E6.2 million down the drain, oh what a council of wasters

In times such as these, when the heads of many households around the country, mothers and fathers, are scraping to keep their families fed and housed, i have no doubt that many are looking back to better times and are regretting some of the high priced articles they had bought in the so called boom years. As much regret as they may have, as frustrated as they are that they don't have a time machine to go back and recoup what they spent, it cannot compare to the over priced purchases of Dundalk town council in 2007, or more precisely, the purchases made by the town clerk, Frank Pentony, on behalf of the people of Dundalk, although few appear to be aware or to be regretting them. In particlular the council's spend of 6.2 million on a five acre flood plain on the point road, Dundalk.

The land in question, as far as we are aware, was owned by a company called Lonemar, a joining of the names Malone and Martin, both natives to the county. Dundalk town council purchased the land for, as we have said, 6,200,000 Euros in 2007. This works out at over one million Euros per acre. Ah but, one might interupt, it was the times that were in it, everyone was paying silly money for land. Well that's not quite true, you see only across the road, at the same time, a developer bought much better quality land and for only E120,000 per acre.

How did this happen one might ask, that council officials, with all of the advisors they could muster, could make such a blunder and pay way over the odds for what is in essence a piece of waste land bordered by a regularly overflowing river. What surveyor, private or public, could have said this was a good buy. What unelected officials such as town clerks and county managers, could over look such a waste of tax payers and rate payers money? What councillors would condone such a purchase? one might ask, well all of them did.

This of course is only one more example of the low grade of public representatives we have in Dundalk and indeed the county. Some of them are simply complacent, some are complicit and most are a waste to the public purse.

People Before Profit in Dundalk are pursuing the intricate details of this particular land deal, albeit with much resistance from council officials at present. We will not let it go however. We want to know how did the council become interested in buying the land in the first place. We want to know who made the proposal, what land quality assessment procedures and price comparison mechanisms did they employ when guaging the value for money aspects of the deal. Finally, we want to know the details of the negotiations and purchasing arrangements.

At the moment we have contacted a number of councillors asking them to group together to request the information as it has been denied already and the only way we the public can access the information is if a majority of councillors vote in favour of a proposal to release it. Things are not looking good so far. We tried to contact Gerry Adams about it, but as usual were prevented from doing so. It appears Gerry's not available for the public in Dundalk, although we suspect he doesn't even know that people are looking to speak to him. We instead spoke to Tomas Sharkey about it but he appeared more interested in casting aspersions on our sources as well as a co-operating councillor. Considering Tomas's campaign to save our hospital, one would have expected he would have been as enraged as us at the waste that could have gone to hospital services. Instead he was happy to state that it's different money. Although hospital funding may appear to come from a different pot, in reality it all comes from the one pot, our pockets, so that's no excuse for ignoring blatant waste.

We will continue to campaign amongst our councillors to have this information released and will keep you, the public, informed of developments.