Search Results for 'Rose Conway Walsh'

Yesterday (Thursday) a delegation from St Anthony’s Special School in Castlebar, along with a number of other special schools, met with the joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Science in Leinster House to discuss the ongoing row over the axing of a number of special needs assistants jobs.

Westport based Fine Gael councillor Peter Flynn has hit out at the industrial action being taken by the members of the public service unions in Mayo County Council in their dispute over pay cuts saying, “The lunatics have taken over the asylum”.

There was serious overcrowding experienced at Mayo General Hospital this week with 23 patients being treated on trolleys on Wednesday, according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation trolley watch survey.

The prospect of Sinn Féin holding the balance of power in Mayo County Council after this June’s local election has seen the party been approached by both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to do a deal with them according to sitting Cllr Gerry Murray. Yesterday Sinn Féin launched their four candidates for the county council elections where the party hope to boost their numbers from their current solitary seat held by Cllr Murray, with Castlebar Town Cllr Therese Ruane running in the Castlebar area, Westport Town Councillor Dave Keating in the Westport area and Rose Conway Walsh who lost out on getting a seat in the last elections narrowly running again in the Belmullet area. The launch was also attend by party leader Gerry Adams and EU Election candidate Padraig MacLochlainn.

The Belmullet area saw the largest influx of new voters into the area following the redrawing of the boundaries last year. An extra 2,249 people were planted into the area from both the east and south of the old constituency. The decision to move Newport east from the Westport electoral area into Belmullet and its population of 1,021 was enough to see sitting Newport based Fianna Fáil councilor Frank Chambers decide not to run again, after seeing his home base split between two different electoral areas. While to the east of the old constituency, Ballycastle, Bunaveela, Kilfian west and Lacken north have been added from the old Ballina area.

There was high drama in Castlebar as night was turning into day when the fourth count of the Swinford area pulled Joe Mellett, the Cathaoirleach of the last term of the previous council, back from the death. From early in the afternoon when the first tallies were done it was looking like Mellett was going to lose out to Fianna Fáil's first time candidate Michael Smyth.

The tricolour was held high in the Ruby Room of the TF Royal Theatre on Sunday after the last Belmullet electoral area seat was taken by Sinn Féin’s Rose Conway Walsh. This resulted in the loss of outgoing Fianna Fáil councillor Tim Quinn’s seat. He topped the polls in 2004 with first preference votes, while against the county trend Fine Gael failed to secure the three seats which it was contending.

Before Cllr Joe Mellett had even handed over the Cathaoirleach’s chain to incoming Cathaoirleach for the next 12 months, Cllr John Cribben, independent Castlebar based Cllr Frank Durcan fired his first warning shot across the bows of the new council. Cllr Durcan told the meeting, “In the interests of transparency and accountability, I would call that the salaries of the Cathaoirleach, the leas Cathaoirleach and all the committee chairpersons be given to the general public”. Cllr Durcan’s call was seconded by fellow independent Cllr Gerry Ginty from Ballina.

The Mayo County Council will speak to the members of the Clarke family about the appointment of members to the steering committee for the library after the council failed to appoint a member to the committee at its monthly meeting this week.

During Monday afternoon’s county council meeting, councillors vented their anger at the Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2009 which is being debated at present in the Dáil.