Council chief accused of treating councillors like school children

THE Chief Executive of Mayo County Council has been accused of treating councillors from the West Mayo area like schoolchildren.

In an email sent to councillors at 9.10pm on the night before a special meeting on the issue of pyrite at Páirc na Coille estate, Mr Kelly called for councillors to show respect for council officials at the meeting.

This was in light of the November meeting of Westport-Belmullet Municipal District, which was adjourned following heated exchanges between councillors and council officials of the issue of pyrite.

Councillors have claimed that Mayo County Council were aware of pyrite being present in Páirc na Coille after it received ‘clawbacks’ from the sale of four houses in the estate after 2017.

Mr Kelly had been invited to attend Tuesday’s special meeting, but could not due to ‘prior engagements’.

Reading his email aloud at the meeting, Cllr Brendan Mulroy said he felt ‘like a bold schoolboy’ and accused Mr Kelly of throwing ‘a low dig’ a councillors’.

Cllr Mulroy said that no elected member had more respect for council officials than the members of the Westport-Belmullet Municipal District.

“That’s very heavy-handed, that’s like being called into the principal’s office,” said Cllr Mulroy, who said Mr Kelly was trying to ‘put manners’ on the councillors.

Mr Kelly wrote that it was his ‘responsibility to ensure the staff are treated appropriately and are respected’ and that ‘the treatment of staff at tomorrow’s meeting will be fair’.

“That’s a low dig,” said Cllr Mulroy, “we’ve always treated staff with fairness in my 25 years in being in this chamber.”

Cllr Mulroy also took issue with Mr Kelly’s request that the meeting be ‘without surprise’.

“So supposing something comes to your knowledge in the morning. Are you supposed to say, ‘Well I’ll sit on this and not open my month about it?’ We wouldn’t be here if people had sat on stuff and not opened their mouths,” the Fianna Fáil councillor commented.

Mayo County Council’s Director of Services for Housing, Tom Gilligan, said that council officials were ‘ambushed’by the grievances aired by councillors at the adjourned meeting.

Cllr Christy Hyland responded, accusing Mr Gilligan of ‘diversionary tactics’.

Councillors had asked that Mayo County Council accept responsibility for the sale of four houses in Páirc na Coille from 2017 onwards that later tested positive for pyrite.

The council has denied that the estate is council-owned, insisting that it is a private housing development.

We will have further coverage of the special meeting of Westport-Belmullet Municipal District in Tuesday’s print edition of The Mayo News.