Bradley Bytes
HSE-style democracy: ‘Our way or highway’
Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley
The HSE West Regional Health Forum is supposed to be a place where democratically elected representatives from counties right across the West, from Donegal to Limerick, question hospital managers and pen-pushers about how the public health service is run.
County and City Councillors, including a handful from Galway, use the forum to hold hospital management to account.
It is a useful arena to raise genuine concerns about problems in University Hospital Galway, Merlin Park and Portiuncula in Ballinasloe.
Councillors submit written questions in advance, and they are provided with answers at the meeting.
They can also ask follow-up, supplementary questions, and health officials are at the forum to respond orally.
It is a very open and fair system, even if the method of submitting questions in advance doesn’t allow for contemporaneous and topical issues of the day to be highlighted.
At the most recent meeting, City Councillor Pádraig Conneely (FG), attempted to raise the case of an elderly woman who died on a trolley while waiting to be admitted to UHG’s Emergency Department.
The tragedy occurred after the cut-off point for the submission of questions, and he was disallowed from raising it under Any Other Business. But they’re the rules.
No doubt he’ll table a question for the next meeting, and will not let it go. Nor should he.
Of more concern to democrats was the attempt by the executive to block and dissuade them from highlighting an issue of concern that they had with the Health Minister.
Members passed a motion calling on Simon Harris to re-open the Accident and Emergency Department at Roscommon Hospital.
One Roscommon councillor noted that the TD for Galway/Roscommon, Denis Naughten, had taken the ‘King’s shilling’ – a reference to the former FG TD who left the party over Roscommon Hospital, but who was now happy to serve as an independent Minister in Government that has stood over the decision he had protested so much about in the first place. But we digress.
The motion to reinstate Roscommon A&E was voted on and passed by a show of hands.
Managers, however, were not happy.
Before the vote, Ann Cosgrove, Chief Operating Officer at the Saolta group of hospitals, warned there were “no plans to reopen the Emergency Department” at Roscommon.
Tony Canavan, Chief Officer of Saolta, went further. “You can vote on it, you can pass it (the motion) but it won’t get past the top table because we don’t endorse it,” he said.
The health chief stopped short of patting them on the heads before sending them home with the motion between their arse cheeks.
In fairness, Canavan later backed down and – bless him – said the democratically elected councillors could send the motion to Harris, but with a note attached to say the unelected executive don’t agree with it.
Wasn’t that nice of him.
FF in dog house
Fianna Fáil is in the dog house.
The party’s three elected members on the City Council were rapped on the knuckles during Monday’s budget meeting.
As Chief Executive, Brendan McGrath, outlined in detail the contents of the budget, and responded at length, and in even greater detail to the questions asked by elected members about the budget, the FFers were getting restless.
Maybe they wanted to get home to watch celebrities in a jungle. But the more McGrath talked, the more bored they were getting.
Like schoolboys down the back of the class, they were fidgeting with their computers and phones, and chatting among themselves.
In fairness, Mike and Ollie Crowe and Peter Keane weren’t the only offenders – showing common courtesy to speakers in the chamber is a rule often not adhered to in Galway City Council these days.
But at one point McGrath couldn’t hear himself speak over the hubbub created by the FF whispers.
“I’m sorry to go on at length . . . I’m trying to be as open and transparent as possible,” he said.
He said he got off his sick-bed to come to the meeting and clearly wasn’t best pleased with some councillors’ attention spans.
And he said he would ‘shut-up’ if they weren’t interested in what he had to say.
“With respect,” responded Mike Crowe. “We’ve got some of them answers already (from other Council officials). There’s a bit of repetition there.”
Brendan then took the hump, and again said he’d say nothing more. And then classroom swots – many of whom were whispering and not paying attention to Brendan either – urged him to keep talking.
He obliged, but Brendan’s encore was very short.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
Bradley Bytes – a sort of political column with Dara Bradley
Galway Green Party Senator Pauline O’Reilly’s ears must have been burning last week.
City councillors didn’t mention her by name, but it was clear who they referred to. And they didn’t spare her.
Cllr Declan McDonnell (Ind) attacked her as a “one-term senator”; a slur he withdrew after Mayor Clodagh Higgins (FG) rebuked him.
There was “no need for that”, she snapped. But Classy Clodagh was not happy with Pauline either.
Declan fumed that a certain Green Party senator had gone on national radio and social media, misrepresenting what councillors had agreed at the previous meeting.
“It’s a disgrace,” he squealed. The unnamed senator (Pauline O’Reilly) hadn’t been at the previous meeting and had interpreted their vote arse-ways, was the gist of his rant.
Classy Clodagh agreed. “We all know what we agreed but the public needs to know; Twitter doesn’t know, Twitter needs to know,” she thundered.
There was more righteous indignation from Cllr Alan Cheevers (FF). The Chief Executive, Brendan McGrat,h needed to unleash the might of City Hall’s Press Office and issue a statement. Set the record straight.
He moaned about “misinformation” and “false information” spouted on the Wild West of social media, Twitter.
Pauline, as is her wont, clearly got under the skin of councillors when she criticised them last month.
On April 18, she tweeted: “The end of the Renmore Ballyloughane cycle lane happened last night. It beggar’s belief that another cycle lane in Galway has been voted down by all but two councillors. It is claimed that it would ‘block off access’. What this really means is that it would reduce car parking.”
This referred to a motion at the April meeting, tabled by Cllr Terry O’Flaherty, seconded by Cllr MJ Crowe.
The motion that was passed, read: “We propose that Galway City Council reject the proposals set out in the Ballyloughane Road/Renmore Avenue Active Travel Scheme in its present format.”
