Search Results for 'Cllr Gerry Ginty'

The curtain finally came down on the local and European election count in the Royal Theatre in Castlebar in the early hours of Thursday after a mammoth almost five days of counting of votes, when Marian Harkin held off the challenge of Pat ‘The Cope’ Gallagher to win the last seat in the Midlands North West European constituency.

The members of Ballina Town Council voted to donate the mayoral chain of the council to the Jackie Clarke Library when the council is disbanded as it is expected to be at the end of its current term next year.

The Ireland West Airport Knock Local Area Plan 2012 to 2018 was given the go ahead at a special meeting of Mayo County Council last Monday. The plan had been up for adoption at the normal July monthly meeting of the council, but was postponed so some amendments to the plan could be made, following consultations between the airport management, council management, and councillors.

The elected members of Ballina Town Council want to see an end to the erecting of illegal signposting by businesses in the town on a Friday evening which are then removed again on a Sunday.

A war of words erupted at the November meeting of Mayo County Council over the decision by the Government to close the Vatican embassy. Independent councillor Frank Durcan said: “I’m ashamed to be from Castlebar and that a Castlebar man had the final say in closing it. It’s a shame.”

The ongoing saga of potholes on roads around Ballina was raised once again at the Ballina Electoral Area meeting this week when Fine Gael councillor , Jarlath Munnelly said, “I may sound like a broken record in respect of this but the problem of the potholes has to be fixed. If we don’t get it sorted in the next short while, it will be 10 times worse by the time we can do it again if we get a winter like last year”.

Independent Ballina town councillor Mary Kelly raised a number of questions over the allocation of €20,000 worth of funding from the council’s coffers towards Ballina Chamber of Commerce for 2011. Cllr Kelly asked what the council would get for the large allocation of funding towards the Chamber and what influence the council would have on where the money was being spent.

The members of the Ballina Electoral Area this week paid tribute to their former Mayo County Council colleague Michelle Mulherin on her election to the 31st Dáil. Dep Mulherin was first elected to represent the people of the Ballina area in the county council in 2004, before successfully retaining her seat in 2009.

The incoming Government was urged to repeal the decision of outgoing Minister of State with responsibility for Housing, Michael Finneran TD to concentrate on leasing houses rather than construct them to fill the social housing needs in the country. The issue was flagged a number months ago that the Government wanted to enter into leasing schemes with developers rather have local authorities do their own construction. At a meeting of the Housing SPC of Mayo County Council, Mr Paul Benson from the council told the members: “We received a circular from the department in December which just copper fastens what we were being told for the past few months. The council is going to have no option but to enter into the leasing deals rather than start new construction projects.” He also told the meeting that the housing funding that would be made available to the council could be only 10 per cent of what it once was and that not many projects can be done with that. However, he went on to say that while this was the proposal at present legislation had to be brought in and that any new Government may decide to go a different way.

purchase scheme which came into force at the beginning of the year has been roundly criticised by members of Mayo County Council. A number of changes have been introduced with the main ones being that the scheme will only apply to new build homes from now on only for new tenants, and that existing tenants can have only a two year window to purchase their current homes. Once that two year period is over, if they want to get involved in the scheme they will have to move to a new build home, which may be nowhere near where they currently live.