Labour councillors hit back at 'lies'
KILDARE NORTH, 26 October: by Brian Byrne. Two Labour members of Kildare County Council have strongly attacked Fianna Fail member Paul Kelly (right) and FG member Senan Griffin (left), one saying the two had 'shamefully misrepresented' how business was conducted at an Area Committee Meeting.
The ripostes, from Cllr Catherine Murphy and Deputy Emmet Stagg, came in response to an Opinion from Cllr Kelly published on KNN earlier this week. Cllr Kelly’s letter related to the unexpected adjournment of the Council’s monthly meeting during discussions on the Maynooth Development Plan.
In a statement, Cllr Catherine Murphy (left) says the Minutes of the Leixlip Area Committee meeting of 5 October ‘nails the lie’ of a ‘shameful misrepresentation’ made in the Council chamber by Cllrs Griffin and Kelly that as Area Chairman she had used her casting vote to ‘ram through’ the Maynooth plan against their wishes.
She also says Cllr Kelly was a ‘willing participant’ in the development of a row ‘orchestrated’ by Cllr Griffin which resulted in the adjournment of the meeting when Deputy Emmet Stagg refused to withdraw remarks he made about legal donations to political parties possibly influencing planning decisions.
In a separate statement, Deputy Emmet Stagg strongly denies that he made ‘accusations of corruption or bribery in Kildare or elsewhere’ at the Council meeting. And he also says he ‘will not be bullied into silence by any combination of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael’ and will do his duty as he sees fit.
Cllr Kelly said in his Opinion that Deputy Stagg had made ‘scandalous accusations about corruption in Kildare County Council’ and suggested that he had ‘raised spurious and untruthful issues for no apparent reason except possibly to gain publicity for himself’, in the process choosing to ‘interfere’ with and ‘delay progress’ with the Maynooth Development Plan.
However, at the Council meeting, Deputy Stagg had made it clear that he was not accusing individual members of the council, or its officials, of doing anything wrong, but he said the coalition of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail was ‘uniquely strong’ when it came to planning decisions.
Cllr Kelly also said the Plan was the ‘recommendation of the Area Committee which had been carefully and thoughtfully put together’, and that Deputy Stagg’s intervention had ‘served no purpose other than to delay the adoption of the Plan and the consequent acquisition of much needed land for sporting and community purposes’.
However, Cllr Murphy says Cllrs Griffin and Kelly had ‘misrepresented’ the way business was done at the Area Committee Meeting, and were ‘clearly playing a party political game’ which she greatly resents. She is now calling for an apology ‘for a lie that places a shadow on my personal integrity’.
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Letting the record speak for itself
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