Search Results for 'Frank Durcan'

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.

Independent councillor Frank Durcan cast aspersions on An Taoiseach Enda Kenny and an a family in-law at this week’s Mayo County Council meeting as he addressed the chamber in regard to his ongoing row with Mayo County Council officials over planning issues. The February meeting of the council had to be adjourned after Cllr Durcan refused to back down on allegations he made in the chamber. There were fears that the March meeting of the council would descend into similar disarray. However when Cllr Durcan tried to raise the issue of the previous month’s meeting under the adoption of minutes, he was quickly shut down by Cathaoirleach, Cllr Austin Francis O’Malley, who informed the councillor there were no matters arising from the minutes on the agenda, so he would be moving the meeting forward.

Independent councillor Frank Durcan had a notice of motion at this week’s meeting of Mayo County Council calling on the council to put notice of motion works out to tender rather than have the work carried out in-house by council staff. Each councillor is given a set amount of money each year under the notice of motion heading which allows them to earmark the money toward certain works they want done by the council. However Cllr Durcan told the meeting that the councillors haven’t been getting value for money on these projects as they normally always get completed at the tail end of the year when the weather is bad and it takes longer and therefore costs more to do.

A motion by Independent councillor Frank Durcan was deemed to be “superfluous” by the council executive at the January meeting of Mayo County Council. Cllr Durcan’s motion called for the procurement officer to attend a council meeting to explain his modus operandi for dealing with tenders.

Fiery Independent councillor Frank Durcan became involved in a war of words with top council officials, not for the first time, at Monday’s Mayo County Council meeting. The Castlebar auctioneer, in a notice of motion, called for a special meeting to be held to discuss “the inconsistency of planners, architects and director of services in dealing with planning applications.”

Castlebar Town Council approved its budget for 2012, which included no increase in rates, on Tuesday. The members approved the €7 million budget, which will see a rateable income of €4,033,383 needing to be raised by the council during the year. The council aims to have an income for €2, 346,322 from its other revenue sources over the next 12 months, with other payments from the local government fund and from pension related deductions contributing some €775,000 to the council’s coffers.

Mayo County Council passed its new Anti-Social Behaviour Strategy 2010-2014 at Monday’s meeting of the local authority. The policy was originally designed to be uniform county-wide, but both Ballina Town Council and Castlebar Town Council have made a number of changes to the policy to tailor them to their own needs.

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.”

Independent councillor Frank Durcan wanted to have a debate on the ongoing Department of Environment, Community and Local Government investigation into the management of the Mayo North East Leader Partnership, following a recent complaint.

There was more bad news for people trying to sell property in Mayo earlier this week, according to journalist Richard Curran’s RTÉ documentary Property Crash - Where To Now? He highlighted Mayo as being one of the areas that would be slow to recover from the current property market downturn. He cited from his research that Mayo had a large oversupply of new and secondhand homes and that, going on current trends, there was not expected to be a population increase demanding a major increase in supply. This news concurred with the most recent Daft.ie House Price Report, and does not paint a good picture as to the state of the property market in the county.