It passed by 14-2, with one abstention. Both Green councillors, Martina O’Connor and Niall Murphy, opposed it.
Councillors at the latest meeting complained the vote was misrepresented. They were angered by Pauline’s tweet and the national media coverage it had garnered her on RTÉ Radio One.
Councillors argued that the phrase “in its current format” meant it was not “the end” of the scheme, as she’d claimed on social media. Instead, the Council executive could come back with more palatable proposals.
Brendan McGrath concurred. He “didn’t see the need” to issue a statement to articulate the decision they made. It was “wrong”, he said, if that decision had not been communicated or interpreted correctly. But it was “abundantly clear” to management what councillors had decided.
Meanwhile, Pauline’s ‘offending’ tweet remains up.
(Photo: Pauline O’Reilly at the Mayoral Ball with Green councillors, Niall Murphy and Martina O’Connor).
This is a shortened preview version of this column. For more Bradley Bytes, see the May 19 edition of the Galway City Tribune. You can buy a digital edition HERE.
Bradley Bytes – a sort of political column with Dara Bradley
Fine Gael is getting desperate to find a candidate in Galway City East.
After a number of potential candidates turned-down requests to contest the Local Election in 2024, including pharmacist Barra Nevin, the party returned to the drawing board.
Sources have confirmed that FG is currently weighing up two ‘left-field’ options to run in this electoral ward.
One suggestion is to lure Pádraig Conneely back out of retirement. The corridors of power at City Hall have been quiet since controversial Conneely stepped away from electoral politics prior to the last Locals.
City councillors, many of them former colleagues of Conneely, have been whispering in recent weeks that his return to front-line politics may not be as far-fetched a notion as it was, say, two years ago.
At first it was said jokingly. But talk of the former mayor (or Mayor Emeritus as he refers to himself) making a comeback is growing legs.
A Marmite candidate, he has plenty of enemies, having attacked various policies and people during heated outbursts at Council meetings and in media interviews down through the years.
But he still retains a sufficient number of admirers inside and outside FG who grudgingly support his views, even if they’re a little uneasy at his abrasive method of articulating them.
That the former City Central rep is living on College Road, just inside the City East boundary, where there is a FG vacancy, has fuelled speculation that he could be welcomed back.
That’s a controversial call and one that will be resisted by many.
And it has led some in the party to look elsewhere for fresh blood. One high-profile man with impeccable credentials who is being sounded out is Galway senior footballer and St James’ legend, Paul Conroy.
It’s understood the Fine Gael organisation plans to approach Conroy to persuade him to put his name forward and will dangle the carrot of guaranteeing a shot at the Dáil, if he were to run in the Locals and take a seat.
A brilliant ambassador for the GAA, for his club and community, and for the Irish language, FG – and other parties – could do worse than to have Paul Conroy’s name representing them on the ballot paper.
There is an element of kite-flying by Fine Gael in touting Conneely and Conroy as possible election candidates to help win back the seat lost by John Walsh in 2019.
But if either could be coaxed onto the ballot paper (and it’s a big ‘if’), they would be serious contenders in a six-seater where Fine Gael has a natural support base.
It’s bound to be a topic of debate as the great and the good gather for Mayor of Galway Councillor Clodagh Higgins’ Mayoral Ball in the Ardilaun this weekend.
(Photo: Padraig Conneely)
This is a shortened preview version of this column. For more Bradley Bytes, see the May 12 edition of the Galway City Tribune. You can buy a digital edition HERE.
Bradley Bytes – a sort of political column with Dara Bradley
The haste shown by Galway City councillors in approving a €45.5m loan to buy Crown Square was unusual, as has been noted previously in this column.
That they approved a loan three days after they received an official report which detailed options, including a recommendation to move City Hall to Monivea Road, was atypical of an organisation that rarely rushes to do anything.
It has reverted to type, though.
An updated Crown Square report for city councillors, prepared by the Chief Executive, Brendan McGrath – who is one of the main proponents of the move – has been on the Council agenda since January of this year.
Four months and as many ordinary Council meetings later, elected representatives have still not debated its contents.
It’s taking them so long to get to the report, a cynic might suggest that they don’t want to discuss the Crown Square move because a number of councillors have had second thoughts on it, despite initially voting in favour.
Among those gone cold on the idea is Green Party councillor in City West, Niall Murphy, who said on Facebook that he had voted for the original plan “in the belief that there would be reduced parking at the Crown site”.
Cllr Murphy said McGrath “nearly had me in tears of joy”, when the CE “gave his best speech ever” about the local authority leading by example on reducing car-parking spaces at its brand new HQ. His tune has changed, though.
Niall’s reverse ferret came days after the Galway City Tribune revealed, through documents released under Freedom of Information, that the Council had struck a deal to buy 200 car-parking spaces, not 100 as originally planned. It “agreed to purchase 200 exclusive underground car-parking spaces at €3,087,500 exclusive of VAT”.
For Cllr Imelda Byrne (FF), it took less than a week after voting in favour of the loan to change her mind, after she claimed that councillors were “hoodwinked” about what the City Hall site would be used for once it was sold.
Other councillors, while still in favour of the move, are concerned that they were not given the full picture before they voted for it, and now they are vulnerable to criticism for approving something they clearly were not fully informed about.
Will councillors finally get to discuss the report that has been on their agenda since January, when they meet this May, or will it be long-fingered again?
(Photo: Green Party councillor, Niall Murphy).
This is a shortened preview version of this column. For more Bradley Bytes, see the May 5 edition of the Galway City Tribune. You can buy a digital edition HERE.
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