Two of the newly elected members of Mayo County Council cried foul this week over the fact that they have had no Notice of Motion allocation to spend for their first six months as councillors.
Fianna Fáil Cllr Brendan Mulroy raised the issue at this week’s meeting of the West Mayo Municipal District.
Each councillor next year will have an allocation of €31,500 to spend on local roads projects that they direct the council to do. However for the new councillors they have no allocation as the 2014 allocations were given to the councillors who held the seats before May’s local elections.
Cllr Mulroy asked that in future there should be a mechanism in place that half of the money be given to councillors in an election year and the rest given to the councillors after the election, or to a new councillor who wins a seat. Cllr Mulroy went on to say that the public don’t understand that he doesn’t have the notice of motion allocation to get things done as he’d like to and won’t until the new year.
Independent Cllr Christy Hyland, also newly elected to the council, agreed with Cllr Mulroy saying: “The system has to be changed. We’re six months in the chair as councillors and we can’t get small little things done. The council have been great when we’ve brought issues to them and got some works done, but it’s crazy we don’t have an allocation.”
Director of services for the district, Martin Keating, said that the decision on the allocations was completly in the ‘gift’ of the councillors and if they wanted to revist it in four and half years’ time ahead of the next election, they could do so.
