Anna-Marie Flynn
BALLINA’s pedestrian bridge has been formally named the Salmon Weir Bridge – despite a year-long debacle over the naming the €1milllion structure after former President, Mary Robinson.
In spite of several lengthy debates both in and out of the town’s Council Chamber; and a process of public consultation which revealed the name Mary Robinson as the most popular, councillors last week voted on the name and opted for the Salmon Weir Bridge.
At last Wednesday’s meeting of the authority, Cllr Willie Nolan proposed the name – which had originally been suggested by 15 people in the public consultation process – and noted the naming process was a reserved function of the Town Council. “This is not an executive function; it is a reserved function of this authority. I am putting forward the name Salmon Weir Bridge as it is neutral and also has significance for the town in that it refers to salmon and the weir, where the bridge is located.”
The proposal was seconded by Cllr Frances McAndrew who said Ballina was ‘synonymous with Salmon and the river Moy’ and thus the bridge should be named after some aspect of that attraction. “We want to promote Ballina as a tourist town and this is the ideal way to do that,” she said.
Issuing a counter-proposal, Cllr Michelle Mulherin, accused ‘certain members of politicising the whole issue’ and repeated her call to name the bridge after former President, Mary Robinson. She took aim at ‘some elected members’ for ignoring the public consultation process which resulted in 50 submissions being made for the Mary Robinson Bridge.
“I propose that we respect the wishes of the public. Mary Robinson received the highest number of proposals and I propose that we name it after her. I suggest we then write to her and ask her will she accept it be named in her honour,” she said. Cllr Mulherin also said that it would be ‘a farce’ to ignore the public at this stage and referred to an in-committee workshop councillors held on the naming process recently by calling on the authority to publically disclose the criteria for naming the bridge. Referring to the ‘neutral’ suggestion of Salmon Weir Bridge, Cllr Mulherin told the meeting: “The Moy is not known worldwide but Mary Robinson is.”
Independent councillor, Gerry Ginty responded by stating that Cllr Mulherin had ‘not turned up’ to the naming infrastructure workshop held by the Council and said that this fact served to influence his personal decision on the naming of the bridge.
Mayor, Cllr Mary Kelly argued that the authority had never stated the highest number of submissions would indicate the chosen name and said the process was merely for ‘feedback’. She said that, ‘at any rate, the process did not reveal a true representation of the people of the town’ as many of the submissions came from husbands, wives, sons and daughters living at the same address. “Once these type of duplicated submissions – where several came from the same address – were whittled down, there wasn’t as significant a number of votes in favour of some of the suggestions as we may first think,” she said.
Cllr Mark Winters seconded the suggestion made by Cllr Mulherin; however a vote taken on the counter proposal saw it defeated by five votes to two. Cllrs Nolan, McAndrew, Ginty and Town Mayor Mary Kelly voted against naming the bridge after Mary Robinson; with Cllrs Mulherin and Winters voting in favour of doing so. Cllrs Barry McLoughlin and Johnnie O’Malley were not present as they had to earlier absent themselves from the meeting to attend the funeral of Ardnaree sportsman, John Forde.
It is not the first time the bridge, which spans the Ridgepool at the Salmon Weir, and is designed on the concept of a fishing rod, has courted controversy with several public representatives and townspeople speaking out against its development in the first instance. Its contemporary design has also been the subject of criticism in some quarters.
