in the county to do something and accused them of having “no backbone”. He also singled out Senator John Carty for criticism, saying, “John Carty is the Government Seanad spokesperson for agriculture, I didn’t believe it when I heard it until I checked it out. I have to compliment him for two things. He was the silent night of the last Dáil and he’s the silent night of this Seanad.”
Independent Cllr Michael Holmes told the meeting that he had visited a farming family who had three sons and had struggled to convince one of them to take on the farm, and when one finally agreed to do it and did his green cert to get everything in order he was hit by three rattles in the budget — the loss of €1,000 base area payment, the loss of the €15,000 installation grant and the cutting of the retirement scheme for the father and mother so the son can take over the land.
The stark reality of the education cutbacks were also addressed by Cllr Eugene Lavin who gave the example of two schools, (Tavrane, Kilkelly and Craggagh, Kiltimagh ) in his area which will be seriously affected by the cutbacks. Where each school had 48 pupils and was thus entitled to three teachers, the changing of the pupil-teacher ratio to having 49 pupils for three teachers will result in them each losing a teacher and increasing the class sizes by 33 per cent from next year for the two teachers who will be left.
Cllr McNamara also put it to the Fine Gael side of the house that maybe they should look back to Alan Duke’s strategy of supporting the Government during the 1980s economic crisis, to which he was told by Cllr John Cribben, “You created the mess, let you clean it up.”
