At a recent meeting of Wicklow County Council, Green Party councillor, Deirdre de Burca called for full transparency to apply to the sale of council-owned land to elected representatives connected to the council.

The Green Party councillor made her remarks as Wicklow County Council discussed a motion to sell 375 m² of council land at Bawnogue, Baltinglass to the Timmins family, on which seven public reserve wells for the town were located. Deputy Billy Timmins was a former councillor of Wicklow County Council and Cllr Edward Timmins currently sits on the council.

A report provided to councillors by council officials stated that the sale of the land to the Timmins family was necessary in order to allow a planning permission for the site, granted to Mrs Nora Timmins in 2003, to proceed. However, Green Party councillor, Deirdre de Burca, said that serious questions needed to be asked about the planning permission for the site that had been granted to the Timmins family. She also queried the value that the council had placed upon the site that it was now proposing to sell to the family.

De Burca informed the council that if it proceeded with the sale of the site to the Timmins family without providing satisfactory answers to her questions, she would lodge a formal complaint with the Minister for the Environment. She also queried whether the Timmins brothers had fulfilled the statutory requirements of public declarations of interest in relation to these lands.

The Green Party councillor asked the County Manager to explain whether the Council had been aware when granting the 2003 planning permission for 60 houses to the Timmins family that the council was part-owner of important strategic areas of the site, on which public reserve water wells were located. She stated that the council officials had no right to grant planning permission to the Timmins family on land belonging to the council without bringing the matter before the councillors of Wicklow County Council. She also asked why the Timmins application appeared to have been treated differently from other similar planning applications in the Baltinglass area over the past few years, many of which were refused on the grounds of a shortage of water supply in the town.

She asked how the council arrived at a figure of 280 thousand euros as the correct value of the seven wells on the land being sold to the Timmins, when only a year ago the council paid 110 thousand euros each for seven wells at Johnstown Arklow. She pointed out that the Arklow land had no planning permission on it, unlike the Baltinglass site which did, giving it a development value. Councillor de Burca provoked the anger of her fellow councillors when she said : “This is public property we are deciding on, and we do not want it to appear to the public as a gift from politicians to other politicians”.

Cllr de Burca says that the County Manager, Mr Eddie Sheehy failed to respond to her questions about the Baltinglass site, and had treated her questioning with contempt. She expressed her disappointment that her fellow councillors decided to proceed with the sale of the land to the Timmins family without her questions having been properly answered. She says she now intends lodging a formal complaint to the Minister for the Environment’s office, asking for the matter to be investigated.