Articles tagged with: Monaghan Co Council

Local authorities in Co Monaghan have been urged by a leading health official to use the powers they have under the planning laws to protect children from unhealthy eating habits. Dr Nazih Eldin, the HSE’s Lead on Obesity, told the February meeting of Monaghan Co Council that planning legislation should be used to ensure that fast food premises were not located in the vicinity of schools. “If this was any other issue, we would have stopped everything else and just concentrated on it,” Dr Eldin told the members, ...

A new action plan to preserve the viability of the furniture manufacturing sector in Co Monaghan was detailed to the members of Monaghan Co Council on Monday. Initiatives to identify new product areas and to examine alternative uses for vacant factory space are key components of the strategy, which aims to plot a productive future course for a sector that was once a major source of employment in the county but has been severely hit in recent years by the loss of export markets. Border Regional Authority Regional ...

Contrasting pictures of the new era for domestic and commercial water and sewerage consumers that will dawn in 2014 when Irish Water takes over responsibility for the provision of these services from local authorities were painted at Monday’s meeting of Monaghan Co Council. Council officialdom imparted a “business as usual” assurance to the Co Monaghan public and pointed out that steps were being taken, including the acquisition of additional staff, to ensure that the same level of service, and complaint and emergency response, would be provided after the changeover. However, some of ...

The legacy of partition and the consequent “partitionist mindset” created had contributed to widescale neglect of the Border region, Sinn Féin councillor Matt Carthy told the June meeting of Monaghan Co Council when moving a motion seeking a comprehensive framework of strategies to reverse economic and social decline in this part of the country. Major infrastructural investment, a new jobs strategy and the harmonisation of key tax rates and currency were components of the blueprint the South Monaghan representative put forward for debate. The text of his motion ...

The financial implications for Monaghan Co Council of assuming responsibility for the five Town Council areas in the county concentrated the minds of the authority’s members when they met for their monthly meeting on Tuesday – and were informed by the Council’s Head of Finance John Murray that the combined financial deficit of the town authorities, based on their annual financial statements at the end of 2012, was €864,000. Fianna Fáil councillor Robbie Gallagher asked what effect the doing away with of Town Councils would have on the rates ...

Perhaps the most important issue among the many discussed at Monday’s meeting of Monaghan Co Council was the crisis in public confidence which is impacting adversely on many aspects of the food sector in the county at the present time. The fallout from the ongoing horsemeat scandal, and the problems highlighted in recent times around country of origin labelling of chicken produce, have combined to create a mindset of suspicion and fear in consumers which is being reflected in their purchasing choices. When any taint attaches to food ...

A number of Monaghan food industries were suffering severely because of the lack of confidence by consumers, and many workers in the sector were now on a three-day week, Fianna Fáil councillor Pádraig McNally told Monday’s meeting of Monaghan Co Council. Colr McNally was commenting on correspondence from the Dept of Health responding to a recent Co Council call for the implementation of more rigorous country of origin rules for chicken products. Colr McNally said that even instances where food was not being imported, there was a lack ...

The spectre of a crumbling county road structure has returned to haunt Monaghan Co Council. Debates about poor roads were a staple of local authority business down recent decades until a steady increase in Government allocations for their repair considerably raised road standards in the county and largely removed the item from the agendas of Council meetings. But Monday’s meeting of the county authority saw Fine Gael councillors table an urgent business motion calling on Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar and the National Roads Authority to increase the ...

The serious difficulties confronting the poultry production sector in this region can be regarded as nothing less than a crisis. Deficiencies in the rules governing disclosure of country of origin, which allow the importation and repackaging of produce under the deceptive guise of it being of Irish provenance, and the factors combining to shave precious income off the prices that producers are receiving, form a threat to the very future of an industry that has come to play a vital role in the Co Monaghan economy. Such are the ...

Representatives of the cream of Co Monaghan and Co Cavan’s young sporting talent – all exemplars in their chosen field – were accorded the honour of a civic reception by Monaghan Co Council in the Four Seasons Hotel on Monday evening. Presentations were made to the Donaghmoyne ladies football team to mark their All-Ireland success; world champion Irish dancers Jessica and Eileen Cullen and Aoife Bannigan, and world champion handballers Paul Brady from Cavan, and Monaghan’s Eoghan McGinnity. A pleasant social occasion which followed the monthly meeting of ...