Senior HSE and ambulance officials have been summoned to explain, in person, to Cork County Council why no ambulance was made available to take Vakaris Martinaitis to hospital after falling from an upstairs bedroom window.

Cork’s county manager and elected members are at odds over whether local authority-run recycling centres should be privatised.

Cork County Council officials are to write to the National Roads Authority (NRA) seeking funding to make safe a 1.2km stretch of road in West Cork which has been the scene of several fatal accidents in recent years.

County manager Martin Riordan has promised Cork County Council won’t be found wanting when it comes to protecting the people of Bandon from further flooding.

Cork county manager Martin Riordan has asked his councillors to furnish him with proof from businesses and householders that insurance companies are refusing to quote for flood cover.

Cork County Council is losing at least €350,000 a year in rental income because it isn’t repairing its vacant homes fast enough.

The Department of the Environment has given assurances that money is in place to complete a major sewerage scheme in a Co Cork town, but work will not restart until next summer at the earliest.

Hundreds of Cork County Council tenants will see their rents more than double as the local authority moves to standardise a countywide minimum rate.

Disabled people seeking council housing in Co Cork are almost ‘bottom of the pile’ in a priority list.

Motorists have been urged to report skidding incidents to gardaí at a notorious bend on a national secondary road, earmarked for new safety warning measures.

Proposals by the Courts Service to transfer court sittings in Skibbereen, Clonakilty, and Kinsale to Cork City have been described as “wholly illogical, irrational”, and could leave the towns “under-policed”.

Experts with Britain’s department of transport have claimed that an accident-prone section of national secondary road in Co Cork does not have adequate “skid resistance”.

The refusal by almost half the country’s homeowners to pay the €100 household charge could lead to cutbacks on road maintenance and library services in one of Ireland’s largest local authorities.

One of the country’s largest local authorities collected a record €95.7m in rates last year, up more than €16m from the peak boom year — 2006.

TWO councillors have challenged local authority planners to “do a bit of cross-dressing” and put themselves in women’s shoes — so to speak.

WITH an above average marriage rate, a greater likelihood than the rest of us to own their homes outright and families less likely to have a single mother at the head, the population of Cork South West would appear to favour the traditional — and politics is no different.

COUNTY councillors in Cork have urged management to “go easy” on an ever-increasing number of housing rent defaulters who are falling on hard times due to the recession.

DREDGING of a flood-prone river has been given the go-ahead after an early-morning stand-off between a local authority and the state’s fisheries watchdog was resolved.

CORK county manager Martin Riordan has indicated he may dredge the Bandon river, despite the prospect that such an act could land the local authority in court.

A CORK County Council delegation is hoping to get Minister Conor Lenihan to overturn an Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) demand that the local authority doesn’t remove any silt from the river in Bandon.

CORK county manager Martin Riordan says he wants to see all allegations made against his planning staff and is confident he will be able to refute every one of them.

THIS looks the easiest of the 10 Cork County Council electoral areas to predict, especially as it’s only a three-seater – and the three outgoing councillors are firm favourites to be returned.

CORK County Council is poised to reopen housing adaptation grant applications for elderly and disabled people — despite not having enough cash to fund the schemes.

Damien Enright on options for the weed growing in bays.

THE leader of the largest party in Cork County Council says public representatives should resign from the job if they don’t attend at least 75% of local authority meetings.

THE proprietor of the Organic Shop in the English Market in Cork accused the Department of Agriculture and Food of having sinister motives for the way in which it prosecuted him.

An aerial view of Ballinvoultig, Waterfall, which sold for €5.5m in one lot.

MORE than 1,000 speed limits are set to be changed in Cork on local and regional roads.

CORK County Council is to take on 70 additional staff to update the electoral register, amid claims from a number of politicians that several voters have inexplicably found themselves disenfranchised.

Fairtrade fortnight is running until March 19. The aim is to increase consumer awareness and to encourage people to purchase Fairtrade products.

A MAJOR push is on to get rid of a stench which virtually destroyed a beauty spot last summer and which is a constant cause of upset to people living near the village of Kilbrittain.

Sean O’Riordan