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Clerical error costs Galway City Council half a million euro

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Red-faced City Council officials have had to write off a debt of almost €500,000 because of a clerical error, the Galway City Tribune can exclusively reveal.

The embarrassing and costly ‘typo’ was included in a grant of planning permission for a residential development in Doughiska, which meant that development levies (which at that time, had to be paid by the builder before a home was sold) did not need to be paid on nearly 100 homes.

A condition of planning permission was that the levies were to be paid in respect of each apartment . . . failing to include the houses, which formed the bulk of the Fionnuisce development.

The Council had brought High Court action against Harrmack Developments (which has subsequently gone into liquidation) to recover almost €470,000 which they claimed was owed – the developers indicated they would be “strenuously defending” the action.

The mistake was first uncovered in an extensive investigation by this newspaper in July 2010. However, it has now come to light that the Council dropped the action earlier this year following advice from their legal team, and has formally “written off” the debt of €467,389.

Solicitors warned the Council that there would be “significant” High Court fees incurred and that the wording was “incorrect” on the planning permission. The Statute of Limitations had also expired – planning was granted in 2000.

City Councillor Frank Fahy (Fine Gael) said he is “gobsmacked” by the litany of errors made by the local authority.

“I’m gobsmacked that it could be just written off like that. We (councillors) were told absolutely nothing about this. The only reason any of us were ever aware of it was because of the investigation in the Galway City Tribune a few years ago.

“We weren’t told the debt had been written off, it was just swept under the carpet. What else is being written off that we don’t know about? I will be looking for a detailed report from the City Manager as to what exactly happened, and for a full list of what has been written off by the Council,” said Cllr Fahy.

For more details on this story, see today’s Galway City Tribune

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