Mayo County Council has said it would look into the possibility of broadcasting its meetings online following a notice of motion from Fianna Fáil councillor Lisa Chambers.
Cllr Chambers said it would open up local democracy to people if they were able to tune in at home and see what goes on at council meetings and how matters are dealt with. There was support from across the chamber for the motion.
County secretary John Condon said the council would look into the various methods and the costs associated with the various options. He said that some initial investigations had already been carried out into one large local authority which does broadcast its meetings and only had an average of 10 to 12 people tuning in to watch.
He also reminded the councillors that if the council did broadcast the meetings, there would be issues of defamation and libel as the council would become a de facto publisher by broadcasting the meetings, whereas up to this the reports of the meetings were carried by other organisations which took on the risk of libel and defamation.
