Galway Councillor declares as Independent

national | miscellaneous | other press Friday June 30, 2006 01:52 by Mike

Catherine Connolly leaves the Labour Party

The American journalist Charles A Dana once wrote: “Fight for your opinions, but do not believe that they contain the whole truth, or the only truth.” The common sense of his statement was been borne out at Monday’s city council meeting.

At the meeting a majority of councillors voted to discuss proposals to change the starting time of the monthly Monday council meetings to the afternoon.

Generally council meetings start at 6.30pm and often run past 11pm. As City Hall officials pointed out on Monday, meetings are legally meant to end at 10pm so reform was needed.

Councillors also feel the overly long meetings are not working. Many point to the fact that despite sitting in council chambers for four plus hours often little is done. Most councillors work from 8am/9am, meet in various council committees, meet constituents, and then go to the Monday meetings straight afterwards which will not finish until will into the night.

By that stage people are tired, tempers are frayed, and concentration levels poor, and many feel this is no way to run the city. Many councillors also argue that their homes have become little more than B&Bs with being away from the home so long. They also feel that time with their families is compromised by meetings running on so late.

A mood for change had been building up and the feeling was that an afternoon start with the meeting ending in the early evening would bring the Galway City Council into line with other local authorities, see more productive meetings with greater work done, and allow councillors some personal time in the evening.

However Cllr Catherine Connolly has argued that changing to an afternoon starting time was anti-women, anti-family, anti-worker, and anti-children and she reiterated this stance last night.

Eventually a new starting time of 4pm was proposed and the matter was put to a vote. The vote was held and the result was nine votes in support of the new time and five votes against. Despite the fact that democracy had spoken Cllr Connolly refused to accept the vote and proceeded from this point on the disrupt the meeting by continentally interrupting, talking over the Mayor, and refusing to accept his appeals for calm. She also announced that she was now an Independent councillor and no longer a Labour councillor - to the surprise of many in the chamber.

Mayor Ó Brolcháin pointed out to Cllr Connolly that a motion she was championing concerning the Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was due for discussion and that it was time to move on to this issue now that the vote on the new meeting times had been passed.

However Cllr Connolly continued to indulge in disruptive behaviour. It was felt her behaviour made it impossible to proceed with the meeting so Mayor Ó Brolcháin - reluctantly as he pointed out - invoked council standing order 40 which allows for a councillor indulging in “disorderly, offensive, or improper behaviour” to be expelled from the meeting. Nine councillors voted for her to be removed form the meeting. Five abstained.

Despite, or because of, a second vote that did not go her way, Cllr Connolly persisted in her disruption of the meeting by refusing to leave. Mayor Ó Brolcháin was left with no choice but to call the meeting to a halt.