From the Galway City Tribune – Management at City Hall ‘fobbed off’ elected members who feel they have been stonewalled when they ask for updates on Kingston and South Park master plans.

Councillors approved master plans for both green spaces pre-Covid, in 2018 and 2019 but they have yet to be progressed to planning application stage.

It’s understood the City Council does not have the resources in-house to design the plans, and they plan to tender for consultants. But councillors said they were frustrated at the lack of progress.

Cllr Donal Lyons (Ind) raised the matter at a  Council meeting. He said raised it last September, and again in November, and was told that consultants would be procured within three weeks.

Six months later and still there was no sign of the contracts going to tender, he said.

“We’re being fobbed off,” he fumed at a local authority meeting.

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Cllr Mike Cubbard (Ind) and Cllr Eddie Hoare (FG), also questioned what the delay was.

Cllr Lyons said that councillors were regularly asked by members of the public why it hadn’t been progressed.

“It’s very frustrating because we are not being given an answer, so what do we tell people,” he said.

Chief Executive Brendan McGrath gave another commitment that there would be positive news about both master plans before the next Council meeting.

In response to pressure from elected members, this week the City Council issued tenders to “establish a multi party framework for consultancy services for recreational amenity facilities”. They want to procure a team of architects, surveyors, and other consultants to carry out the work.

Cllr Lyons said he welcomed that the job has finally gone to tender and has been assured that the Kingston and Millar’s Lane master plans will take priority.