Eyre Square

toiletduck

SyxPak wrote:

A blocading of McGrath's car/office or barricading him into the toilet might be an idea.

hear hear!

Robbo

danniemcq wrote:

before it was great kinda chilled like the arch with loadsa trees and stuff and i don't think anyone really knows why it was dug up. i heard before it started they were meant to make the whole area wi-fi

No need for municipal WiFi in the Square. There's enough misconfiguration of APs in the area for a good ould session.

po0k

ssshh Robbo

Sponge Bob

The councillors are afraid of McGrath so they wont sack him and he wont care what they say and do about him if they wont sack him

Thats why the councillors put P O Ceidigh (not a Galway man but a Spiddle man ) in charge of a 'task force on eyre square' when they themselves should be the task force or so you would think .

Mc Grath will refuse to meet the task force in public to answer anything significant.

If he does answer questions he will baffle them with legalese. Expect the taskforce to do nothing useful ....ever.

NakedGalwegian

Ah sure **** it - where's me shovel?

I'll go and finish it meself.

Be done in time for Race Week if the lads help.

Put the kettle on - looks like we're having us an ol' fashioned Square Renovation!

Asok

"Little Girl: Whats going on"
"Nakedgalwegian: It's an old fashioned hole diggin! lordy its been a while!"

Sponge Bob

Rather than a Boards Beer why not announce a Boards Dig in Galway for the Sunday before race week. Make sure the Advertiser and Tribune are informed well in advance of the impending arrival of a flood of geeks with shovels

Then all off to O Connells , shovels and all, for a few pints and a planning meeting (a la the Corpo) .

Anyone can come as long as they bring their shovel.

po0k

I'd be up for it...

Dundhoone

Sponge Bob wrote:

.

Between the Bond and the Contract as Asset and the Liquidator and the sorting out of same in the High Court there is no chance that the Contract will be retendered and reawarded for at least a year if not more . I would now expect the square to be finished in 2007 / 2008 at the earliest and most likely the latter.

Thats an interesting point of view. however with the contractor defaulting on his contract, the council are within their rights to re-tender immediately although charging the remainder of the work to kingston might be a bit pointless. At least with the 3m paid they have gotten 3m worth of work plus raw materials. Some of the councillors statements of "why wasnt the contractor given advance payments to keep him afloat " were so childishly stupid as to be nearly beyond belief. As far as I remember, this Eyre square redev was not Joe mc Graths idea, he's just inherited this ****storm. Tom O'connell is a genuine nice, hardworking guy. The contractor would have been financially checked out before the contract was awarded to him, outside of that the city council have no control over him going belly up. The conditions of contract being used in this country have little in the way of built in penalties for delays - theres a weak clause, but its just not implemented if the contractor is making some sort of reasonable progress.


I really dont have a very high opinion of our city councillors to be honest. Lots of mouth, little education, and few braincells. though theres probably a few decent ones in there somewhere. Reading the reports on the council meetings is often like an episode of neighbours. Bloodly little children. We really should have some sort of IQ testing for the people we have to represent us.

LegacyUser

Sponge Bob wrote:

The councillors are afraid of McGrath so they wont sack him

They do not have the power to sack him.

P O Ceidigh (not a Galway man but a Spiddle man ) in charge of a 'task force on eyre square' when they themselves should be the task force or so you would think .

The idea of the task force is to have a fair representative spread from the local authority, tourism, business and construction sector. They are a wealth of experience between them He's a hugely successful businessman. So what if he's not from the city, and it's not like Spiddal is that far outside town these days.

Anyway, Bernard Duffy, Stephen Mackey and John Concannon aren't from Galway either.

Mc Grath will refuse to meet the task force in public to answer anything significant.

There was never an intention for the meetings to be held in public.

If he does answer questions he will baffle them with legalese.

Obviosuly you have NEVER met the guy.

Sponge Bob

monga_ringpull wrote:

They do not have the power to sack him.

Ahh , so he is not really answerable to the councillors .

The idea of the task force is to have a fair representative spread from the local authority, tourism, business and construction sector. They are a wealth of experience between them He's a hugely successful businessman. So what if he's not from the city, and it's not like Spiddal is that far outside town these days.

Anyway, Bernard Duffy, Stephen Mackey and John Concannon aren't from Galway either.

The idea behind the task force (I'd say) is that the council and the councillors are incapable of sorting out the mess in this decade so they will try to dump it on someone else .

There was never an intention for the meetings to be held in public.

Ahh. Expect lots of action so

Obviosuly you have NEVER met the guy.

Mc Grath, No. Not interested either unless he's buying the beers

Seems the council had the same idea as I last week. Get the square to 2 lane operation for the races.

