Donegal Councillor Dessie Shields has said that several mistakes have been made in the construction of the Courthouse project.
Shields, a practicing solicitor said that “Whilst the new building itself is to be welcomed as a vast improvement on the existing courthouse building, there is no escaping the fact that mistakes have been made by the Council in relation to the project generally.”
Shields believes that selling of the old swimming pool site to the courthouse without any conditions put in place was a “major mistake.”
“The fact that the Council have only in the last few months demolished the old fire station building which is located only a hundred yards away to ease parking issues in the area is an embarrassment which serves only to highlight the glaring mistake made by the Council in not anticipating the possibility that the Court Service might not provide on-site parking.
“The old fire station building should have been reused or the site itself redeveloped for social/amenity purposes coming under the Council’s remit but instead there was a rush by some councillors to have it demolished and designated for car-parking because of the lack of public parking at High Road.”
“This of course does not disguise the fact that at the same time the new courthouse development which will by the end of this year attract hundreds of extra persons and vehicles to the High Road area on a daily basis will not provide any on-site parking on the site it now owns.”
Shields said that a strong argument could be made that land on the Neil T Blaney Road would have been a more suitable site for the courthouse to be constructed on. ”
“A bit of forward planning and joined up thinking rather than the amateurish decisions made here would not go amiss,” he concluded.
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