Search Results for 'Cllr Michael Kilcoyne'

Where did it all go wrong is what the Fine Gael party faithful will be trying to figure out over the next few weeks as they saw their seats in the county town drop from four to two over the weekend. One man who won’t be asking that question is Independent Cllr Michael Kilcoyne who topped the poll with an amazing 2,921 votes, a massive 1,210 first preference votes over the quota of 1,711. From not long after the boxes were opened and spilled across the counting tables in the Royal Theatre in Castlebar early on Saturday morning, there was never any doubt that Kilcoyne was going to top the poll, it was only a matter of by how much. When he was elected on the first count, he was the first councillor in Ireland elected in this year’s local elections, but he had to wait until the early hours of Tuesday morning for the official declaration of election after the recount of the Castlebar papers had been concluded. More on that below.

Castlebar Chamber president Oliver Kelleher, in a presentation to Castlebar Town Council last week, hit out at the council on a number of issues. Kelleher told the meeting that the businesses in the town were looking for “fair play” and were not looking for “special treatment”.

The three town councils in Mayo faced into what will possibly be their last budgets over the past two weeks. However at both the Castlebar Town Council and Ballina Town Council budget meetings the issue of starting the review of the towns’ development plans and the costs associated with them has caused a lot of debate this week.

The time for talking about doing something has passed, and unfortunately for 23 families so far this year the time for doing something has passed also. At last Monday’s meeting of Mayo County Council, the members engaged in serious and at times heart-wrenching discussion about suicide.

Tempers frayed at a meeting of Castlebar Town Council this week during a discussion on the recent visit by two members of IDA management to the town which included a tour around the old Volex and APC plants, conducted in the company of Mayor Eugene McCormack and councillors Ger Deere and Brendan Heneghan.

The issue of the gradient on the new footpath on Castle Street was raised at the June meeting of Castlebar Town Council. Cllr Michael Kilcoyne told the meeting that he had representations about the gradient on the footpath changing. Cllr Frank Durcan also told the meeting it had been changed and made steeper and would be very difficult for someone to get up the hill with a wheelchair. However town manager Seamus Granahan told the meeting, “The gradient hasn’t changed at all, the road has been raised all right but the gradient hasn’t change. There is a strict formula that is used in relation to where the entrance to the doorways in the shop and houses are and that hasn’t changed.”

Recent resurfacing works carried out by Castlebar Town Council in the Pound Road and Churchview Villas area caused concern for members of the town council this week.

The main message from last week’s special meeting of Mayo County Council to discuss the implications of the potential job cuts in Mayo County Council was lost in a war of words and point scoring by the local politicians inside the chamber. At the outset of the meeting, county manager Peter Hynes told the members that there will be no enforced redundancies in the council and that they will be dealing with the issue within the confines of the Croke Park agreement. He did express his regret that the issue became public knowledge through the media and informed that meeting that no member of the council executive was involved in leaking the information. He said the council “will not be discussing the proposals in public with a megaphone”.

The issue of the amount of money owed by central Government to Mayo County Council for works carried out by the council was raised again this week at the monthly meeting of Mayo County Council. Cllr Eugene Lavin brought up the issue asking Peter Duggan, head of finance for Mayo County Council, how much money was owed and how much the council had to pay in relation to interest charges on loans that it has had to take out to cover the debt.

The issue of zoning of lands for housing is set to become a hot topic for discussion amongst elected members and the officials of the four local authorities in Mayo over the coming months. Following on from a presentation on the Core Strategy for the county, which has to come into effect under the Planning and Development Act 2010 to the County Council early last week, it was the turn of the Westport Electoral Area Committee and Castlebar Town Council to get briefed on the matter. One councillor in particular laid the blame at the foot of the councillors themselves for the over zoning of lands.