Job creation challenge to West Clare councillors

NEWLY elected Kilrush Electoral Area chairman, PJ Kelly has challenged all six West Clare county councillors, including himself, to create and drive a job-creating initiative apiece in the west of the county.

He threw down the gauntlet to Councillors Christy Curtin, Bill Chambers, Oliver Garry, Pat Keane and Gabriel Keating at Monday’s area council AGM, at Clare County Council headquarters in Ennis.
Although the councillors had been part of a committee that launched the West Clare Economic Task Force report last Tuesday week in Kilrush, Councillor Kelly warned that the report “may come to nothing unless councillors work to implement its findings”.
“The road to failure is paved with costly reports. Why? Because there was no follow-up action. Unless we’ve a little piece of action, unless we start walking the walk now after talking the talk, then the effort of last year is gone down the drain,” he said, following his election in succession to current Mayor of Clare, Christy Curtin.
Councillor Kelly predicted, however, that if councillors are linked to a job-creation project, some people will infer that they are benefiting from that association.
“If we’re going to walk the walk having talked the talk, each and everyone of us will have to identify a job-creation project. I do know that as soon as any of us do that, the little men with the leaky mouths and the small minds will be up whispering, ‘there’s a commission out of that’.
“But I’ve never been intimidated by little men. I’m prepared to put up with those things even though I have never benefited from any job-creation project that I was associated with,” he said.
“We have to act as leaders, as motivators, we have to act as facilitators and, in certain cases, we have to act as innovators,” Councillor Kelly maintained, before criticising the local authority’s recent decision to turn down a planning application in Doonbeg, which the Lissycasey councillor said would have created jobs in the tourism industry.