Planning

The first official meeting was on the 31st of May 1990. The committee first decided to think of a name for them. They thought among themselves and decided they would be a limited company because if they weren’t they wouldn’t be able to get a grant. Then Olivia White and Ann Daly thought of the name “The Mid Offaly Housing Association Limited. Everyone agreed that is what they should be called. They were building the houses for the elderly.
Chairman John Butterfield looked for advice on how much it would cost if they would get a grant and if they would need to hold fundraisers. He held a meeting with a man from the Department of Environment. He said there was a grant available that would suit their needs. It was £20,000 per chalet or £200,000 for the whole ten houses.
A few members of the committee wanted to know if they could get a grant for a Day Care Centre, so while John was at the meeting he enquired about this and found out he could get a grant of £20,000 for a Day Care Centre.
After this meeting John Butterfield spoke to the manger of the County Council. He estimated that it would cost £5,000 but there was no rush on the money. Later on the County Council dropped the price of the land to £2,000 and gave them free site services.
The committee drew up a rough plan of what they wanted. They gave it to Trina Daly who drew up 6 different plans. The committee had a vote, to see which plan they thought was the best and also to see if all the houses were going to be the same. The vote was 11 to 3 that all the houses should be the same and they picked Plan 2. When they were planning they decided to build it in a way that they could build more behind it in the future if this site went well.
Molly Buckley, the District Health Nurse, was the person who advised them who got the houses since she would be visiting the elderly she would know who needed them best.
All the people on the committee were glad to hear that if sadly the committee did go into liquidation they wouldn’t be asked to pay a lot of money to cover the committee’s debt. All they would have to pay out of their own pockets was £1.
Although everything else went well there were a few problems such as: site plans were changed due to rocky land; getting the grant was very difficult they had to work as hard as they could to get the Government to believe that they could get Ard Aoibhinn up and running; thinking of fundraisers that people would enjoy; getting everyone to agree on things and trying to get planning permission was very difficult.