Council has no offers to run weighbridge in Baltimore

COUNCILLORS are counting down the clock for a new weighbridge in Baltimore, but the local authority says it has been unable to secure a contractor.

When some of the councillors heard that they saw red and spoke in heated terms at a meeting of the West Cork Municipal District.

Cllr Karen Coakley (Ind) had tabled the issue as a notice of motion and requested an update on efforts to secure a tender for the weighbridge.

Referring to her notes, she said the councillors were told, on April 3rd last, that it was at tender stage.

‘Time is of the essence,’ she said, ‘because the Brexit funding that has been approved for the weighbridge needs to be spent before October.’

Cllr Joe Carroll (FF) pointed out that there is a similar system in operation in Dunmore East and Castletownbere and that it should be possible to have one installed at Baltimore. ‘The latest thing I’ve heard,’ he said, ‘is that it might need planning permission and that could take three months.

‘It’s got to the stage where I am pulling my hair out,’ said Cllr Carroll. ‘People are asking if we are all dead inside at these meetings because of the lack of action.

‘There should be an urgency with the Council,’ he added, ‘because there is a fish factory down there that will close unless this piece of equipment is put in place.’

Cllr Paul Hayes (Ind) said all of the councillors got correspondence about this issue. ‘Yet again,’ he said, ‘fishing is the poor relation.

‘If it was an IT company coming into an area and creating jobs we would be falling over them, but that doesn’t happen with fishing,’ said the councillor who agreed with Cllr Carroll’s assessment that the Council needs to ‘inject a bit of urgency’ into this.

Cllr Caroline Cronin (FG), whose husband is a fisherman, said she understands that there is a pressing need for this piece of equipment – which would be used to weigh fish, over a certain tonnage, on landing – and she concurred: ‘It is really important that it gets done.’

But the Council’s senior executive officer, MacDara O h-Icí said the date for submissions had passed and the Council had not received a tender. There were simply no bids by contractors to do the work. One possible solution, the council official suggested, would be to go back to the market again and break the project down into smaller contracts. As for planning, he said: ‘If it needs planning we will have to do that.’

He said the Council knows the cost of the project, and have identified a suitable location for the weighbridge, but no one seems to be available to do the work.

Mr O h-Icí confirmed that the funding would have to be drawn down from the Brexit package because the Council would not have the funding required out of its own budget.

Cllr Carroll said he knows contractors and tradespeople are difficult to get at the moment. With gallows humour, he said: ‘Some of them will tell you they won’t be available until next summer.’

Nevertheless, he said the issue is too serious to let slide. He urged the Council to be proactive and approach contractors to tell them the work needs to be done.

Cllr Coakley said it has got to the stage that she is embarrassed to be seen in Baltimore. ‘If we don’t act soon,’ she said, ‘the money will be gone and the work won’t be done.’