WASN’T life much easier for John Moran prior to June 7 last? There he was with his faithful companion Henri, shooting the breeze and giving his mayoral vision the hard sell to a public that couldn’t lap it up fast enough.
His trusty Irish Setter and Limerick’s First Dog, Henri, certainly did him no harm on the campaign trail. A dog is man’s best friend, as they say.
Councillors, on the other hand, are a different breed altogether. Often rabid and always barking the odds at you.
Things took an interesting turn at this Monday’s full meeting of Limerick City and County Council, with most local representatives wagging their tails with glee at the prospect of the new ‘Mayor’s Questions’ section of the meeting.
A first for Limerick, and the rest of our canine-loving isle, councillors got to interrogate Mayor Moran – in the case of Fine Gael way at least – while the first citizen handled the questions of the day.
Councillors were giddy with anticipation and couldn’t wait to be trotting off after their little bone.
Teething problems, we were told, were to be expected. And teething problems we certainly got, of the-dog-ate-my-homework proportions.
Fine Gael councillor Sarah Kiely and Sinn Féin’s Ursula Gavan were first up with the questions. What could go wrong, right? Well, as it turns out, plenty, and – if you were reading between the lines – it was all apparently Corporate Services fault.
The Mayor’s written replies to the two questions on the agenda were only sent to councillors 10 minutes into Monday’s meeting, which did not go down at all well. Councillors were barking mad, and Cllr John Sheahan suggested the item be adjourned until later in the meeting so Council members could get their heads around the Mayor’s replies.
But no. Cllr Daniel Butler (FG) wanted answers.
“What’s the delay? Maybe there’s a genuine reason for it, but some people might be suspicious about why they have been put up so late,” he woofed.
Cllr Sarah Kiely was not enamoured either, saying she had “no time to consider the reply because it was uploaded during this meeting”.
“Mayor’s Questions is supposed to be open and transparent, I wouldn’t call it that. I don’t think anyone else would either.”
After having their backs scratched and tummies rubbed, councillors agreed to come back to the Mayor’s Questions later in the meeting after they got through the other business in the agenda.
Mayor Moran wasn’t out of the woods yet and would do well to remember that it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. Councillors had the scent of blood in their nostrils now.
As it turned out, when they did get back to the questions, Limerick’s local representatives now had more pressing questions that they wanted answered.
Such as “when was the reply written?”, “why were we not given it before the meeting?”, and quite possibly “where were you at approximately 12.30pm on November 22, 1963?”
“I spent the weekend writing the response. I needed some numbers to be clarified because I don’t like getting them wrong and it was given to the Corporate Group long in advance of me coming here. They had the responsibility for putting it up,” Moran informed the chamber.
Once bitten twice shy.
