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A second pedestrian crossing promised for the Dublin Road in Mullingar will have to wait until at least next year but could take another five years to complete, if the vague answer given to a councillor this week is taken at face value.

“All lands will be frozen until a route is chosen and accepted by the council,” was the stark reality that senior engineer for Mayo County Council, Noel Burke, told members of the Ballina Electoral Area this week. The members of the committee had been debating the issue of the new Crossmolina bypass which has caused plenty of debate in the area over the past number of months. When the route chosen by the council executive for the proposed new bypass was rejected by the council, all potential routes and lands around them were frozen for development.

A number of Ballina based councillors expressed their anger that the stalled N26 project has been left in limbo. Fine Gael councillor Seamus Weir told a meeting of the Ballina Electoral Area committee of his frustration at the silence on the issue since it was refused planning permission by An Bord Pleanála. He asked the council executive if there was an update on the project. “We had a meeting two months ago and we spoke at length about it,” he said. “I have heard nothing since about it, we adopted this plan in 2002 and since then we have had landowners having their lands frozen and now they still don’t know what is going to happen. It’s just not fair on them. Is this project dead in the water or what? The reality of this is that we do need this road, the people need the road. I’d favour downgrading the road from a dual carriageway if it made it easier for it to go ahead.”

The elected members of Mayo County Council this week hit out at the decision by the council executive to close the two civic amenity sites at Derrinumera and Rathroeen at 1pm on Saturdays.

A recent announcement by Minister for Housing, Michael Finneran TD, of funding for housing repair grants scheme has caused local councillors to be inundated with calls from applicants according to the Cathaoirleach of Mayo County Council. Cllr John Cribben was speaking at the Claremorris Electoral Area Committee this week where he said “people have seen this story in the newspapers and they assume that if they have applied for the grant they are going to get the money now. But I’m led to believe it’s not that easy.”

“Hideous” and “deplorable” is how local councillors described the state of Athlone shopping centre (Texas centre) this week as they called on the council executive to act to improve its derelict appearance.

The removal of a jetty at Bachelor’s Walk in Ballina which a number of councillors had called for, as it was deemed a danger to the public and the site of anti social behaviour, has been put back to the April meeting of the council following the call for public consultation on the issue.

The elected members of Ballina Town Council once again called for a public toilet to be put into the town. Following a request from the members at a previous meeting, town clerk Carmel Murphy had researched the cost of providing such a convenience and had contacted a number of other towns of the same size as Ballina to see what they had done. She told the meeting that of 11 towns she contacted, four had no toilet and some of the other seven had discontinued their use because they were very expensive.

Mayo County Council employs 188 technical staff which cost the council €13 million in wages in 2008, according to independent Councillor Frank Durcan. The councillor brought up the figures while the council was discussing the NRA roads’ budget and the effects the cold weather after Christmas had on the roads network in the county. Cllr Durcan was hitting out at what he saw as “bad management” by the council executive, which combined with a recent drop in funding from the Government he said was hurting the council’s finances.