Warning letter issued over development at Mayo hotel
The eight-bedroom hotel, which is accommodating 16 people in emergency accommodation at present, is owned by Manchester-based Pat and Mary Mulhern, who invested over €1 million in restoring the hotel.
Local county councillor Michael Loftus expressed concern that ten extra bedroom spaces were being added to the hotel.
Last November, the hotel ceased trading 'due to economic challenges facing the hospitality sector'. It has since been providing emergency accommodation for Mayo County Council.
Speaking at the monthly meeting of Mayo County Council in Bonniconlon Community Centre, Cllr Loftus described the attempts to add extra bedrooms to the Dolphin Hotel function room as 'crazy'.
The Fianna Fáil councillor proposed that people in emergency accommodation should be accommodated on a basis of one bedroom per person.
Cllr Michael Kilcoyne seconded his proposal, saying he had received complaints about two strangers being accommodated in one room at one premises.
Mayo County Council is currently paying €59.85 per person to hotel owners who provide them with emergency accommodation.
In the last week of March, 149 adults accessed emergency accommodation in Mayo.
Catherine McConnell, Mayo County Council's Director of Services for Planning, told the Irish Independent that the local authority had issued a preliminary warning letter to the Dolphin Hotel owners. She said that 'no decision on whether any unauthorised work has been carried out has yet been made'.
In March, Mayo County Council issued a planning enforcement letter to the owner of the Railway Inn in Ballinrobe accusing him of unauthorised development.
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The council alleged that the change of use of the premises from a hotel to emergency homeless shelter required planning permission.
Mayo County Council stopped using the property for emergency accommodation following several disturbances in the area around the premises.
Separately, Mayo county councillors have called for people in emergency accommodation to be accommodated in their area.
At present, several homeless people in Mayo are being accommodated at a former nursing home in Charlestown.
Mayo County Council have used the former St Anne's nursing home as emergency accommodation since December 2023. The local authority are currently in a five-year agreement with the owners of the nursing home, which closed in the summer of 2023.
The 26-bed facility can accommodate up to 100 people. It is accommodating mostly families at present.
Cllr Michael Kilcoyne, who proposed the amendment to Mayo's homelessness action plan, said it was 'wrong' that people in emergency accommodation had to move far away from their area.
'People that become homeless in Castlebar are moved to Charlestown, Crossmolina, wherever…people in Ballina who are being made homeless, some have been moved the same way, and that's wrong.'
Mr Kilcoyne's suggestion was backed by Fianna Fáil's Damien Ryan, who said that 'each area should have to look after its own' homeless people.
Mr Ryan reiterated Mr Kilcoyne's concerns about children having to be taken out of schools to move to another area.
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