Failure to attend meeting was a ‘lost opportunity'

By Kieran O’Mahony

INDEPENDENT TD Michael Collins has said it was a ‘lost opportunity’ when members of the West Cork Municipal District did not attend a meeting of the Oireachtas’ Rural Affairs Committee in Dublin last week, after the deputy had lobbied to get them an invite to attend.

‘I did a lot of work to get this off the ground and I pushed it so that the West Cork Municipal District could be in attendance, along with other municipal districts, at last week’s meeting and I’m disappointed to be honest,’ Deputy Collins told The Southern Star.

‘This was the opportunity for members to push on all areas relating to West Cork, including issues like broadband and the N71. Each member of the Rural Affairs Committee was entitled to ask their Municipal District to attend and unfortunately they missed out on this, as municipal districts from Meath, Cavan, Galway and Connemara got to attend.’

Deputy Collins, a member of the Oireachtas committee, said that he is trying to get West Cork on the map and needs the co-operation of the Council on this but the decision was made not to attend the meeting.

At a recent meeting of the Western Committee in Clonakilty, the invitation was raised by Deputy Collins’ brother, Cllr Danny Collins.

‘We had a chance of addressing important local issues and while the invite was a bit late, we should have attended the meeting,’ said
Cllr Collins.

Divisional manger Clodagh Henehan told councillors that they did receive an invitation, but a decision was taken that it was too late and part of the invite brief was to prepare a submission, which they did not have sufficient time to do.