Councillors seek to ensure straight, clear answers from council managers and staff

The mood in the council chamber at City Hall seemed reasonably upbeat as the South East Area Committee convened for its October meeting.

As Dublin City Councillors filed in, the layers of a string quartet performing "A Whole New World" from the

Aladdin soundtrack floated up the winding stairs from a wedding reception in the rotunda.

But, the room soured as Bernard Brady from the council's Parks Department provided the elected members with a financial overview of the Merrion Square tearoom.

The project, which originally began in 2015, has an approved budget of €7.5 million, according to a Local Government Audit Service report for 2025

Somebody described it to her as the Children’s Hospital of the south-east inner city, said Green Party Councillor Claire Byrne. “Eleven years to deliver a tearoom is questionable from the outset.”

But, it was Fine Gael Councillor Danny Byrne who seemed particularly irked. He spoke for three minutes straight.

He had asked for an update on the tearoom almost a year ago, he said. “I can’t believe I had to ask in February, and we’re having someone come before us in October.”

He also submitted a question on the tearooms for the meeting too, he said. “The answer again is very unsatisfactory. It does not answer any of the questions.”

He requested the original budget, he said. “No clear original approved budget or original estimated completion date from 2015 has been provided.”

There was no original tender price, current contract value or forecast final construction cost was provided, he said.

For him, it was an example of the inadequate answers that council officials sometimes provide to elected representatives, Byrne later said at the council’s protocol committee meeting on Thursday 22 October.

Byrne, at the protocol committee meeting, tabled a motion that noted that “concerns have arisen” about replies to the questions of councillors which do not fully address a query, the motion said.

The council needs to undertake a review of the standards governing the responses to formal questions, the motion said.

Independent Councillor Kevin Breen said there was some discussion at the meeting regarding the motion, and that he agreed with Byrne’s position. “Council questions are a function of the council and councillors need to hold the executive to account.”

Those answers need to be both forthright and transparent, Breen said.

A spokesperson for the council said that they would issue a report in response to Byrne's motion at their next protocol committee meeting on 26 November.

Of varied quality

When TDs have asked in the Dáil about the mechanism for monitoring how council staff handle queries from councillors, they've been told that it's nothing to do with the Department of Housing and Local Government.

"It is a matter for the elected members to hold the Chief Executive to account with regard to issues such as timely and substantive responses to representations made by the elected members to the Chief Executive and other local authority staff," said Minister for Housing, Fianna Fáil's James Browne in September last year.

Some councils do that through "standing orders", he said. That's each council's rulebook on how it runs meetings, and council business.

Dublin City Council does lay out in its standing orders the process to lodge written questions, for staff to answer on behalf of the chief executive. But the rules don't say anything about a process to follow when councillors are unhappy with a response.

Social Democrats Councillor Karl Stanley doesn’t have a huge amount in common with Fine Gael Councillor Danny Byrne, he said on Tuesday. “Like, geographically or politically.”

But when he saw the motion, it interested him, he said. “This resonates with my own experience.”

He has only been on the council for a year. For the best part, the answers has he gotten back have been fine, he said. “I’ve had a few where there were issues with timeliness or quality.”

Times when he’s asked if the council could restore a bin somewhere, he said. “And they give you a response saying there was never a bin in that location, so you have to go send them a photograph.”

“But I have also had responses that have been, for want of a better word, petulant,” he said.

Byrne’s motion captured the feelings of frustration among some councillors, says Fine Gael Councillor Clodagh Ní Mhuirí.

“Any time these questions come up we’re looking for information for an issue that a constituent has approached us about, or we’re trying to get an update on something that’s important for the city,” she said.

It’s an important part of the job, she said. “It’s challenging when you go to the trouble of putting in a question and what comes back is vague or doesn’t tell you anything new.”

Byrne told the protocol committee that in order to get actual updates or information on certain matters, he has considered making requests under the Freedom of Information Act instead, said Social Democrats Councillor Cat O’Driscoll on Friday.

In July 2023, Fine Gael Councillor Ray McAdam floated the idea of using Section 140 of the Local Government Act 2001 – a rarely used provision that lets the councillors that orders the council's executive to do something –in an effort to find out why the council had at the time rowed back on its plan for installing bike bunkers.

Difficulty getting clear answers is an issue she has encountered frequently since first becoming a councillor, she said. “It’s not across the board. Some departments are very good at answering the questions. But then sometimes your question isn’t sent to the right place.”

How council staff deal with the queries that come in may be subject to change too. It's one of the areas in which they are exploring a greater use of AI, triggering among other questions, whether such output should be labelled.

Appeals

Byrne’s motion also asked the committee to agree that there needs to be a clear procedure through which elected members can seek review and corrections for replies if they fail to address their questions, it says.

Officials told the committee that currently, every question gets sent to the head of the relevant department within the council for approval, said Stanley, the Social Democrats councillor. “I suppose part of what we need to do is make sure that actually happens.”

The main request from councillors is for more oversight, Ní Mhuirí said. “In theory that is there at the moment. All of our area committee questions are reviewed by the area manager.”

Everybody is highly professional within the council, Stanley says. “But I would be worried that there is maybe a culture, maybe allowed to develop where they would rather not give straight answers where possible.”

The motion was agreed, a council spokesperson confirmed on Friday.