Limerick councillor expresses dissatisfaction with official meeting minutes

A LIMERICK councillor has said what appears in the recorded minutes of municipal meetings and what was actually said are “two separate things”.

At every Limerick City and County Council (LCCC) municipal meeting, minutes are taken to document the proceedings.

At the January meeting of the municipal district of Adare-Rathkeale, Fine Gael councillor Adam Teskey brought up a topic on whether LCCC is aware of any remuneration being paid to objectors to planning applications in his district.

The discussion on remuneration lasted for approximately 30 minutes, in a debate back and forth with correspondence from LCCC representatives and local councillors present. All that was documented in the draft minutes besides a reply from LCCC was that “Councillor Teskey expressed his dissatisfaction at the response to his question”.

At the beginning of every municipal district meeting, the council are asked to adopt the draft minutes from the previous meeting.

At the February meeting, Mr Teskey said he “couldn’t adopt these minutes” as such an occasion needed to be highlighted.

Administrative officer, Karen Butler told Mr Teskey that “minutes are circulated to everyone on the agenda” following the meeting and “if there are amendments we adopt them”.

According to Stephane Duclot, director of rural, community and culture development for LCCC, it is “up to the councillors to amend the minutes as they request”.

Mr Teskey then asked if Mr Duclot could change the minutes as he sees fit but Mr Duclot replied that he cannot amend the adopted minutes, only the draft minutes. It is up to the councillors to adopt the minutes of the previous meeting.

Mr Duclot also mentioned that this issue had never been brought up to him before this month’s meeting.

“I have raised this issue before in a meeting and Cllr O’Donoghue challenged me on it,” Mr Teskey replied.

Independent councillor John O’Donoghue said that the minutes are not inaccurate but they “lack detail”.

“What do you want them to do, write everything down? If we want to write everything down you’d need to chop down a forest,” Mr O’Donoghue quipped.

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Independent councillor Emmett O’Brien said that reducing a long debate down to one line “is a bit peculiar”.

“So what you are doing is censoring the minutes. You can remove or insert as you see fit,” Mr O’Brien said.

Mr Duclot once again reiterated that they are the “draft minutes”.

“I don't have the prerogative to change the adopted minutes,” Mr Duclot said.

Fianna Fáil councillor Kevin Sheahan who is retiring from politics at the end of this term said he has “never experienced any difficulty” with the staff that record the minutes.

“The staff that record the minutes are second to none, I wouldn’t swap them in the morning,” Mr Sheahan said.

Mr Teskey also agreed that this is “no reflection on them”.

Concluding the discussion, Mr Teskey, who is Cathaoirleach of the Adare-Rathkeale district said he intends to submit a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to view the minutes from the meeting before any amendments were made.