National Transport Authority’s failure to correspond with Sligo councillors slammed as “absolutely disgraceful”

IRATE members of Sligo County Council are furious with the National Transport Authority who they have accused of totally ignoring them.

Time and again at various council meetings, whether full plenary meetings or municipal district meetings, councillors have complained that they cannot get the transport authority to meet them or to reply to their letters and it would appear some councillors have had enough.

This week councillors attending in the Borough District of Sligo and Strandhill municipal district meeting were the latest to slam the NTA approach to communication.

In January councillors had agreed to send a letter to the NTA outlining the need to engage with them.

That letter was sent to the NTA on February 14, but not even that date has done the trick with the NTA showing no love for the overtures from Sligo councillors. The letter has not been responded to in any fashion, they were told on Monday, and it did not go down well.

Already unhappy,

Cllr

Tom

MacSharry, who asked for the letter to be sent to the NTA at a meeting in January where he received the full backing from colleagues, was borderline furious when he heard their pleas to be heard or met had again fallen on deaf ears.

In January he asked, and all members were in agreement, that a further correspondence should issue to the National Transport Authority (NTA) expressing dissatisfaction at the ongoing delays in responding to correspondence sent to the NTA by council members.

Correspondence was issued from the Council’s Corporate Services section on February 14. Since that letter was issued there has, he was told, been no response from the NTA.

Cllr MacSharry, less than impressed, described the failure of the NTA to respond to the February 14 letter as “absolutely disgraceful”.

He said he didn’t think they could have expressed the sentiments of the councillors as a collective in stronger terms than they had done when they last raised their concerns in January at the NTA’s response to engage with them.

“I think there should now be an urgent letter sent to the NTA reminding them how upset we are at their lack of a response considering the importance of the issue,” he said.

The mayor, Cllr Declan Bree, said Cllr MacSharry had expressed on all their behalf’s just how unacceptable the response or lack of one by the NTA is. “It is just unacceptable that the National Transport Authority would essentially ignore the views of this Borough District and indeed of the Council as a whole,” he said.

Cllr Arthur Gibbons said he had previous experience of being at meetings with the NTA where, he claimed, the NTA didn’t even want to give a date for a follow up meeting.

“I was sitting in the room with them and we had a struggle to get them to agree to a date for a follow up meeting. They didn’t want to meet us was my view.

“If they are doing something like avoiding even responding to correspondence we send them, they need a good rap on the knuckles.

“They are answerable to the public the same as everybody else, that’s who we are representing,” he added.

Another letter is on its way to the

NTA and based on the mood of councillors who spoke at last Monday’s municipal district meeting, it will be fairly direct. How it fares remains to be seen as those councillors who have spoken on the lack of communication with the NTA are convinced the transport authority simply has no interest in talking to them, however, they seem more determined than ever now, not to be ignored.