This article is from page 23 of the 2009-06-09 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 23 JPG
THE bitter disappointment felt by Fianna Fail’s Peter Considine at los- ing the seat he held on Clare County Council for 35 years will be softened by a Government pay-out of over €40,000.
He will receive the highest amount of the four councillors who failed to get re-elected to the county council and now qualify for the Govern- ment’s retirement gratuity scheme for councillors.
Last December, the council set aside a fund of €250,000 for coun- cillors who retired or failed to recap- ture their seat in the local elections.
Cllr Considine became a councillor in 1974 and had a proud record of be- ing re-elected at every election since over the 35-year period.
However, the backlash against Fi- anna Fail in urban areas along with the carving up of the old Ennis elec- toral area put paid his prospects al- lowing Kilmaley’s Tom McNamara to grab the Fianna Fail seat in Ennis West.
Cllr Considine had also to over- come a recent serious illness to con- test last Friday’s election.
Although he retained his seat on Ennis Town Council, he will still avail of the pay-out for the loss of his county council seat.
Under the scheme, councillors who have served since the 1999 local elec- tions will receive around €30,000 as the retirement gratuity guarantees €3,300 per annum since 2000 and a lower scale prior to 2000.
Fianna Fail’s Tom Prendeville who lost out in the Kilrush electoral area but was re-elected to Kilrush Town Council can expect a gratuity in ex- cess of €35,000 after serving on the county council for 18 years.
Party colleague Bernard Hanrahan from Clarecastle who lost out in En- nis East became a member of Clare County Council in 1995 and he can also expect a gratuity in excess of €30,000.
The only Fine Gael councillor to
lose his seat, Cllr John ‘Mashen’ McInerney can expect a pay out of around €16,500 as he was only elected in 2004.
Four other councillors who retired and decided not to contest the elec- tion will also receive the gratuity.
They are the current mayor, Cllr Madeleine Taylor Quinn (FG), two former mayors, Cllr Flan Garvey (FF), Cllr Colm Wiley (FF) and Cllr
Martin Lafferty (Ind).
Cllr Lafferty will receive the high- est amount of the councillors who announced their decision to retire prior to the election. He was elected in 1974 as a Labour councillor and remained with Labour before his subsequent election as an independ- ent.
Cllr Madeleine Taylor Quinn was elected in 1979 along with Cllr W1-
ley, while Cllr Garvey was elected in I ee
The key distinction in the new scheme from the Government’s 1999 ‘scrappage scheme’ for councillors is that those councillors who avail of the gratuity next year are free to con- test any future local election.
Nationally, the payout for council- lors could top €10 million and this would be more three times what
former Environment Minister, Dick Roche estimated the scheme would cost when he announced it in De- cember 2006.