After that its simply a case of board it and hoard it up and get the peds crossing at the AIB and thats that for 2005 then .

No combination of task force/ corpo / corpo member will get it moving this year I am sorry to say.

toiletduck

http://www.rte.ie/news/2005/0721/galway.html

so now their saying it should be finished by next march...

Sherifu

"City Manager Joe McGrath has told city council members he is still trying to find an alternative construction company to complete the scheme."
March 06 - he's pulling dates out of his arse, they haven't even got a construction company yet...

Sponge Bob

Sponge Bob wrote:

(4th of July like) Get the square to 2 lane operation for the races.

After that its simply a case of board it and hoard it up and get the peds crossing at the AIB and thats that for 2005 then .

No combination of task force/ corpo / corpo member will get it moving this year I am sorry to say.

Still nothing happening and still no contractor.

Any news from the High Powered task Force of notables ???]

nobodythere

It'd be cool to turn it into a citizens volunteer project of gardeners if a) it wasn't in such a ****ing state and b) it'd be letting the council get away with murder.

Sponge Bob

monga_ringpull wrote:

Apart from everything that has happened on the site and the various delays all along, the City Manager has some serious questions to answer:

1. A few weeks back ,the City Tribune had a story saying that the Health and Safety Authority had visited the site and considered closing it down.

The following week, the Manager (Joe McGrath) went on Keith Finnegan's show on GBFM and said the story was completely untrue and the HSA never visited the site. A statement was issued to other media outlets in the city saying the story in the Tribune was totally untrue. The HSA have since issued a statement saying they did visit the site on a number of occasions and had spoken with Mr McGrath. Lie No. 1.

We never got an explanation of that one did we.

2. The same paper had a story the following week saying that SIPTU had strong concerns about working conditions on the site and pay. They said they had voiced their concerns to Joe McGrath and Director of Services Tom Connell. McGrath denied having had any contact with SIPTU. He also cut across Councillor Tom Costello at a Council meeting two weeks ago when cllr Costello raised the SIPTU issue. McGrath said it was nonsense and untrue that SIPTU had gotten involved and kept cutting across the councillor, provoking Costello to walk out of the meeting.

The councillors never got an accurate report of that meeting from the City Manager did they ?

Cllr Michael Leahy also walked out of the meeting when he was refused the opportunity to ask questions by McGrath, who, under the Council's Standing Orders, has no right to do so.

We all know who runs the council , we must take his word for everything

On Keith Finnegan's show this morning, McGrath said he had spoken with SIPTU in the first week of June, thereby exposing Lie No. 2.

Inconsistency , will get to the €6m €9m €11m and €12m figures in a minute

3. At that same council meeting, the Manager lost his temper with Councillor Padraic Conneely who demanded that all documentation between Kingston Construction, the Council and SIPTU be made available to him. McGrath said Conneely should go and ask Kingston Construction for the documents. He also became quite annoyed that the Eyre Square issue was back on the agenda at the meeting and complained that there were no issues there.

Yes. The councillors have still not received any explanations for the flannel from the city manager and so to the cost.

The 'negotiations' under way at the minute are designed to produce a 'finished' Eyre Square by the end of March for €9m . This wil lead to the council claiming that the job is finished on budget .

In order to 'finish' it 'on time' some sizeable chunks have been taken out of the contract because the contractor negotiated them out in order to finish by the end of March.

These 'supplementary' works will cost €2-3m in a separate contract which will go to tender ...next year maybe ..... some time , who cares

The cost of the current 'negotiated' version of the original contract + the ' supplementary contract' will be €11m-€12m .

My own questions.

1. Has anyone heard anything from the 'Task Force ' ?
2. Is the scale model still down the eyre square centre inside the back door onto Abbeygate street
3. Have the councillors ever got an explanation about the HSE and SIPTU issues that never happened ?
4. Do we need any councillors anyway , they obviously don't count when an oul task force can do things better ?

Sponge Bob

grasshopa wrote:

It'd be cool to turn it into a citizens volunteer project of gardeners if

Full page on Galway Corpos attempt to run a pissup in a brewery inside the Irish Times . The pedestrianisation of Shop St in the 1990 's (a mere 30% over budget (plus related compo cases of which there have been many) ) is also mentioned in that article.

We look fab so we do

sceptre

monga_ringpull wrote:

They do not have the power to sack him.

Is that what they said? Apparently they do. See here.

This guy doesn't seem all that suited to the role or any management role to be honest. See how diplomatically I put that?

biko

Well, it seems it's "game on" again. I passed Eyre Sq today and lo and behold, people working up at the top digging up stuff.

Ronan|Raven

They should shoot those responisble for deciding to modernise it out of a cannon.