Cork bridges the rural-urban divide as special committee prepares to meet for first time in years

By Peter McCarthy, Corkman

Cork County Council has appointed councillors to sit on a joint committee with Cork city councillors that was set up to improve co-operation and co-ordination between the county’s two local authorities but which hasn’t met for years.

Nine county councillors were appointed to the committee at this week’s meeting of Cork County Council with three each from Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, two Independents and one Social Democrat. Cork City Council appointed its representatives to the committee some time ago.

City Councillor Peter Horgan, one of the city appointees, welcomed the news, describing it as a positive step. “I will be engaging today with colleagues who sit on the city side to arrange a meeting without delay this side of Christmas. There is much we can work on together as city and county for the betterment of Cork,” he told the Irish Independent.

The Joint Cork City Council/Cork County Council Committee hasn’t met for several years. Another city appointee to the committee, Cllr Shane O’Callaghan, told the Irish Independent in October that “my understanding is that it never met during the last council term. So it hasn't met at least since June 2019 and I suspect it didn't meet for a long time before that either.”

At last month’s Cork City Council meeting Cllr Ciara O’Connor put forward a motion calling on the city council to write to its county counterpart requesting that the committee be reconvened “to ensure ongoing co-operation and co-ordination on projects of mutual importance that overlap both local authority areas and municipal districts.”

“The reality is that as our city grows and the county grows, many of the strategic projects we are involved in, whether it's infrastructure, transport or environmental planning, do not respect the boundaries between city and county. They affect all of us and more importantly they affect communities we represent,” she said.

The Irish Independent understands that no date for a meeting of the reconvened committee has yet been set. The proposed Cork city to Kinsale greenway is likely to be one of the items on the agenda. The city council agreed to give the county council all of its powers and functions regarding the controversial development, which some landowners fear will be constructed using compulsory purchase orders.