Councillors to fight Manager ‘head on’

THE decision by the City Manager, Brendan McGrath, to end the local authority’s involvement in refuse collection is to be challenged by a number of councillors next Monday.

A motion – submitted by Cllr. Colette Connolly – will attempt to use Section 140 of the 2001 Local Government Act to seek a reversal of the City Council’s ‘executive decision’ to withdraw from refuse collection.

The ‘head-on’ confrontation between a number of councillors and the City Manager will be the subject of a special meeting to be held on Monday evening in City Hall at 4pm.

The Galway City Tribune has learned that the City Manager, will be referring to senior counsel legal advice when he responds to the Section 140 notice, something rarely used in local government affairs.

A Section 140 notice is designed to counter balance the executive powers of a city or country manager with the wishes of the elected representatives of a local authority.

This week the proposer of the motion, Cllr. Colette Connolly (Labour) told the Galway City Tribune that the elected representatives of the city were being treated with ‘utter contempt’ by the City Manager on this issue.

“We only received an email last Friday from the Council executive on this issue and yet it was there in front of us at a meeting on the following Monday afternoon,” said Cllr. Connolly.

She added that when privatisation occurred in Dublin, the consequences had been disastrous with an increase in illegal dumping and a huge ongoing clean-up bill for the local authority.

“What will happen with all the special offers that the private operators are dangling in front of customers when the City Council pulls out of the service.

“When this happened in Dublin, there was a 50% increase in charges and the same thing will happen in Galway. The Council just didn’t get their message across about the service they were providing,” said Cllr. Connolly.

However, the City Council are pressing ahead with their privatisation move with public advertisements placed in the local and national press, seeking expressions of interest for the provision of the household waste collection service.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.