Fermanagh Council remains for elections 2011

Editorial Department • Published 17 Jun 2010 16:00 0 Comments

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Fermanagh will continue to be the only county in Northern Ireland to have its own district council for the foreseeable future, following the collapse of the Review of Public Adminstration this week.

The Northern Ireland Assembly Executive in a special late night meeting on Monday, failed to agree a plan to reduce the current number of 26 councils to 11 by next May.

Now Council elections will go ahead in May 2011, to elect councillors for the 26 councils across the Province for a four-year term. No-one is sure what is to happen to the proposal to reduce the number of councils beyond that.

There have been mixed feelings among local councillors to the news with some castigating blame on the Environment Minister, Edwin Poots for failing to take the RPA proposal forward and others welcoming the collapse saying that Fermanagh ratepayers will not have to pay for other councils' debts.

Sinn Fein's Brian McCaffrey, who has already notched up 20 years services on Fermanagh Council, said that from a Party point of view, they would have liked RPA to have gone ahead.

"I think it's regrettable. I suspect the main reason is the Minister's Party's concerns and not the overall good of the ratepayer," he said.

"We had serious concerns in relation to Omagh and the impact on the rates. But there is wider point that some councils have not been prepared to share power. I think this situation only prolongs the situation," he added.

Ulster Unionist Councillor Bertie Kerr however said he was delighted with the decision taken on Monday.

"I'm happy enough with that. It was a very bad deal from the start for Fermanagh. The whole thing is a disaster. They should have had 15 councils from the start and that would have left Fermanagh to continue to enjoy its own good management. We did our best to join with Dungannon as they were more similar to us but they didn't listen to that.

"I'm very disappointed about the whole thing," said Councillor Kerr, who has served on Fermanagh Council since 1979 with just a four-year break.

It's understood that a number of factors led to the failure of the Executive to agree to RPA.

One of the main sticking points was a Boundary Commission recommendation over changing the boundaries involving Castlereagh and Lisburn Councils and the loss of high profile rates derived from shopping malls in the area to the losing Council. There was also the question about who was going to pay for the restructuring; the Assembly or the Councils themselves and how the rates burden would be divided.

The Review of Public Adminstration was one of the first major projects for the Assembly. Everyone had thought it was going through once the recommendation of 11-council model had been generally agreed.

Fermanagh councillors were never happy with the decision to merge with Omagh although they had reluctantly accepted it and were working with their Omagh counterparts on a Transition Committee to prepare the way for a new Council.

It also throws into question plans by long serving councillors to retire next May when they were expecting several payments. Council staff may also have seen an opportunity to retire from Local Government in 2011 as the new Council structure would have envisaged fewer staff. That situation may now have changed considerably.

Former Fermanagh councillor, Tommy Gallagher, an SDLP MLA, described the decision as a "castastrophic multi-million pound shambles."

Mr. Gallagher said: "Once again, because of bickering between these two parties the tax-payers have seen their money wasted and squandered. In this particular instance more than a £100 million has already been spent by government departments on preparations for new council arrangements.

"At the same time, all of the 26 councils have been spending considerable sums of rate-payers money over recent years making preparations for the new councils that now won't come to fruition," he said.

This article appeared in Impartial Reporter 17 Jun 10

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