Calls to take Castlebar hat factory into state ownership

A CAMPAIGN has been launched for Castlebar’s old hat factory to be brought into state ownership.

People Before Profit local election candidate Joe Daly has launched a campaign for the site to be compulsorily purchased and developed as a public amenity.

The now-derelict factory operated for 42 years on the Newport Road before closing in 1981.

Mr Daly has called on Mayo County Council to initiate a Compulsory Purchase Order of the site, which he said could provide ‘a badly needed state-of-the-art public preschool facility along with social housing’.

He suggested that money from the government’s €10 billion budget surplus be used to purchase and develop the site.

When contacted by The Mayo News, Mr Daly could not estimate how much it would cost to CPO the site.

“In terms of costs, that’s not my remit. I wouldn’t have the means to cost the land but obviously whatever it costs it would have to be done,” he said.

“But the plan itself would have to be made up by Mayo County Council planners and engineers and all of that. Then you obviously realise what the full cost would be.”

_{People Before Profit local election candidate Joe Daly has called the Castlebar hat factory 'a long-standing eyesore'}

Mr Daly lamented how the building had become a ‘long-standing eyesore’ in private ownership and said he would make it one of his top priorities if elected in next year’s local elections.

When it was put to him that buildings such as the Imperial Hotel and Westport’s Convent of Mercy had sat undeveloped in council ownership for over a decade, Mr Daly insisted that nothing could be done with the site while it remained privately owned.

Work recently began to develop public facilities at Westport's convent, which was first acquired by Mayo County Council for €4 million in 2008. The Imperial Hotel has remained vacant since it was purchased by the local authority for €800,000 in 2011.

A proposal to sell the hotel to a private developer recently fell through.

“At least if it is owned by the council, you can pressure the council and if you have an active campaign you can pressure the council,” Mr Daly said, adding that it would be ‘ideal’ to mount a similar campaign to develop the Imperial Hotel.

“Likewise, with the convent in Westport, but if it’s in private hands, you can do nothing. So the first step in the process would be to compulsorily purchase the land and then to keep the pressure on the council, the TDs and the government to provide the funding and to get the ball rolling and to roll it out.”

Mr Daly is currently the only People Before Profit representative standing in next year’s Mayo County Council elections.

The Castlebar-based schoolteacher has previously stood unsuccessfully for the far-left party in the 2020 general election and 2019 local elections.