Council comes to aid of TT group after grant aid is withdrawn

The award-winning Moynalty Tidy Town Committee has run into financial rough waters over its borrowing of €150,000 from the local credit union to cover footpath enhancement works in the village. The committee expected that Meath Leader would provide the funding for the work. However, an EU inspector attached to the Department of the Environment has said that the TT committee should not be paid the grant because the work it undertook did not qualify under the Rural Development Programme EU rules. The result is that the community in Moynalty now has to repay the €150,000 or raise the money from other sources. The issue led to a row at this week's meeting of Meath County Council when councillors were asked to extend a short-term loan of €34,631 to get the group out of its immediate difficulties. While Fine Gael, Labour and at least one independent councillor were in favour of the loan being voted through, Fianna Fail members said that not enough time was being given to debate the proposal. They asked council cathaoirleach, Cllr Eoin Holmes, for a five-minute recess to consider the situation. This was granted and the FF group withdrew from the chamber. However, the group's discussions ran to six minutes or more and, in the meantime, the remaining councillors in the chamber voted the loan through. Kevin Stewart, the council's director of economic development and innovation, briefed councillors that the TT committee in Moynalty had received a "letter of promise" from Meath Leader for funding of €150,000 for improvement works during 2009 and 2010. He said it transpired in the course of a review that an EU inspector had concluded the works could not be grant-aided under the Rural Development Programme. Moynalty Credit Union had loaned the €150,000 to the TT committee but the TT committee was not in a position to repay it. The credit union had instituted proceedings against the TT group for repayment of the money and the TT committee had then asked the council for a short-term loan. Mr Stewart said that Meath County Council had got legal advice that it would be in order to pay the €34,000, subject to council agreement. The TT committee was now appealing the EU inspector's decision, he said. Cllr John Farrelly said that the granting of the loan was something that the county council would prefer not to be involved in. It was regrettable that the inspector had found that these works in Moynalty should not be grant-aided. He said Moynalty was a small village, with a small credit union, and that all the local people were interlinked through the 17 community committees there. He said he was asking members to approve the loan and hope the matter would be resolved. Cllr Niamh McGowan sought assurances that the letter given by the council as it handed out the loan was "legally binding" and would provide for the money being paid back to the council if the TT committee's appeal was unsuccessful. She was told it would. Cllrs Catherine Yore and Brian Fitzgerald agreed that the council pay out the loan. There were sharp exchanges across the council chamber when Fianna Fail members sought a five-minute adjournment to allow them discuss the issue. Cllr Fitzgerald said the party whips had met to discuss the issue that morning but the FF whip, Cllr Cassells, was not present. He said the loan was "a once-off" and should go through. Cllr Cassells said he was unable to attend the morning meeting and said the matter was a serious one and should have proper consideration. It had been "sprung" on members. The FF members retired from the chamber but the loan was voted through while they were outside. Cllr Cassells said: "We fully support Moynalty Tidy Towns but we didn't want a scenario where the TT committee was put under further financial hardship." He said that €34,000 was to pay this year's tranche of the loan "but what will happen next year?" The cathaoirleach made it clear that the Moynalty TT committee had done nothing wrong and there was no suggestion that anything inappropriate was done with this money, he said. Michael Ludlow, chief executive of Meath Partnership, said that what had happened was "a temporary embarrassment" to the TT committee and Moynalty Credit Union. He said he had no doubt that the appeal lodged against the EU inspector's decision not to sanction the grant aiding would be successful. Commenting on the outcome of the council meeting, Cllr Cassells said: "What the council have done to the people of Moynalty is no better than what the IMF is doing to the Greeks. "They have burdened ordinary people in the small village with a loan of €40,000 that has to be paid back for work that the council should have been doing in the first place. "We wanted to really help the people of Moynalty and so we made the proposal that the money be paid now and included in the books as part of the roads work programme for 2012. There should be no money owed by the people of the village to the council for work on footpaths and other public realm improvements. "Let us be crystal clear about what is happening here. The EU inspectorate who overturned the Leader money which the group were granted did so on the basis that the application was for work that the local authority should have been doing in the first place. "That is why we made the proposal that the council should make this payment towards the Tidy Towns Committee and put it down as part of our roads programme. Out of our total budget of €98.3m, this group were looking for €34,631. "That is not a huge amount of money in our overall budget but is a massive debt for a small community to have to pay back to the council. Even more so when you consider the fact that they still owe the credit union €110,000 for the balance of the work." Cllr Cassells added: "The FG/Labour councillors have concocted a bad deal, and to make things worse, they rammed it through without a proper debate which raises serious questions about proper procedures. They should all hang their heads in shame because the people will be paying this debt back for a long time."