“It would do Councillors better to work with the staff instead of attacking us”
The Chief Executive of Louth County Council (LCC), Joan Martin, has rejected calls for her resignation over the Council’s handling of the failed application for the Northern Access route for Drogheda and has accused Councillors of sniping at her.
Speaking at the March monthly meeting of the Council, which was held remotely this morning, Ms Martin hit back at Councillors who have been critical of her and her staff saying that it would suit them better to work with the council rather than engage in continual sniping.
The Chief Executive said that the council has, for the last 15 years, been “looking and looking and looking” for the money for the Northern Access Road project.
“I think I was accused on Friday last of clutching at straws but you clutch at whatever straws are available on a particular day and you apply for whatever funding is there that you may or may not get” she said.
She said that LCC has a very good level of success in their applications. “We make applications for funding practically every day of the week and just to pick on one unsuccessful application and to accuse the staff of putting in substandard applications and not being as good as other councils like Sligo and Dun Laoighaire is not good enough.
“I’m sure they also have applications that are not successful also. Practically every aspect of funding is now competitive at a national level. I cannot guarantee that, no matter how good our application is, we will get the funding.
“It doesn’t matter if I had the entire 740 staff working on an application, I still cannot guarantee that we would get the money.
She went on to say that she does not accept “the unfair accusations” that are being made that the LCC application was sub-standard just because it didn’t get the money.
“That is not a logical link” she said, “it could be as good as you liked as an application but if the person making the decision decides it is not the fit they are looking for or it is not the type of project they wish to prioritise in this round of funding I can’t do anything about that.
Rounding on the Councillors she said: “It would do Councillors better to work with the staff instead of attacking us, it would do you better to support our work, it would do you better to look to the Minister to amend the next round of the URDF funding so that it is a better fit for our application.
“Sniping at the staff and sniping at me doesn’t gain us anything, it might gain people satisfaction and it might gain you kudos on the radio in the morning when people think you’re marvellous for attacking the staff because that’s a kind of national pastime to attack civil servants but it doesn’t gain anything.”
Ms Martin said she was as committed as she’d ever been over the last 15 years to get the funding.
“I’ve been round the houses with this, I’ve been dealing with this road for the best part of 20 years, I’m still fully committed to it because I still feel it’s badly needed for Drogheda but that doesn’t mean that I can magically get funding for it, It’s not for want of effort on the part of me or the staff at LCC
“If you look at the list of applications from around the country that were funded last Monday they are nearly all town centre applications so quite clearly the preference was for town centre. If that’s what the Department decides they want to prioritise then that’s what they’ll prioritise.
“If you don’t meet that priority, it doesn’t mean your application wasn’t good, it means your application didn’t meet the criteria to select the small number of projects that were successful.
“We will continue to make every effort but I would like to think that we would be doing it with the members rather than us working in here and being sniped at from the fence on every possible occasion by the members, by the public, by all kinds of people.”
