No change to the county boundary in Athlone - report

A controversial report on the future of the county boundary in Athlone has recommended that Monksland and other areas of South Roscommon should not become part of Westmeath. 

Communications Minister Denis Naughten welcomed the report's recommendation that there should be no change to the Roscommon county boundary.

'I was not going to support a Government that was going to alter the county boundary of Roscommon.

'I made it clear to the Taoiseach that this would be a 'red line' issue for me when I was being offered the Ministerial role, and I received certain assurances in relation to that,' Minister Naughten told the Westmeath Independent this afternoon.

'This is going to take the issue of the county boundary in Roscommon off the agenda, once and for all.'

However, two other TDs in Roscommon sounded a note of caution in their responses to the report.

Independent Roscommon-Galway TD Michael Fitzmaurice also welcomed the report's recommendation but said the issue was not 'dead and buried' yet.

'While I welcome the fact that the status of Roscommon will not change as a result of the Boundary Commission Report, there are conditions and changes in the report that may be a threat to the county's status in the future and people should be very aware that this issue is not fully over with yet,' said Deputy Fitzmaurice.

'There is no doubt that the decision not to alter the actual boundaries is a victory for people power and the massive campaign that was launched in County Roscommon against the proposals and I congratulate everyone concerned with that campaign.

'But there are several elements in this report that would seem to indicate that the proposals are not fully shelved and may have just been 'kicked down the road' a bit.'

Fianna Fail TD Eugene Murphy said the proposed Athlone boundary change had 'not been written off completely' and that there could still be changes to the boundary if some stipulations in the report were not adhered to in the coming years.

“The boundary report states that there must be a joint local area plan within 24 months, a joint retail strategy within 18 months and a service delivery analysis and plan within 9 months, while the implementation of these service delivery changes must take place within three years,” said Deputy Murphy.

He also stated that the boundary report indicated that Local Authority services between Roscommon and Westmeath should be shared and this could be extended to other organisations such as the HSE, the IDA and other bodies.

“When I pressed this issue at the Oireachtas briefing this afternoon it was indicated that if all of these conditions are not implemented within four years then the proposed boundary change could still go ahead.

'I am not satisfied that boundary change has been completely written off and I think this is a sophisticated way of getting around it.

'The boundary report is a plan of action with a number of issues to be addressed within specific deadlines and in my view the Minister needs to scrap this plan of action in the boundary report and simply take the issue off the table completely as this still leaves a veil of uncertainty over the issue,” he said. 

Westmeath County Council had sought an extension of its county boundary into parts of South Roscommon, stating that this would further boost Athlone economically.

However, there was strong resistance to the idea of a boundary change among many in Roscommon.

Some 28,000 submissions were made to the boundary committee by members of the public, with the vast majority of these opposed to a change.