Search Results for 'Cllr Joe Mellet'

As has now become tradition, the second last full meeting chaired by the outgoing Cathaoirleach of Mayo County Council packs up from the chamber in Áras an Chontae in Castlebar and hits the road to the home town or village of the outgoing Cathaoirleach. On Monday this week, the community centre in Ballyglass was the setting for the May meeting of the council, the home village of Cathaoirleach Cllr Cyril Burke.

Numerous tributes were paid to outgoing Cathaoirleach of Mayo County Council, Cllr Austin Francis O’Malley, at the May monthly meeting of the local authority. The Louisburgh based councillor brought a meeting of the local authority to his heartland for the first time in history this week. The meeting was held in the Ocean Lodge, in the village of Killadoon just outside Louisburgh, where one councillor joked before the meeting as he looked out on the Atlantic Ocean, “next stop is the Statue of Liberty”. Padraic McNamara, chairperson of the Killadoon Community Council, welcomed the 31 members of the council and the officials to the area at the start of the meeting.

The elected members of Mayo County Council last week agreed on the budget for the council for the coming year. The €130 million budget was agreed after a meeting lasting over eight hours last Friday, and for the most part the meeting passed off without incident as the members picked over the facts and figures presented to them by the council officials. There were only a couple of incidents of political point scoring with Sinn Féin councillor Gerry Murray getting into an argument with Fine Gael councillor Patsy O’Brien over the way the Government is running the economy and cutting funding for services. The Fianna Fáil party also forced a vote, which was defeated, on a potential one per cent rate cut near the end of the meeting.

The members of Mayo County Council paid tribute to the late Myles Staunton at the beginning of their AGM this week. Before the order of business of the meeting, Fine Gael whip Cllr Joe Mellet asked the members to have a minute’s silence in honour of the former councillor, TD and senator. Cllr Michael Burke who was chairing his last meeting of the council also passed on his sympathies to the family of the late Mr Staunton as did county manager Peter Hynes on behalf of the staff of the council. Cllr Mellet also indicated that the council would pay a fuller tribute to Mr Staunton at its July meeting.

The elected members of Mayo County Council were forced to vote in a new member of the local authority to sit on the governing authority of the National University of Ireland, Galway this week. The vacancy on the governing authority at the third level institution came about after the council executive received correspondence from the university which informed them that Cllr Henry Kenny who had been appointed to the authority was “deemed to have resigned his seat”.

The elected members of Mayo County Council accepted the draft Western River Basin District Management Plan and the Shannon International River Basin District Management plan this week, but with a number of reservations attached to the plans. Fine Gael whip Cllr Joe Mellet proposed the acceptance of the plans, but with the inclusion of the three reservations about the plan. The reservations included that nothing in these plans should supersede the County Development Plan, that they didn’t accept that 31 per cent of pollution in the rivers came from agriculture, and that the plan did nothing to supersede the current EU nitrates directive.

The annual allowances and expenses paid to the elected members of Mayo County Council came in at just under €1.25 million for the year just gone. The €1,244,587.37 paid out was split among the 39 people who were councillors during the year. The top 10 earners collected €524,889.25 among them. The top 10 earners though does contain seven members who either retired from their seats or lost their seats in the local elections held in June last year and were entitled to gratuities for their service, as well as the two councillors who held the position of cathaoirleach during the year.

Planning applicants in Mayo are beginning to feel the effects of Environment Minister John Gormley’s intervention in the County Development Plan.

The first ever full meeting of Mayo County Council to be held in Swinford in the 110 years of elected local government in Ireland got off to a controversial start this week.

The new planning and development act which has been proposed by the Minister for Environment John Gormley has been described as a death knell for rural Ireland at the monthly meeting of Mayo County Council.