Search Results for 'Jimmy Maloney'

It was widely expected that the eight seats in the Ballina area would be some of the most hotly contested in the county and that was certainly the case in the count centre in the TF Royal Theatre Hotel, Castlebar, over the weekend.

Nominations for the Local Elections on May 23 closed on Saturday.

A proposal to have all 400kv power lines undergrounded included in the new Mayo County Council development plan fell at a vote (12-10, with nine councillors absent for the vote ) at this week’s special meeting of the council to approve the new county development plan.

There were clear dividing lines drawn in the Mayo County Council on Monday afternoon when a controversial draft policy on ‘Community Benefit Contributions for Certain Major Developments’ was passed, by a vote of 26-6. Excepting Fine Gael where all councillors support the motion, the two other political parties in the council split on the vote, with Sinn Féin’s Rose Conway-Walsh, Fianna Fáil trio of Al McDonnell, Blackie Gavin, and Damien Ryan, and Independent councillors Michael Kilcoyne, Richard Finn, and Michael Holmes all voting for it. Voting against the motion were Fianna Fáil’s Margaret Adams, Jimmy Maloney, and Annie May Reape alongside Sinn Féin’s Gerry Murray and independents Gerry Ginty and Seamus Weir. Cllr Frank Durcan was absent from the meeting. Both Cllr Murray and Cllr Weir led the charge against the proposals at the meeting and both councillors ended up in heated side-debates with other councillors while the topic was being discussed.

The nationwide embargo on the recruitment of public service workers has been in place for six years now and has seen staffing levels at Mayo County Council fall by 20 per cent.

Next Monday’s meeting of Mayo County Council will see a number of different motions come before the councillors in relation to different strands of energy issues in the county including the Eirgrid project. Independent councillor Michael Kilcoyne has one motion calling “that Mayo County Council invite Dr David Connolly, who is a renewable energy expert and native of Ballyhaunis, to give a presentation to the members of Mayo County Council so we might learn from the experience of the windy western counties of Denmark, and their efforts to achieve a situation where 100% of their energy requirement is supplied by renewable energy and where renewable energy is the largest employer. Dr. David Connolly is now assistant professor in Aalborg University, Denmark.”

The hot-button issue of the proposed Grid West 400kV power line development has continued to evolve this week. At Monday’s Mayo County Council meeting, the elected members took the unusual step of adjourning the standing orders of the meeting to let one of the affected members of the community address the meeting in the middle of a debate.

Fianna Fáil councillor Jimmy Maloney has called for the numerous community groups who have concerns about the potential Eirgrid project in the county to be provided with funding and can engage the services of a specialist independent consultant so they can be represented and their concerns be put across by an appropriate professional. Cllr Maloney said this week, “I attended the special county council meeting and listened with interest to the presentation given by Eirgrid. I then weighed this up against the numerous calls I had received from the public over the past number of weeks relating to genuine public concern over the Eirgrid proposal. As I see it the only solution for fair and open discussion is to provide the public and community groups with funding to allow them the option of engaging the services of an independent consultant or consultants to represent them at local and national level- Specifically when this process reaches planning stage with An Bord Pleanála. This means that they can request answers to their concerns from the appropriate independent professionals. I further feel that the costs arising from this consultation should be paid for by Eirgrid.”

As part of its submission to the draft Mayo County Development Plan 2014-2020 Sinn Féin has included a submission relating to a schedule of levies and a schedule of weight restrictions it wants imposed on the heavy harvesting of forestry.

The May meeting of Mayo County Council was adjourned after an hour to mark the passing of council employee Gerry Callaghan of Tullinacurra, Swinford who passed away last weekend.