Brid Smith’s Account of Dublin City Council Meeting Monday July 6 2009

Last Monday was my first full Council Meeting. The long and confusing agenda looked daunting. I thought I would never get my head around it but with a lot of help from Joan and Kieran, I think I got it.

After a long discussion on emergency motions dealing with the recent flooding in Dublin, we welcomed into the council chambers Maria Metcalf who is replacing Maureen O’Sullivan. It’s great to have another truly independent councillor on board.

The next three hours was taken up with Governance Issues – appointments to committees and council bodies (most of this sorted outside of the actual meeting).

Reports from the council officials on protected structures, disposal of properties and the granting of leases then followed. One report in particular was controversial.

A three-year lease to operate the market at the Red Stables in St. Anne’s Park, Raheny was awarded to Fingal Market Management. Previously this was held by the Irish Farmers Market.

I asked the manager to answer three questions on this

1. We are told this was the most favourable tender but we are not told Why – What were the conditions submitted that made this tender the most favourable?
2. Why is the rent – €7,200 per annum – so low? I had helped a friend run a stall at that market two years ago and the rent of a stall for one day was €75 plus each stall holder had to provide their own public liability insurance and deal with their own waste. In one day of the market (and it ran two days each weekend) they would pick up about €1,000 in rent from stall holders.
3.One of the Fine Gael Councillors has just reported that three of the workers employed at the market have lost their jobs and are not being given their rights under the Transfer of Undertakings. Is this so? And if so all councillors should vote against this to protect the pay, terms and conditions of our citizens.

The answers were totally unsatisfactory

1. This was the most favourable tender because they answered all the questions. Other tenders didn’t.
2. Yes the rent tendered was lower than other tenders but they filled other criteria
3. Any issues to do with the workers are between them and the employer. They are not the business of this council.

So that’s the answers and you get no chance to butt in and query it further. It goes straight to a vote and some sensible councillor called for a role-call vote (I think that is the term – it means each councillor has to call out how they are voting either for or against – instead of a show of hands). The Lord Mayor quickly informed us that she needed at least five councillors to stand up to enforce such a vote.

More than five of us duly did so and the roll call vote took place. The end result was 39 for, 14 against and 4 abstentions. I know all independents voted against but the rest I am not sure of where the opposition came from. It had to be a mix mash of a number of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail. What I did notice as it was glaringly obvious, was that to a man and a woman – all of the Sinn Fein and Labour councillors voted in favour.

It is shocking that they would not have serious misgivings about the awarding of this licence on the basis of the rights of the workers concerned being infringed, never mind a concern about the low rate of rent. We will be scratching and scraping around for money when it comes to the budget in the Autumn. This is the sort of area where we should watch the finances. The rates we are charging for rent are important and it seems to me that this sort of rate is ridiculously low.

Most importantly, the parties that claim to represent working people and who get their votes in the main from working people, failed again to represent their interests. I don’t accept what the manager says, that issues of workers rights are between the workers and their employer. I think that workers rights are our business too and especially the business of the left parties ie Sinn Fein and Labour.

After this, the only other area we had an input into was the reorganisation of committees on the northside of Dublin. I asked for time as a new councillor to consider the issues involved but the vote went ahead. And I believe the outcome was the one that the independents favoured most. So that was a good thing.

I had an emergency motion in condemning the closure of a respite ward in Cherryorchard Hospital and calling on the HSE to lift the recruitment embargo and employ the nursing staff required to keep the ward open. The practice in the council is that emergency motions will be dealt with quickly without debate. The motion on Cherryorchard was unanimously adopted. The council has no control over the HSE but it has to be worth something that the entire elected council of Dublin City has expressed its concern and wants the ward kept open. It will help our campaign for the hospital.

Another emergency motion on the Moore Street national monument was hotly debated. I am confused about this issue. I understand that the monument is safe and guaranteed in a deal done with the developers. Councillor Joan Collins worked on getting this passed last year. But another group of concerned citizens are now calling for more protection for this historic site. There are conflicting messages from different groups and it is difficult to have a clear picture. But one thing is clear from what happened here. If an emergency motion is not voted on by the time the meeting is ended, the motion falls. And this is what happened in this case.

Joan tells me that this is often used as a tactic to avoid a vote – drag the debate out until there is no time left and avoid having to take sides on the issue. This has been Joan’s experience on many occasions when she has put motions before the council on the bin tax.

Is this what “democracy” looks like?

We have the month of August free from meetings. Looking forward to the break and recharging the batteries because we will be hitting the ground running in the autumn on the Development Plan for the City and the Budget. We will be organising local public meetings on these issues to get the people engaged in these crucial issues.

Looking forward to that – See you in September.