Anton McNulty
The executive of Mayo County Council will have questions to answer regarding the decision to seek to layoff 152 members of staff during a special meeting on the matter.
The council has confirmed that a special meeting will take place this Friday morning, May 6 to discuss the job losses. The meeting had been sought by Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin and some Independent members of the Council following the announcement that the executive were looking to layoff 15 per cent of the staff.
Sinn Féin councillor Gerry Murray, who initially called for the meeting, said he was pleased the councillors would be given a chance to discuss the matter.
He told The Mayo News that the members were given no indication of these job losses when the Council agreed on the 2011 estimates and adopted the budget in January and now wanted clear answers from the executive.
“As far as I am concerned when we adopted the budget we had the finances to run the Council for a 12 month period. There was no indication of job losses at that time. Mayo County Council is a service provider but if there is not enough personnel we cannot provide a service. As it stands the outdoor staff in my area are already stretched to the limit. A lot of questions will have to be answered by the executive,” he said.
Cllr Murray added that it seems to him that the executive are providing ‘political cover’ to Fine Gael by calling for these cuts in the middle of the year and not at the time of the budget. He said as the majority party in the Council he called on Fine Gael to make their position on the job cuts clear because he feels there is a difference of opinion among Fine Gael members.
Cllr Murray said any decision on job cuts should not be made until the 2012 budget next January when councillors could vote on the Council’s expenditure.
“This should not be on the radar in the middle of a financial year. If the executive wants to make cut-backs of this nature it should deal with it with the elected members at the estimates meeting in January. It seems to me the executive is giving political cover to Fine Gael in all this,” he said.
