County hall squanders on luxury chamber while housing list tops 4000

THE youngest member of Galway Co Council has castigated the authority for spending almost €500,000 on revamping their meeting chamber at a time when tackling the lack of social housing should be their top priority.
Tuam Cllr Karey McHugh (Ind) told The Herald that she saw spending huge amounts of money on making the 39 members of the council more comfortable as obscene at a time the council’s own housing list had reached the 4,000 mark.
“What really annoys me is that the council has only allocated €100,000 towards tackling unfinished estates while at the same time they  can find almost half a million to do an unnecessary revamp of the chamber.”
Cllr McHugh said that in better times she would probably go along with the project but at a time when there are so many calls on resources it seemed like an insult to the people of Galway to press on with the revamp.
The council have argued that nine additional councillors elected last May meant that the chamber, designed to accommodate 30 members, was not big enough.