CITY TRIBUNE
Councillors do not scrutinise 90% of Chief Executive’s reports
Bradley Bytes – a sort of political column with Dara Bradley
All 18 city councillors were circulated with a report from Brendan McGrath on Friday, March 5.
‘Turascáil an Phriomhfheidhmeannaigh Márta’ or the Chief Executive’s Report for March was a 65-page document. It was supposed to be dealt with at the ordinary meeting of Galway City Council on March 8.
It wasn’t. Nor was it dealt with at the March 22 meeting. And it wasn’t dealt with at the Council’s April meetings, either.
The March and April meetings’ minutes will record that it was “not considered”. It will disappear from future agendas, never to see the light of day.
Who cares? Well, you should. It’s your report; your taxes funded it.
The CE is required by the Local Government Act to prepare a monthly report.
It’s a mine of information. From financial figures, to updates on projects, and an overview of the activities of and services provided by the City Council, the CE’s report is usually comprehensive.
It does contain Council spin. And its authors, the CE and his colleagues who supply the information, certainly view the world from City Hall-tinted glasses. Perhaps that’s to be expected; there are enough knockers of Galway City Council without the CE doing it too.
What’s supposed to happen is this. The CE prepares a report. It’s forwarded to elected members days before the Ordinary Monthly Meeting of the Council. It’s discussed at the meeting, and councillors can question and challenge the CE on its contents.
Media present at meetings relay the contents of the CE’s report to the public, and give a synopsis of the discussion.
It’s how local democracy works. It sounds very simple. And yet, well, it’s not. Because that is not what actually happens.
What actually happens is the manager prepares a report every month. He gives it to councillors days before it’s an agenda item at their monthly meeting. They don’t get round to discussing it. It stays on the agenda for the following meeting, when it’s not considered again. It drops off the agenda after two meetings, to be replaced by a more up-to-date monthly report that invariably is ignored too.
What happened in March 2021 was not an exception. February and March 2020 reports – both “not considered”.
The CE reports for April, May and June were “deferred”. July and September reports were “noted” but not discussed.
Reports for November, December, January, February, March and now April were also “not considered”. The CE’s report was considered at the October meeting. That’s once in the past 14 months the CE was questioned on the contents of his reports.
When asked by this newspaper to release March’s report, the CE said ‘no’. He said the reports are prepared for consideration by elected members at Council meetings.
“They are therefore not ‘published’ and in the public domain until the point at which they have been considered and debated.
“The holding back of the CE’s Monthly Report or any other report from the media or others is . . . recognition of the mandate of the elected council and the responsibility of the Executive to uphold that mandate,” he said.
Brendan McGrath’s regard for councillors’ mandate is quite touching. But when less than 10% of CE’s reports are made public, and subject to accountability and scrutiny, it makes a mockery of the democratic principles he claims to uphold.
(Photo: In the past 14 months, councillors questioned Chief Executive Brendan McGrath on the content of his monthly report just once).
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From the Galway City Tribune – An impassioned plea for a ‘masterplan’ that would guide Galway City into the future has been made in the Dáil. Galway West TD Catherine Connolly stated this week that there needed to be an all-inclusive approach with “vision and leadership” in order to build a sustainable city.
Deputy Connolly spoke at length at the crisis surrounding traffic and housing in Galway city and said that not all of the blame could be laid at the door of the local authority.
She said that her preference would be the provision of light rail as the main form of public transport, but that this would have to be driven by the government.
“I sat on the local council for 17 years and despaired at all of the solutions going down one road, metaphorically and literally. In 2005 we put Park & Ride into the development plan, but that has not been rolled out. A 2016 transport strategy was outdated at the time and still has not been updated.
“Due to the housing crisis in the city, a task force was set up in 2019. Not a single report or analysis has been published on the cause of the crisis,” added Deputy Connolly.
She then referred to a report from the Land Development Agency (LDA) that identified lands suitable for the provision of housing. But she said that two-thirds of these had significant problems and a large portion was in Merlin Park University Hospital which, she said, would never have housing built on it.
In response, Minister Simon Harris spoke of the continuing job investment in the city and also in higher education, which is his portfolio.
But turning his attention to traffic congestion, he accepted that there were “real issues” when it came to transport, mobility and accessibility around Galway.
“We share the view that we need a Park & Ride facility and I understand there are also Bus Connects plans.
