This article is from page 60 of the 2009-07-28 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 60 JPG
UNDER the terms of the An Bord Snip Nua report, town councils across Clare would be for the chop under a radical restructuring of local government that would see all execu- tive power and authority centralised under the umbrella of Clare County Council.
The mere suggestion of town coun- cils in Ennis, Shannon, Kilrush and Kilkee being surplus to requirements has already resulted in howls of pro- tests from interested parties in all four authorities, but at least they can say in Kilkee that they’ve never been adverse to wanting cutbacks in local government.
All of 50 years ago, a call for the abolition of Kilkee Town Commis- sioners came from within the local authority itself. It came from long- standing Fianna Fail commissioner, Tom Stapleton, who said the practi- cal and economic thing would be to abolish the Commission and what function and role it had taken over by Clare County Council.
“The Town Commissioners are performing no useful function,” he blasted. ““We meet here monthly and the county manager has to travel from Ennis for our meetings, but what we have to do here is senseless.
‘We are more or less a mutual ad- miration society, but it is a costly one for the ratepayers who are paying an extra 5/ in the pound to have us here. With the limited money at our disposal, we should ask the county
council to take over the town’s public affairs. We could not be much worse that we are now,” he added.
Commissioner Stapleton’s motion didn’t receive the support of the other eight members of the local authority, but one famous motion about cut- backs that received majority support came in 1956 when the Kilkee coun- cil lost its only phone.
Commissioners controversially voted in favour of disconnecting the telephone service at the town clerk’s office in order to save the sum of £20 a year.
The fate of the Town Commission’s link with the wider world was decid- ed by the casting vote of the chair-
man, Commissioner Michael Mar- rinan. Commissioner Michael Nolan led the call for the commission to disconnect the telephone.
“Many of us have to have a tel- ephone, but a lot of us would be pleased if we could get on without one. I propose we discontinue the tel- ephone service as the Commission- ers are able to discharge their duties without it,” he said.
The cost of having a telephone in the town clerk’s office was £10 rent a year and the call charges for the year were estimated at another £10.
“There is a lot we could do with that money and we should apply it to a better purpose. There are people in many towns, including business peo- ple, who have given up the telephone Service,’ added Commissioner No- Ete
“Having no telephone would be like put an iron curtain around Kilkee,” countered Commissioner Stapleton. “All of the time the telephone was installed, we thought it absolutely essential to retain the status of the town. Taking it out now is penny wise, pound foolish.”
Alas, the telephone was discon- nected and was no more – Kilkee Town Council will be no more if the An Bord Snip Nua report is imple- mented.