This article is from page 2 of the 2006-05-09 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 2 JPG
CLARE County Council’s new €27.5 million headquarters will not be in place until 2008 — one year later than originally scheduled.
Demolition work is expected to commence on the council’s increasingly dilapidated old HQ on Ennis’s New Road in the next number of weeks, with construction work expected to last 20 months.
This imposes a new deadline of January 2008 on the development.
However, in April of last year, councillors were told in a report that work would be commencing on the project in June last year and be completed over a 20-month period to February 2007.
At the signing of the contract with Michael McNamara and Co last December, county manager, Alec Fleming, said that he expected “construction of the corporate headquarters to commence in early spring”.
This failed to commence and independent councillor, Patricia McCarthy said that the delay “is not satisfactory”.
“It is a pity that there is a delay, but now that work has started, I would hope that the contractor would finish the work within the deadline and that there would be no cost-overruns,” she added.
Currently, the council’s offices are located at various venues around Ennis.
Cllr McCarthy commented, “The current situation is very awkward for the public, staff and public representatives.”
Cllr Martin Conway (FG) said, “My biggest concern is the additional costs as a result of delay as the council is paying large rents for various offices across Ennis.”
Cllr Christy Curtin (Ind) said that he was disappointed with the delay.
“The current set-up is not good for the harmony of the organization with departments at different locations around Ennis.”
Over the past number of months, the contractors have relocated the machinery yard and other facilities to Beechpark on the Kilmaley Road.
A spokesman said, “The work at Beechpark is now completed as scheduled and the Machinery Yard, together with record storage facilities and archive storage facilities, are now provided at the Beechpark site.
“The transfer of the actual facilities and records has taken place over the past few weeks.”
McNamara’s are actually on site in New Road at present, preparing for the demolition and subsequent construction of the new headquarters.
The contract in the works was not signed until last December due to the complexity involved in the 35-year agreement.