“I also suggest that the City Council reflect on her comments. I am proud to be in a Government that is providing unparalleled levels of investment to local authorities and unparalleled opportunities for local authorities to draw down,” he said.
Then Minister Harris referred to the controversial Galway City Outer Ring Road which he said was “struck down by An Bord Pleanála”, despite a lot of energy having been put into that project.
However, Deputy Connolly picked up on this and pointed out that An Bord Pleanála did not say ‘No’ to the ring road.
“The High Court said ‘No’ to the ring road because An Bord Pleanála acknowledged it failed utterly to consider climate change and our climate change obligations.
“That tells us something about An Bord Pleanála and the management that submitted such a plan.”
In the end, Minister Harris agreed that there needed to be a masterplan for Galway City.
“I suggest it is for the local authority to come up with a vision and then work with the Government to try to fund and implement that.”
The new Salmon Weir pedestrian and cycle bridge will be officially opened to the public next Friday, May 26.
Work on the €10 million bridge got underway in April 2022, before the main structure was hoisted into place in early December.
A lunchtime tape-cutting ceremony will take place on Friday, as the first pedestrians and cyclists traverse the as-yet-unnamed bridge.
The Chief Executive of Galway City Council, Brendan McGrath, previously said the bridge, once opened, would remove existing conflicts between pedestrians, cyclists and traffic “as well as facilitating the Cross-City Link public transport corridor over the existing 200-year-old bridge”.
The naming of the new bridge has been under discussion by the Council’s Civic Commemorations Committee since late last year.
One name that has been in the mix for some time is that of the first woman in Europe to graduate with an engineering degree – Alice Perry.
Ms Perry, who was from Wellpark, graduated from Queen’s College Galway (now University of Galway) in 1906. The university’s engineering building is named in her honour.
The bridge was built by Jons Civil Engineering firm in County Meath and was assembled off-site before being transported to Galway. Funding for the project was provided in full by the National Transport Authority and the European Regional Development Fund.
(Photo: Sheila Gallagher captured the city’s new pedestrian footbridge being raised on the south side of the Salmon Weir Bridge in December. It will officially open next Friday, May 26).
From the Galway City Tribune – Minister of State for Local Government and Planning, Kieran O’Donnell was labelled a “disgrace” for overturning councillors’ decisions to rezone land in the new City Development Plan.
Minister O’Donnell (pictured) confirmed in a letter to Council Chief Executive Brendan McGrath last week that he was reversing 25 material alternations made by councillors to the CDP 2023-29. He made the decision on the advice of Office of Planning Regulator (OPR).
Minister O’Donnell directed that 14 land parcels that were subject to land-use zoning changes by councillors as part of the Material Alterations to the Draft CDP should be reversed.
He directed that a further 11 land parcels in the city should become “unzoned”.
The Minister found that the CDP had not been made in a manner consistent with recommendations of the OPR, which required specific changes to the plan to ensure consistency with the national planning laws and guidelines.
At last week’s Council meeting Cllr Eddie Hoare (FG) asked for clarity on the process by which councillors could rezone the lands that had been changed by the Minister’s direction.
Cllr Declan McDonnell said, “What he [Minister O’Donnell] has done is an absolute disgrace”.
And he asked: “Do we have to have another development plan meeting to deal with it?”
Both Cllrs Hoare and McDonnell wondered what would become of the lands that were rezoned or unzoned by the ministerial direction.
Mr McGrath said the Council had put forward an argument in favour of retaining the material alterations in the plan, but ultimately the Minister sided with OPR.
He said if councillors want to make alterations to the new plan, they could go through the process of making a material alteration but this was lengthy.
The Save Roscam Peninsula campaign welcomed the Minister’s decision.
In a statement to the Galway City Tribune, it said the direction would mean the Roscam village area on the Roscam Peninsula will be unzoned and a number of land parcels would revert back to agriculture/high amenity.
A spokesperson for the campaign said: “the material alterations made by city councillors following lobbying by developers continued the long-standing practice of councillors facilitating a developer-led plan rather than an evidence- and policy-based plan that meets the needs of the city.
“The Minister’s direction is an important step in restoring confidence in the planning system. It is clear from the City Council’s own evidence on future housing projections that there was no requirement to zone these lands for residential purposes in order to meet the needs of the targeted population increase up to 2029,” the spokesperson added.
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