Search Results for 'Michael Kilcoyne'

This morning at 11am, a vastly changed Mayo County Council will meet for the first time since the election and the speculation that has been raging for almost two weeks now over who exactly will hold political sway in the county for the next five years will finally be put to bed.

The curtain finally came down on the local and European election count in the Royal Theatre in Castlebar in the early hours of Thursday after a mammoth almost five days of counting of votes, when Marian Harkin held off the challenge of Pat ‘The Cope’ Gallagher to win the last seat in the Midlands North West European constituency.

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.

A number of the Independent candidates running in the upcoming Local Elections believe voters are disillusioned with what the traditional parties are offering and a swing towards the non-party aligned is on the cards.

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

Independent councillor Michael Kilcoyne has this week lashed out at the fact that from Tuesday week, April 29, if you have to make a call about water service issues such as a leak you will now have to call Irish Water on an 1890 number in Cork rather than calling the Mayo County Council to deal with it.

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 future of maternity services at Mayo General Hospital has been put firmly on the agenda around the county this week, following revelations from Independent councillor Michael Kilcoyne that a draft report proposed the closure of a number of maternity units in the region, including at Mayo General.

Many older people in Mayo are isolated, lonely, and fearful about their future, according to a new report from a national listening service.

The investigation is continuing into the shooting of Owen Maughan at a Castlebar filling station in December.