IT APPEARS the crux of the bickering and rowing between councillors and the Mayor – one-sided though it may be – is simple really.
The veil slipped at this month’s Adare-Rathkeale meeting to reveal our local representatives, – mostly those of the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil persuasion – are no more than green-eyed monsters.
The lords and ladies out in West Limerick were in an awful flap, and not for the first time, over who gets to deputise for the Mayor when he’s not available himself – despite not having a kind word for him at the best of times.
Why? Well, it upsets them because, as far as they are concerned, the Mayor has something they believe is rightfully theirs. These well-fed folks, who can sniff out a buttered scone like a hound at Schiphol Airport, are of the opinion that it is they, and not our first citizen, that should be front and centre at the cuttings of ribbons and the openings of envelopes throughout our fair county. It is they, and not Mayor Moran, that should be getting their photo in the papers, rubbing shoulders with the top set on a weekly basis.
Fine Gael won’t work with the Mayor. There’s more chance of Jim Gavin winning Landlord of the Year. And with the Council’s annual budget only weeks out, you can bet your last Rolo there is some scheme afoot for headline-grabbing high jinks to steal Moran’s thunder.
What was witnessed at this month’s meeting of the Adare-Rathkeale district came as no surprise, but nonetheless it was mortifying.
The Council’s answer to Statler and Waldorf – Fine Gael councillors Adam Teskey and Stephen Keary – conveyed their moral indignation at Independent councillor Tommy Hartigan representing Mayor Moran at the opening of the new Reilig Mhuire graveyard extension in Askeaton. The pair of them were up to high doh over the proper protocols not being followed.
Teskey and Keary are a law unto themselves at the best of times at local authority meetings. But on this occasion, they were sticklers for rules and regulations. We only fell short of a motion to see if butter would melt in their mouths.
Cathaoirleach of the Adare-Rathkeale District, Fianna Fáil quiet man Cllr Ger Ward, as it turned out, was supposed to be doing the honours at the burial ground shindig. But as luck would have it, he had bigger fish to fry at the Ryder Cup in New York.
Saying more words at a Council meeting than I have heard him use to date, Cllr Ward told his fellow councillors that he notified the Mayor’s office that he wouldn’t be available for the boneyard gig and “that’s the end of it”.
His party colleague Cllr Bridie Collins, Leas Cathaoirleach of the district, was having none of this. As second in command in the Adare-Rathkeale war-room, she pointed out that it was she, and not the young Cllr Hartigan, who should have been cutting the ribbon.
Independent councillor John O’Donoghue admitted he would have jumped through hoops to have had the chance to cut the ribbon if the Mayor had asked him. Being the Cinderella of the district’s political pack, he cried out that, alas, he is usually “left with the crumbs”.
Keary and Teskey wanted probing of this great slight, and wouldn’t rest until this issue was taken up with the directly-elected Mayor directly.
Cllr Hartigan, in fairness to him, had the good sense to sit this meeting out altogether.
Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.