The Galway City Council made two housekeeping decisions of note at its November meeting earlier this week. One was to permit the participation of members meeting in a socially distant manner; members can now Zoom into the proceedings. The second was to defer the annual budget meeting; originally intended to take place next week but now put back to November 30.
Looking at the former decision first, Insider is sure citizens will see it as nothing more than what should be expected of a modern democratic forum. Most employees working through the lockdown will have become well accustomed to Zoom, Teams, Webex. Why should the deliberations or determinations of the city council be any different? One would expect this opportunity to participate from the home or office will be second nature and standard practice to tech-savvy members.
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The second decision incites a spark of excitement among our council members. The council budget is one of the very few areas where the elected members are considered to have some authority or power. That this power is only an impression was highlighted by the delay in holding the budget meeting, a situation which arose from the chief executive not having an adequate opportunity to prepare the draft budget, owing to uncertainty about council income following the Covid rates waiver scheme.
The effect of the pacts
Following last year’s local election, this newspaper quoted an unnamed councillor describing the formation of the current pact that followed that result as “changing everything” with its membership excluding both the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael for the first time in some time.
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There was fanfare and colour with visions and expectations of fresh thinking, new ideas, and that things would be different from this point forth. The attentive observer might have noticed that six of the 10 pact members were part of the pact of the previous five years, and that it included three of the longest serving members of the council - Declan McDonnell, Donal Lyons, and Terry O’ Flaherty.
The main attraction of the pact is the positional spoils, who gets to be Mayor, who gets to be deputy mayor, who gets the lucrative positions and posts. Aligning political priorities and policies is only a very minor afterthought.
'Allocations of funding go through no formal assessment process and the equity of some groups getting frequent benefit, but others getting none, arises'
One additional perk of being a participant in the pact is agreeing the perceived distribution of monies, during the council budget procedure, to projects or more often, to community groups within one’s electoral area. These monies are created from minor cuts to other areas of expenditure.
Looking at the minutes
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A quick review of the minutes of budget meetings over the past number of years highlights an increasing number of organisations seeking a slice of this pie. The minutes also highlight that numerous projects, for which councillors claim credit for obtaining monies at the budget time, have never seen the light of day indicating again that the power really lies with the paid officials in our local government system.
'Fine Gael now forms the biggest group within the current pact. Will this see a change of practice?'
These allocations of funding go through no formal assessment process and the equity of some groups getting frequent benefit, but others getting none, arises. In response to a recent piece on local radio, where a local soccer club complained that the local authority was ignoring its requests for fencing around its facility, one councillor proposed a motion asking the council to carry out the work.
The response of the officials was a “no-can-do”. The club could do with having a word with one of the other colleagues in the ward who have been granting funding in recent Galway City Council budgets.
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Another evident trend in the minutes of the budget meeting, and something clear to those of us who observe Galway City Council proceedings, is that for a decade now, the councillor to whom responsibility fell for proposing the budget was Cllr Declan McDonnell.
This has not been a coincidence. Cllr McDonnell has a background in accounting and finance, but more noteworthy is his ability to strike deals, recognise prospects or limits, and keep people on board together. Political affiliations, colours, philosophies, or beliefs can all be put aside.
But will this year be the same? Interestingly, Cllr McDonnell finds himself outside of the pact following the “pact of great change” breaking earlier in the year. Fine Gael now forms the biggest group within the current pact. Will this see a change of practice or can we expect the continuation of the established one?
