Open house at the council with no staff members on duty

January 1986

‘IT was like the Marie Celeste,’ was how a Greystones woman described her experience at Wicklow County Council offices in Wicklow on Monday.

The woman drove with her daughter to Wicklow to renew her motor taxation.

She arrived at the council’s offices at around 2.15 p.m. and joined about 16 other people outside a locked door.

Being full of the goodwill of the season, she decided the lunch break was long and returned to her car to read the paper and wait.

Her daughter remarked that the others were all going in the front door so they hastily joined the throng.

They all walked in and as she later remarked: ‘I know just how the sailors who boarded the Marie Celeste felt.’

There was no one there, but all the doors were open.

One man who knew how to use the switchboard phoned a councillor and was told that they were most likely closed that day at the council.

Some had come to pay water rates and others to tax cars.

If they were dishonest they could have fixed themselves up with whatever documents they needed.

A phone call to the council offices confirmed that they are always closed on a church holiday.

But the would-be car taxer asks the question that surely it cannot be accepted practice to have such poor security in a building of this kind.