Articles tagged with: Monaghan Co Council

An unexpected increase of 0.5% in their Local Government Fund allocation for 2013 eased the process of adopting an Annual Budget for the members of Monaghan Co Council yesterday afternoon. The windfall news meant that Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan, more frequently the object of the elected members’ ire in the course of the year, came in for something of a paean of praise from Co Mayor Hugh McElvaney when he opened proceedings. “The Dept of the Environment has been very generous to Monaghan Co Council on ...

There was strong criticism at Monday’s meeting of Monaghan Co Council of the delays being experienced by social welfare applicants in having their claims processed. A proposal was adopted, put forward by Matt Carthy with seconding from his Sinn Féin party colleague Brian McKenna, calling on Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton to put in place the necessary resources in order to reduce the “scandalous” waiting time applicants for social welfare payments were forced to endure before a decision was reached. The proposal also called for a review ...

Last week’s presentation to Monaghan Co Council by two authoritative voices in the Irish angling sphere – Inland Fisheries Ireland Chief Executive Dr Ciaran Byrne, and Mr Peter Walsh, Secretary of the Irish Angling Development Alliance – was an illuminating one. Dr Byrne took as his theme the perception and the reality of the health or otherwise of Co Monaghan’s traditionally strong angling tourism resource and it was clear that to some extent the factors responsible for its decline in recent years had been mis-assigned in much of the ...

The presence of non-native invasive species in Co Monaghan’s angling lakes and rivers was a much more significant threat to fish stocks than overfishing, Monaghan Co Council were told at their July meeting when they received a presentation from the Chief Executive of Inland Fisheries Ireland, Dr Ciaran Byrne, and Peter Walsh, Secretary of the Irish Angling Development Alliance. Mr Walsh declared that invasive species were “the greatest single threat to our resources without parallel”, and outlined moves to create invasive-free zones in Co Monaghan and to have newly ...

The devotion by Monaghan Co Council of the greater portion of its monthly public meeting on Tuesday to discussions relevant to job creation is undoubtedly a sign of the times. Elected local public representatives and the administration of local government may have a limited function in the actual delivery of employment, but the need for the development of new opportunities in this sphere touches on all aspects of their work. And, while providing jobs themselves is not the remit of our local authorities, it can be argued forcefully ...

The intention by the Government to remove responsibility for the provision of water services from local authorities and vest them in a new public utility, Irish Water, was the subject of a lengthy and at times acrimonious debate at Monday’s meeting of Monaghan Co Council, with several contributors condemning the move as privatisation. Described by Acting Co Manager David Fallon as the biggest change in local authority governance and functions since the transition of the health sector from Co Councils in 1971, the plan provoked considerable concern among the ...

The Irish Valuation Office was unable to consider reducing the valuation of commercial and industrial properties for rates on the grounds of a downturn of business, the members of Monaghan Co Council were informed at their February meeting. Members received a presentation from Mr Coleman Forkan, Valuation Office Team Leader, who outlined to them the process by which the valuation for commercial rates was determined and detailed the revaluation programme that his office would be putting into place in future years across the country and which he stated would ...

With the early details of this week’s severe Budget emerging via the electronic media as their meeting progressed, Monaghan Co Council on Monday became perhaps the first local authority in the country to react to how the Government’s cuts and revenue generating measures will impact on vulnerable sectors. Members agreed to send an e-mail to the Taoiseach Enda Kenny in a last-ditch bid to avert the proposed 2% hike in VAT, expressing fears that the measure could lead to business closures in towns in the county and across the ...

Monaghan Co Council are to convene on Monday, December 19 next to consider the adoption of what Acting Co Manager David Fallon described on Monday as “the most difficult Annual Budget in a generation.” Mr Fallon told Monday’s meeting of the Council, at which the date for the Annual Budget Meeting of the authority was fixed, that this would be the most difficult Budget to come before the members since the late 1980s. The Acting Manager delineated a number of aspects of the Council’s finances for the year ...

The meeting chamber of Monaghan Co Council reverberated with the sound of high-decibel verbal clashes on Monday as Sinn Féin members launched strong attacks on the voting stances adopted by Fine Gael TDs Sean Conlan and Heather Humphreys in a recent Dáil health service debate – and the under-fire Deputies were stoutly defended by their party colleague Hugh McElvaney, who launched an attack of his own on SF Dáil representative Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin. Although much of the invective hurled across the room was lost in the general clangour, some ...