County council set to mothball Dunshaughlin area offices?

Councillors in the Dunshaughlin area have reacted angrily to the possibility that the local county council offices in Dunshaughlin may be closed and that administration services may be moved to Ashbourne. Representatives of the press were asked to leave an area meeting of the county council on Thursday last as it went into private session to discuss an item on the agenda, the proposed future use of the Dunshaughlin and Ashbourne offices of the council. The meeting had been delayed by 20 minutes and councillors found themselves locked out of the building as staff were given a briefing by council officials. The removal of services from Dunshaughlin would mean another blow to the town which has already seen the local court sittings move to Navan and the closure of a number of main street businesses. It is understood that the council wants to move the services to the Ashbourne offices as the town serves the largest centre of population in the Dunshaughlin area. Any suggested closure of the Dunshaughlin offices was opposed by councillors Noel Leonard, Brian Fitzgerald and Nick Killian. The possibility of moving a department from Navan to Dunshaughlin in the future is also believed to have been mooted by the council, but with no firm proposal. Cllr Leonard said that Dunshaughlin had been originally chosen because it was the geographical centre of the electoral area, and that people from Kilcock and that general area would be as near to Navan as they would be Ashbourne. "The area office would no longer serve them," he said. Cllr Brian Fitzgerald concurred, saying that Dunshaughlin had been the centre of administration in the area since before the foundation of the State, when the Board of Guardians sat at Dunshaughlin Workhouse. "And there was obviously a reason for that, it being central," he added. The introduction of Kilmessan and its hinterland into the area meant that it was even more important. Cllr Fitzgerald said it was crazy that the council was paying out "big rent" for buildings in Navan while the Dunshaughlin offices were available. "The idea was to bring the services to the people, when huge money was spent building these offices and creating one-stop-shops," he said. "This has been diminished over the years by the removal of car tax and planning services, not all of which was necessary to centralise back to Navan, especially with technology available as it is now," he added. Cllr Killian said the threat to the council offices would be an added blow to Dunshaughlin which had already lost its courthouse to Navan, with no prospect of the court sittings returning in the near future. He described it as the 'Garlow Cross' system of administration, where nothing was allowed any further than Garlow Cross (on the N3 between Navan and Dunshaughlin). At last Thursday's meeting, area manager Michael Killeen and director of services, Tadhg McDonnell, asked for a motion to be passed by councillors that the press be excluded from the meeting as human resources and industrial relations matters needed to be discussed. Councillor Maria Murphy proposed that the press be excluded and Cllr Regina Doherty seconded the motion. Councillors agreed that they would support the motion as it pertained to HR and IR issues. Afterwards, Meath County Council said it was involved in a consultation process with staff and elected representatives in the area on the future of the facilities there.