Media silence over Niall Collins story

Does anybody really think the timeline RTE published was accurate?

LEA meeting held on the 15th Jan 2007

Full council meeting had to be held subsequently to actually authorise the sale.

Then the land was advertised in the Limerick Leader before January was out?

It just doesn't add up.

And what do you think that the effect of this drip-feed of revelations about FFG politicians will be on FFG support in a GE?

The current media landscape is a very different one to that under which FFG prospered (Tony O'Reilly/Denis O'Brien being the largest shareholders in IN&M and the De Valera family owning the Irish Press). People get a lot of their news from Social Media and Collins has been a trending hashtag in Ireland on Twitter for some time now.

New legislation cannot generally be retroactively applied but that's not FFG's problem with Collins. It is the perception of gombeenism that would have gone unremarked decades ago that is the problem. That's losing them support. The electorate has changed while the institutionalised FFG politicians in Dail don't seem to have noticed.

Regards...jmcc

So he attended, but isn't noted in the minutes, didn't bring forward or second any motion. Stop the press.

The local electoral area do not have any such authority.

Only the full Council can approve disposal of land.

The timeline described seems accurate to me and I'm a former Council planner who used to put together these land disposal packages for approval.

Collins has admitted he knew his missus was interested in the land, conflict of interest no?

I notice your 6-point "YES" argument is now only a 2-point argument now. Progress?

Cherry picking the statute into a sentence fragment isn't a legally substantive interpretation of the statute.

When disposals are proposed, either by request from a third party, or originating from the Council executive, they are put before the local area committees for discussion to see if there is any particular reason that it ought not to be disposed of, or if the local members have any other input, such as bringing forward any adverse consequences such a disposal might have on other people, property or projects.

So the correct interpretation of the minutes is; the executive informs the LEA they have had interest in this piece of public land. The executive (in the person of G Naughton, Senior Engineer) asks if there is any reason the members from the local area would object to the Council disposing of it by sale on the open market. The members of this meeting raise no such objection and nod it through on a floor motion so it can be recorded.

Now of course these things come before local area committees across the Country thousands of times every year. They are very routine. LACs know its not for them to approve and the executive knows it too. It is merely the dissemination of local information for Councillors to be aware of local matters.

If a Councillor or Councillors had raised an objection, that would have been noted by the executive and checked out for veracity before bringing the matter to the full County Council, as only there can land disposals be approved. And even then, it is the executive that manages the sale as a transparent process on the open market. They have to advertise the plot as being open for bids, which they did.

The whole statutory procedure is laid out in crystal clear detail under Part 16, Section 183 of the Local Government Act 2001.