Local government plan would diminish Athlone's development

Plans by the Local Government Efficiency Review Group to amalgamate Westmeath County Council with Longford County Council and Roscommon County Council with Mayo County Council must not be allowed to come to pass if people want to retain some form of representation by local government officials. As it is people have to fight for the smallest things, they depend on their elected representatives to act on their behalf at council levels on issues such as roads, water, facilities and the development of local areas. Often times people must campaign again and again for things such as traffic calming measures, playground facilities for their children, public lighting and other facilities as council budgets must stretch to cover large areas. But what would if there are more people fighting for a slice of the pie and the pie suddenly gets smaller? What the review groups is proposing is the co-locate Athlone Town Council with the newly formed Longford/Westmeath local authority, which would most likely be located at County Buildings in Mullingar. Not only would this create a huge inconvenience for the staff currently based at the civic centre, but it would leave the people of Athlone without the facilities of the council, essentially stripping the town of its seat of government. People who wish to pay their road tax, for example, would have to travel to Mullingar to do so, and of course due the group's plans to try to encourage people to pay their motor tax online, they would have to pay and extra tenner for the privilege of paying their tax online. Aside from these huge inconveniences and the unjust nature of charging people who are unable to pay tax online, it would also leave an amazing building, which came with a price tag of in the region of €20m not so long ago, idle. Surely such an idea must be seen as ludicrous. This week with the European People's Festival in town we can see the huge benefit of having such an impressive civic square, to lose this amenity would surely be a step backwards. On top of that the group is also proposing to amalgamate Roscommon County Council with Mayo County Council. As Mayo is the larger of the two counties, with its local authority employing double the amount of staff Roscommon employs, the likelihood is that the administrative headquarters of this new body would be located in Mayo's county town Castlebar. As it is with Monksland being governed from Roscommon town it is often the poor reltation when it comes to funding and projects, but if these decisions were being made from Mayo it would certainly be to the detriment of the ever growing area. If implemented, the recommendations of the review group, would certainly leave Athlone and the greater area out in the cold in terms of representation. Towns like Athlone, major urban centres, which, for historical reasons, are not the centres of local government in their respective counties, must not be punished, simply because our local government system is based around county borders. However, not only that, but the recommendations of the group as a whole are yet again hitting out at the most vulnerable people in the country. In a bid to increase online applications the review group feels it is wise to force people who are paying their motor tax in person to pay an additional administration charge, therefore hitting out at people who either do not know how to or are unable to use the internet, in essence once again hitting out at society's most vulnerable, something that is unfortunately becoming a hallmark of this government.