Father Ted feel to the latest ‘hybrid’ Galway City Council meeting

Bradley Bytes – a sort of political column with Dara Bradley

Galway City councillors could be forgiven for feeling they were being treated like imbeciles at the start of the June ordinary meeting.

Meetings administrator, Gary McMahon, was explaining the rules of the meeting, which held as a hybrid – in-person at Leisureland and remotely, using online technology.

It would last no longer than one hour and 55 minutes, to comply with Covid-19 regulations, he said. Then he explained to them – slowly – how to use the microphones.

“Not too close to your mouth and not too far away,” said Gary, with the air of a boarding school principal addressing morning assembly.

Patronising? Yes. Necessary? Also, yes, probably.

In fairness, the acoustics in Leisureland are cat melodeon.

Grand for Comedy Festival gigs where there’s one person on stage communicating with a receptive audience. It’s just not suited to local authority meetings where half of the participants are attending remotely, via Zoom. Unless used correctly, the mics are useless.

The meeting started at 3pm but they hadn’t even finished the first item – minutes of the previous meeting – when technological problems emerged.

“It’s impossible to hear,” shouted Colette Connolly (Ind) into her laptop screen, when one of the officials, Brian Barrett, was replying to her question. He’d possibly missed Gary’s introduction.

Colette was attending remotely. She, too, was difficult to hear, for anyone based in Leisureland; her voice dipping and fading at various junctures during her contributions. Not that anyone alerted her. Maybe they didn’t notice. Or maybe nobody needed to hear more Colette. She can have that effect on colleagues.

At 3.48pm, with Colette in full flow about something or other, the Shantalla-based councillor was cut off suddenly.

If you didn’t know any better, you’d claim it was deliberate.

Alas, while councillors – and City Hall management – may have wished Colette would stop talking, there was no evidence to suggest they had successfully willed it to happen.

No, apparently it was a technical glitch, breaking the connection between the real and virtual attendees.

“They’re all still online, it’s just that my thing is gone,” assured the poor unfortunate man at Leisureland who was responsible for ensuring the ‘thing’ wasn’t ‘gone’.

King of Knocknacarra, Donal Lyons (Ind), proposed an adjournment until the technical fault was resolved.

Those in Leisureland had an idea what happened – the screen showing online participants went dead. Collectively, they just sat and waited until it was fixed.

But what about those attending remotely; were they sat at home alone, frantically trying to find what button they’d hit that made them lose connection, or did they even notice?

After about five minutes, the meeting resumed. It continued without technical glitches, bar some spontaneous outbursts of ear-piercing screeches from microphone feedback and muffled sound and annoying echoes of online contributors.

Because of Covid-19 time limits, the meeting was adjourned ’til next Monday. Maybe they’ll have the hang of hybrid by then.

(Photo: Councillor Colette Connolly).
This is a shortened preview version of Bradley Bytes. To read more, see this week’s Galway City Tribune. You can buy a digital edition HERE.