MEATH 'KELLS' SPARKS FIERCE LOCAL ROW
A major row has erupted between Kells Town Council and the Kells Tourism Forum over comments made by the tourism body last month, with local town councilors describing the forum this week as "insulting" and "an embarrassment," the Meath Chronicle reports.
Kells Town Council is demanding a retraction of comments by the Kells Tourism Forum that "members of the council were actively working against the campaign for the restoration of the Book of Kells."
However, yesterday, indications were that the forum would refuse to retract the comments, which were made in letters to local media last month.
At a meeting of the council on Monday night, councilors unanimously agreed to write to the forum looking for a retraction of the comments.
In an escalation of the row between the two bodies, the tourism forum came under fire at the meeting, as councilors suspended standing orders to discuss the recent comments.
Councilors accused the forum of showing enormous disrespect to the council and the chairman and concern was expressed that they were undermining the council's ongoing negotiations with Dublin's Trinity College.
The meeting heard that the chairman, Councilor Brian Collins, had been harangued in public and it was claimed that a member of the forum had shouted at then presidential candidate, Michael D. Higgins, that he would never get a vote in Kells.
However, the Kells Tourism Forum chairman, Aidan Wall, said it should be a standing policy of Kells Town Council and Meath County Council to get back one or two volumes of the Book of Kells, because the people want it and it would be good for the economic life of Kells and Meath.
During Monday's meeting, area manager Kevin Stewart said he had met with Trinity College twice this year and the college authorities had responded positively to the council's approach.
He explained that they had discussed the possibility of Kells craft workers selling their work in Trinity, signposts from Trinity to Kells and a joint ticketing arrangement. Stewart said the council has an application for funding to refurbish the Kells Heritage Center with Failte Ireland and a decision on that application was imminent.
CORK POL UNDER FIRE OVER AMBULANCES
At a lengthy and at times heated meeting with the West Cork SOS Committee in Skibbereen on Monday night, Cork South West Fine Gael TD Jim Daly eventually agreed to address a list of questions to be prepared by the committee about the threat to local ambulance services and come back to them with answers within three weeks, according to the Southern Star.
He also said he would support the call for no withdrawal of the current level of ambulance services in West Cork until there had been a complete review. Daly had agreed to meet the committee ahead of this Saturday's big protest march in Skibbereen, as he will be unable to attend it due to a prior commitment, and said he wanted to set the record straight.
Criticism had been leveled at him for not attending the packed public meeting on Sept. 30 last that led to the formation of the West Cork SOS committee. That meeting was attended by his Cork South West Dáil colleagues, Michael McCarthy (Labour) and Noel Harrington (Fine Gael), along with Senator Denis O'Donovan, Fianna Fáil, all of whom supported the public's call for the retention of the current level of ambulance services.
At the invitation of Frank Fahy, chairman of the campaign committee, Daly met with members of the West Cork SOS committee last Monday evening in Skibbereen's West Cork Hotel. During a fraught encounter, there was complete disagreement about the date when the planned cuts to services will be implemented. Daly said he had been told by Ger Reaney, area manager, HSE, that the cuts would be implemented in 2013.
In response, Fahy, who is Skibbereen's mayor, claimed: "You are being misled and our information, which we have in writing, is that the cuts must be implemented by June 2012."
The TD said: 'I would be extremely annoyed if my information is incorrect," whereupon Skibbereen Fine Gael town councilor Karen Coakley urged her party colleague, Daly, to phone Reaney the following morning to clarify the situation.
The committee expressed their anger that their letters to the Minister of Health James O'Reilly, and their calls for a meeting had been ignored. It was pointed out that over 80,000 people in West Cork, many of whom had voted for Daly, were effectively being ignored and the committee were requesting, on the electorate's behalf, that he take their concerns to the minister.
"All I am doing is being an honest broker. Everything is under review. It would be very easy for me to sit here and tell you what you want to hear," Daly said.
