Monaghan Co Council voted on Monday to put the building that currently houses the branch library on Monaghan Town’s North Road on the open market to ascertain if there was private sector interest in acquiring the property. The town library will be housed in the nearby Peace Campus when the €17.6 million project is constructed and the Council has decided to test the waters to see if there is a buyer out there for the North Road building, which dates from the 1970s.
While it was stressed at Monday’s Council meeting that no formal decision to dispose of the property has yet been made, Independent councillor Paudge Connolly felt putting it on the market was tantamount to its sale. He resisted the move, calling instead for the building to be retained and its potential use as a new meeting chamber for the Co Council investigated.
Councillor Connolly said this would obviate the need to construct new civic office premises, an issue currently under consideration by the local authority, and he was supported in his stance by fellow Independent Seamus Treanor, but their position was not shared by any of the other elected members bar Mary Kerr-Conlon of Fine Gael who supported them in the vote.
The proposal to place the library building on the open market to explore what offers might be forthcoming came before Monday’s meeting as a recommendation from the Council’s Corporate Policy Group.
Councillor Connolly said it would be a huge mistake to sell off the library building, which was a Co Council asset that would cost them nothing to retain. When the matter had recently been mentioned [in-committee] at Monaghan Municipal District level, although not voted on, he had registered his objection.
Councillor Connolly proposed that the Co Council retained the branch library building and explored options for its future use. He thought the top floor of the building would make an excellent Co Council meeting chamber as opposed to the Council’s current chamber location at Knockaconny for which they…..
