Row erupts as Tipperary councillor claims others ‘piggybacking’ on road project
Tensions flared at a meeting of the Carrick-on-Suir Municipal District (MD), as one councillor accused colleagues of “piggybacking” on his work.
At the April meeting of the Carrick-on-Suir MD, Fine Gael councillor Mark Fitzgerald was praising the work of council teams on resurfacing the Ballinard road in Fethard, but said that he had been working on getting this road fixed for a number of years.
"I contacted every resident on that road because this isn’t one I’m trying to take credit for and have done nothing on, this is something I’ve been working on for the last four or five years, before the last local elections in 2024,” Cllr Fitzgerald said.
"I’m not trying to come in at the last minute and take credit for this, I’ve worked with the engineers and the gangers and the overseers, they’ve been up that road morning, noon, and night.
"Everything I do in my job, I work at, and I don’t try to piggyback on anyone else’s work, but I feel that there’s councillors in this room that have piggybacked on work that other councillors have done,” he added.
The Fine Gael councillor said the news of the road being resurfaced turned into a barrage of phone calls from people saying he was “telling them lies” and other councillors were saying different things.
"My phone has been hopping because of Ballinard, which should be a great job, which turned into nothing but a volume of phone calls, people saying I was only telling them lies, then we had other councillors going up the road contradicting what I’ve been saying,” Cllr Fitzgerald hit out.
"This road is only a mile from me, and I’m a very passionate Cloneen man, and I’m very proud of my parish. To have accusations levelled at me by residents on that road to say that someone else is the reason that road was put on the list and that I’m only trying to tuck in now and take credit, I cannot stand over that,” he added.
Responding to Cllr Fitzgerald’s statement, district Cathaoirleach and Sinn Féin councillor David Dunne said he knows how hard the Fine Gael councillor works.
"Mark, I know how hard you work as a councillor, and the three-year roads programme is the three-year roads programme, there’s nothing added to it afterwards, so I can understand your frustrations,” Cllr Dunne said.
Labour Party councillor Michael ‘Chicken’ Brennan responded saying that he hadn’t piggybacked on anyone else’s work, and that he tries to help constituents to the best of his ability.
"If I was contacted by people from any district or any area, I will represent them to the best of my ability, and I would have been contacted by people to find out if I could find out why that road wasn’t continued the whole way out,” he said.
"I visited that road, but I didn’t talk to an engineer until that evening, so I wasn’t taking credit for anything, I just put up what I was told by the engineer and that was it. There was no piggybacking, I don’t have to piggyback, and I won’t be piggybacking,” he said.