Tag Archives: Councillor Cillian Murphy

Kerry and Limerick families can earn €5k more and access housing assistance THE plight of working families who are unable to access housing support because of “bizarre geographical discrimination” was highlighted in a joint motion from seven councillors at the May local authority meeting. The matter was raised by Councillors Cillian Murphy, Gerry Flynn, Tony O’Brien, Johnny Flynn, Shane Talty, Pat O’Gorman and Pat Hayes who called on the housing minister to review the maximum household income thresholds as a matter of urgency. Councillor Murphy outlined his concerns by describing a hypothetical case of a young woman, with three small children. “She works part time in a local business and earns €180 per week,” he said. “She gets income support of €152 and one parent allowance of €226 per week. “She is separated and doesn’t receive any maintenance, so her grand total income is €558 per week. Her rent is €165 per week and she pays out €240 every week …

LIGHTING on piers in West Clare is critical to supporting what remains of the county’s fishing industry, a local councillor has said. At this month’s meeting of the Municipal District committee, Councillor Cillian Murphy described the issue as “close to his heart”. “As someone who was involved in the fishing industry, I know the importance of having proper services on our piers,” he said. “Fishing crews have started to gear back up and I’ve had contact in relation to both of the piers in Carrigaholt. But, equally, I’m making the call on behalf of fishermen using all of the district’s piers, lights must be operational on all of them. For the want of a few bulbs, we could be making these areas a lot safer. There was no light at all on either of the Carrigaholt piers at one stage. We have little enough left of our fishing industry at this stage and this would go some way toward supporting …

RURAL councillors will have to “toughen up” to ensure that smaller communities have a chance to develop in the face of a new national directive which threatens to de-zone lands without wastewater treatment facilities. At a discussion this week of a review of Clare’s Rural Development Strategy, members noted the challenges facing communities in accessing such infrastructure. Clare is still the only county to have a rural strategy and Director of Service Leonard Cleary told members of the Rural Strategic Policy Committee (SPC) that it is now being reviewed to take account of changes including those caused by the pandemic. Councillor Pat Burke said that committee members would have to work hard to have their concerns addressed in the new County Development Plan. The forthcoming blueprint will have to take account of the National Planning Framework, which stipulates that lands where there is no prospect of wastewater infrastructure being built in the lifetime of the plan must lose their zoning …

INSURANCE hurdles stand in the way of the development of another “Grade A” tourism product for the Loop Head Peninsula, members of the West Clare Municipal District have heard. Addressing the January meeting of the committee, which took place online, Councillor Cillian Murphy appealed to the authority to consider taking a newly-created access path into Carrigaholt Castle under its public insurance policy, issued by Irish Public Bodies Mutual Insurances (IPB). The Fianna Fáil members commended the work of the local heritage group who had secured funding for the access route and noted that the insurance for public amenities is a recurring issue of concern. “The community group there have done some Trojan work,” he noted. “It’s taken them a long, long time to get to the bottom of ownership and to get permission from the owners to allow work. They’ve got significant funding from The Heritage Council and it’s the end of a long road, if you’ll pardon the pun, …

DEMAND for property in coastal Clare continues to increase, to the point where the working from home phenomenon has been likened by a local businessman and public representative to a revolution. The potential for remote working created by digital technologies, and introduced out of necessity during the pandemic, is proving to be a game-changer for rural communities which up to last year had been facing the prospect of accelerating depopulation. Now, demand from city dwellers looking to relocate, as well as holiday home owners who have switched their primary residence has boosted the population of coastal communities. A property price survey conducted by The Sunday Times showed that while the median house price in Clare is down from €194,500 to €191,000, coastal property prices continue to rise. Demand for property in Kilkee and Lahinch was aid to be “insatiable” with a three-bedroom semi-detached home in the latter recently selling for €274,000, after multiple bids. “We are at a transition point,” …

CLARITY on when National Broadband Ireland (NBI) will roll out services across Clare is urgently needed, so that people can make decisions around career and college options, a local authority briefing was told this week. The view was expressed by Councillor Pat Hayes when officials of NBI made a virtual presentation to local authority members to outline current and future progress with the delivery of high-speed broadband to parts of Clare who currently have little to no access. Welcoming a presentation from Joe Lavin, Chief Commercial Officer, Councillor Hayes said he was pleased that NBI had acceded so quickly to his request for information. “Your openness is welcome,” he said. “What we don’t want to have to deal with is another Eir. The real challenge now is to identify the time-frame for delivery. This is critically important. I know of students who have had to give up college courses because they’re not able to connect from home. People need to …

AN alternative to repeated lockdowns, in response to the pandemic, could lie in the promotion of ventilation and air filtration systems in homes and businesses, according to a West Clare member of Clare County Council. Addressing the November council meeting, Councillor Cillian Murphy asked the authority to undertake a campaign and to contact other councils “to build awareness at a national level of the impact better indoor air quality has in reducing the spread of Covid-19”. His motion was seconded by Councillor Patrick O’Gorman. Noting a written response from Senior Engineer Cyril Feeney saying that responsibility lay with the HSE, Councillor Murphy urged the authority to consider what it could do to promote the message. “To-date the health promotion message had focused on social distancing, hand washing and mask wearing, but there is now an increasing understanding of air-borne transmission and proper ventilation of buildings,” the Fianna Fáil member said. “Clare County Council has been instrumental in delivering HSE recommendations …

EMERGENCY measures, to manage overcrowding, has been used at the region’s main hospital, on average, every second day of the year to the end of September. The situation has been compared, by a member of the HSE West forum, to rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. Figures, obtained by the Irish Patients’ Association, show that the Full Capacity Protocol was deployed at University Hospital Limerick (UHL) on 184 days. The protocol involves putting extra beds on wards and in corridors, and only the acute facility in Waterford invoked this so called ‘last resort’ more often. Councillor Cillian Murphy described the protocol as “a nice fancy name for overcrowding”. “When I hear of a solution being described as ‘low cost, high impact’, my cynicism button lights up,” he said. “When something is low cost, it is rarely high impact in a positive way. We need to get to the root of the problem and, in my view, that means getting more …