Mayo council official takes 'full accountability' for return of funding 

A Director of Services with Mayo County Council has taken full accountability for the recent return of over €200,000 in Exchequer funding that had been earmarked for local road improvements in Mayo.

Tom Gilligan told councillors at their September meeting that it was “unfortunate" the Local Improvement Scheme (LIS) money went back and it would not happen again. The money in question was allocated to the council for use within a set period but was not administered in time.

Independent Cllr John O’Malley said he wanted to know who exactly was responsible for the "fiasco".

“Clearly, somebody didn’t do their job and you have to tell us why did that money go back. It is not good enough to say there were no applications in for it. Let’s face it, some engineer or manager did not do their job.” 

Mr Gilligan told the councillor: “I am not going to throw anybody under the bus, and as Director of Services, I will take full responsibility.”

Cllr O’Malley: “So what you are saying is you are going to carry the can?"

Cllr Michael Kilcoyne then challenged the council chief executive Kevin Kelly: “Well, are you going to deal with this as a disciplinary matter, because people out there are worse off because somebody failed and they are left with no roads."

Mr Kelly did not respond.

Cllr Richard Finn said he believed Mr Gilligan was coming under “undue pressure from councillors" while Cllr Damien Ryan said what actually happened was there was no reserve list for LIS roads, which meant that replacements could not be quickly identified when some projects failed to proceed on time.

• Published as part of the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme