Interestingly back in July as news was soon to break that six of our senior local authority bosses had received performance related bonuses of almost €70,000 last year, the EPA was being notified by Galway City Council that big problems were brewing in Galway.
Yep, as we now know it was July 30, not last Tuesday that was D-Day in this latest water crisis. And now the media’s glare and public outrage descend on Galway City Council and its officials once more.
These situations are, of course, complex and in our rush of anger and indignation we often assign blame before actually engaging our brain. As has been noted elsewhere no one is blaming the council for causing this problem. Lead pipes have been laid throughout the world for centuries. It is, however, their response to this problem that must be questioned.
Mayor Padraig Conneely last week called the council’s decision to withhold the information from the councillors and the people of Galway a cover-up, a claim that has been strenuously denied by the top officials.
Fair enough, but a time when the effectiveness and efficiency of public servants everywhere is being questioned you’d think we’d see a pro-active bunch of civil servants rushing to, at least, inform people they could get sick by drinking the water. Again.
Over these past years - under the reign of our officials at City Hall, and their political masters up in the Department of Environment in Dublin - Galway’s reputation goes from embarrassment to debacle. Crypto left us without water - unless we boiled it - for 158 days. And here we go again. For how long this time we don’t know.
In the real world the pressure would be mounting on our non-elected officials - the real bosses of Galway City’s councils. Their handling of this latest crisis has been at best pondersome. As our mayor noted, confidence is slipping away. But of course as they are civil servants, and accountability is a dirty word, any talk of a last chance is ridiculous, but if our city manager and his underlings want to maintain - or restore - the confidence of this city, this is their last chance to demonstrate a sense of leadership and control, that for these past years seems beyond them.
