Cllr won't let time stand still on local town

A Cavan County Councillor is determined not to let “time stand still” on his local area- starting with fixing the town's broken clock.

Independent representative Brendan Fay has been working quietly behind the scenes to get the time-keeping device mended, after it stopped working almost three years ago.

Located atop the landmark Belturbet Library and Townhall Civic Centre, the hands are currently fixed at almost half-past one. Whether that happened in the day or night is not known.

But Cllr Fay says: “Its gone on long enough. I've been speaking and working with Cavan County Council and engineers in the area and we're close now to getting the work done. One things for certain, I won't let time stand still on Belturbet, not by a long shot.”

He adds that the Covid-19 pandemic has hit the country hard over the past three months, bringing drawing the economy to a near standstill, but Cllr Fay hopes the ticking of the clock in Belturbet once again can stand as a symbol of thing getting the economy going again.

In the local election in May 2019, Cllr Fay was elected and became the first Independent councillor in the county since 1999. He is also the first Councillor to represent the town at county in almost a decade and a half. Belturbet had a town council but it was dissolved following the realignment of local government in 2014.

The two-storey town hall, designed by Cavan architect and civil engineer Joseph Patrick Brady (1881-1936), was built in 1928.

The clock is a central feature of a building occupying a strategic position on The Diamond, which once served as the market square of Belturbet, a market town of significance since the seventeenth century.

A spokesperson for Cavan County Council confirmed to The Anglo-Celt that the repair of the clock at Belturbet Town Hall is programmed to take place this week.

The total cost of the works is not yet known.