Who engineers Lismore? Little-known quirk in county Waterford clarified
Council building in Dungarvan
A little-known administrative quirk caused a bit of confusion at the Dungarvan-Lismore District Council this month.
Cathaoirleach Cllr Niamh O’Donovan raised an issue at the January meeting, where engineering issues for some parts of the Lismore area are handled by the Comeragh District Council.
This affects the areas of Modeligo, Touraneena and Ballymacarbry.
“So, because they fall under the engineering area of the Comeragh District. The overlap is that the reporting on those areas is going to the Comeragh meeting.
“But none of the five councillors elected in the Comeragh district are elected to make representations on those areas,” said Cllr O’Donovan.
Cllr Thomas Phelan raised the issue again during the update from the planning section.
He asked if councillors had a role in deciding boundaries in the county, be they municipal or political.
And if so, could the council take the review of the area plan as an opportunity to realign the areas with their districts?
Director of Roads Gabriel Hynes explained that this was a decision taken by a previous council.
The central government changed the political boundaries, but the council decided to keep the engineering areas as they were.
This was so that no personnel changes were needed, which was considered a waste of resources.
“So, what we decided, having discussed it with yourselves, going back to the previous members, is that we would leave the engineers alone.
“But if you had issues at the district meeting, the senior engineer who would be attending those meetings and the senior engineer would address that at the meeting.
“So that was the decision that was made,” said Mr Hynes.
Mr Hynes said that going forward, those areas could be included in the monthly district report for Dungarvan-Lismore.
