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Independent Ballina Municipal District Mayo county councillor Seamus Weir this week hit out at proposals to only underground 8km of the controversial project. Cllr Weir said this week: “I oppose Eirgrid’s third option to reduce the voltage on the proposed 400kv transmission line from 400kv to 210kv and suggesting under-grounding the line to a distances of 30 kilometres from Magownagh to Flagfort. I am told it will only be underground for 8km at Flagfort substation.”

A Castlebar man who found himself on the front page of a national daily newspaper over his appointment to the board of State body SOLAS has responded to the story this week.

The stand off over the Grid West project looks set to intensify with members of the Moy Valley Protection Group now vowing they will fight it all the way, regardless of whether or not the proposed high capacity power lines are sunk underground.

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.

The race to fill the late Nicky McFadden’s Dáil seat will begin in earnest on Wednesday (April 30) when the Government is expected to call a by-election for May 23 to elect the 40th TD to represent the Longford-Westmeath constituency.

The race to fill the late Nicky McFadden’s Dáil seat will begin in earnest on Wednesday (April 30) when the Government is expected to call a by-election for May 23 to elect the 40th TD to represent the Longford-Westmeath constituency.

There was celebrations for Mayo at the Local Authorities Members Association (LAMA) awards on Saturday night when In Humbert’s Footsteps picked up the Best Gathering Event for Ireland. The festival which saw re-enactments of General Humbert’s march through Mayo during 1798 in Killala, Kilcummin, Lahardane, and Castlebar saw off competition from 10 other events for the award.

The long drawn out saga of putting in place countywide bye-laws for burial grounds in Mayo was finally concluded on Monday when the members of Mayo County Council approved the new bye-laws by a vote of 15-7 after a number of last minute amendments were proposed from the chamber floor.

Last week the Castlebar branch of the Fine Gael party met to pick candidates to go forward for the selection convention ahead of next year’s local elections. The Castlebar branch selected sitting county councillors Cyril Burke and Eugene McCormack along with current Castlebar Town Council councillors Brendan Heneghan and Ger Deere. The four selected nominees all spoke to the meeting and will now go forward to the party’s Mayo convention next month.