A motion has been issued by Fine Gael councillor Patsy O’Brien calling for more transparency on decisions made by strategic policy committees. Cllr O’Brien’s motion called for all decisions made at SPC level to be made an agenda item at the main council meeting each month.
His party colleague Cllr Seamus Weir supported the motion. “In some cases, minutes of SPCs just come here and are passed because only the councillors who are on them know what happened at the meeting,” said Cllr Weir, who went as far as asking for SPCs to be abolished, saying, “I think they are a talking shop and we should get rid of them.”
Other councillors to express dissatisfaction included Cllr Michael McNamara who said, “The flow of information we get from them at present is not enough.” Cllr Damien Ryan added, “They haven’t served this council well, we are not getting enough info on them and the decisions that are made there.”
However Cllr Michelle Mulherin put forward a strong case for the SPCs. “The minutes of every meeting of an SPC is on the agenda that you get, and all that comes out of SPCs are recommendations and it’s up to this chamber here to pass them and bring them into effect,” she said. Cllr Peter Flynn agreed. “All that comes here from SPCs are recommendations and they have to be ratified here before anything happens with them,” Cllr Flynn said.
Cllr Eddie Staunton also pointed out the good work that can be done in SPCs. “In the housing SPC that I chair you only have to look at the way that we were able to sort out the problems with the home repair grants, and a lot of people have really benefited from them since then,” he said.
In response, county secretary John Condon stated: “I have no difficulty with the motion. Some of the SPCs are working well and some aren’t. As was pointed out, they don’t make decisions, only recommendations, but we can have items put on the agenda in relation to recommendations as separate items on the agenda in future.”
