FINE Gael councillor Olivia O’Sullivan has taken issue with an alleged comment made to her by Mayor John Moran one year ago in which he told her: “Hurry up, you’re late. I’ll have to dock your pay.”
Speaking at last Thursday’s adjourned mayoral fund meeting, an emotional Cllr O’Sullivan said that she has found herself working in a very challenging environment over the past year within the local authority.
“If we’re clearing the air today, there’s something that I want to say. When I arrived to the budget meeting last year, the Mayor said something to me that took me aback. I’d arrived to do our business on a tense day and I passed the Mayor in the corridor when he said, ‘hurry up, you’re late, I’ll have to dock your pay’,” Cllr O’Sullivan told the chamber.
“I cannot understand how the Mayor felt it was okay to speak to me in that way.”
The Fine Gael woman said she was “embarrassed” by the comment and was uncomfortable raising it in the chamber a year on.
“No Council official, no director, would ever speak to me like that. There are plenty of councillors here I can disagree with who would never speak to me like that. I’m not used to experiencing that condescension. I was embarrassed by it, and I’m not comfortable raising it now,” the City North representative revealed.
“Why am I letting a comment like that live in my head, revisiting my notes in disbelief that it was said to me, instead of handing it back to the person who made me feel that way? What I wish I had said was, ‘who do you think you are speaking to me like that? And how dare you speak to me in that way.’
“So I’ve said that now, and that will clear the air for me, and I will echo the calls today for respect to be restored in this chamber, respect from all sides,” she added.
Cllr Dan McSweeney (FG) complimented Cllr O’Sullivan for setting out the issue they are dealing with as an organisation.
“I think the remarks that were passed were completely unacceptable, and we’ve spoken about respect many occasions in relation to this chamber. But my type of respect and your type of respect are two different things,” he told Mayor Moran.
Cllr Daniel Butler (FG) said of his party colleague: “I know her and I have worked with her for a long time. I have a huge respect and huge regard for Cllr O’Sullivan, both professionally and personally as an individual, and I know that her saying that is something that she hasn’t done lightly and without due consideration.”
“I know that she’s not a person that easily gets upset. So it’s very difficult to see a colleague upset like that in the chamber, especially in such a public forum. I know it must not have been very easy for her to have shared that in that way. And I want to acknowledge that strength of bravery that I know she has. I’m sorry that she had to endure it.”
Mayor Moran apologised to Cllr O’Sullivan before the meeting adjourned for a third time without dealing with the business on the agenda.
“Cllr O’Sullivan, I’m sorry if you took offence to that. I’ll remind you that was at a time when one of your own party colleagues was at a meeting suggesting that I should have my expenses removed if I didn’t come to a meeting at all. If you took offence at the joke in the in the corridor, I apologise for that,” he said.
As a matter of practice, the Mayor of Limerick, in his role, does not have the power to dock the pay of any councillor or civil servant.
– Local Democracy Reporting Scheme