Mayor manages mudslinging from councillors with one eye on election

Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column with Dara Bradley 

You’d know there’s a general election on the horizon, with the way some city councillors are taking aim at each other in the Council chamber.
Mayor Mike Cubbard (Ind) ruled with an iron fist at the latest ordinary sitting of the Council, which ensured there were no unseemly out-and-out slagging matches between elected members. But there were skirmishes and snide digs aplenty.
Greens versus Fianna Fáil; Social Democrats versus Fianna Fáil; Fianna Fáil versus Fine Gael; and Independents versus Greens. It was hard to keep up.
Many of the flashpoints came during a discussion of that hot topic, climate change.
Pauline O’Reilly (Greens) was close to having a conniption when John ‘Comeback’ Connolly (FF), had the temerity, as she saw it, to welcome the Draft Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, which outlined some of the possible ‘positive’ impacts of global warming on the city – increased tourism, because of sunnier days and less rain.
In fairness, after one of the wettest August’s on record, reasoned John, the people of Galway might welcome a few more beach days. Pauline, puce, said he’d shown a complete lack of understanding of global warming.
In a tag-team against John, Owen Hanley (Soc Dems) chimed in, and said a 1% average increase in temperatures would bring hotter summers in Ireland and death in poorer countries.
Council employee Paul Patty, who prepared the draft strategy, was asked to adjudicate. They were both right, he said. There are potential benefits to Galway (more sunny days and increased tourism) but climate change will have a devasting effect on developing countries. A diplomatic response.
Pauline, the Greens general election candidate in Galway West, pointed out that only she and her party colleague, Martina O’Connor, had made submissions to the strategy. Colette Connolly (Ind), whose sister Catherine will face a challenge to her Dáil seat from Pauline, went bananas and issued a riposte about her “casting aspersions” on other councillors.
Earlier, John, a teacher, must’ve felt like a pupil getting told off in class when Pauline barked at him for interrupting.
“We can have a chat outside, if you like, but this is actually a Council chamber; now, if I could just make my point,” she snorted.
John was in the wars again later. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael had almost done a deal on a mayoral pact, but subsequently couldn’t cobble together the numbers (don’t mention the war!) and yet they were at each other’s throats about homelessness.
John lashed the FG-led Government for being out of touch, a Dublin-centric administration that cared little about the housing crisis. It was being propped up by FF, but he urged party leader Míchéal Martin to pull the plug on confidence and supply. Rookie Eddie Hoare (FG) made a meek response about Connolly having ‘some neck’. But it was left to seasoned Blueshirt Frank Fahy who gave FF welly, when reminding the Soldiers of Destiny of the Fianna Fáil tent at the Galway Races, where developers rubbed shoulders and drank expensive plonk with FF Government ministers, during the Celtic tiger construction boom. Civil War politics at its finest.

For more Bradley Bytes see this week’s Galway City Tribune