Dinner for councillors and officials adds to tensions at Limerick's local authority

MAYOR John Moran has questioned plans to spend thousands of euro on a hotel dinner for councillors as a fresh disagreement ignites with Limerick City and County Council Director General Dr Pat Daly.

The directly elected mayor warned it would be “politically unpalatable” to spend what he calculated as up to €3,000 on a meal after the people of Limerick faced a difficult budget.

But the local authority’s director general responded, insisting it is “normal practice” to provide such refreshments.

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It’s the latest disagreement between the two most senior figures in the local authority.

Councillors were due to gather at the Great National South Court Hotel in Raheen on Friday for a workshop on the council’s corporate plan - a blueprint for how the local authority will operate in the years ahead.

The meeting was scheduled from 4pm to 6pm, with councillors and staff booked to dine in the hotel restaurant afterwards.

But in a letter to Dr Daly, obtained by the Limerick Leader, Mayor Moran made it clear he had reservations.

“I was not comfortable with the pre-arranged idea to have a dinner paid for by our budget,” he wrote last week.

“After messaging about a difficult budget, the idea of spending €2,500 to €3,000 on this is not, I believe, politically palatable. I am happy to go for dinner — but not from the public purse.”

Sources insist the actual cost would have been far lower — and say councillors were never told the details of the proposed dinner.

Dr Daly defended the practice.

“It is normal practice when having a council meeting or workshop to provide refreshments for those attending, particularly at that time of the day when people may have come to the meeting directly from work or other engagements,” he stated in one of the emails, all of which were issued at the start of last week.

In the end, the workshop never happened. It was cancelled after an independent facilitator — brought in to oversee the process — withdrew.

The disagreement over the proposed spend on the meal was included in detailed emails over a dispute about the council’s corporate plan — who leads it, who organises meetings, who directs officials and who signs off on the final document.

Letters circulated by the mayor to councillors and senior staff show he believes he should be in charge of the process, including deciding who facilitates workshops and who attends them.

He said he was “surprised” that a workshop was arranged without consulting him.

Dr Daly, however, maintains that it is the elected councillors who ultimately decide whether the plan is adopted.

As Ireland’s first directly elected mayor, it is widely accepted that the respective powers of Mayor Moran and Dr Daly are poorly defined in law.

“These are of course teething problems being the first DEM,” accepted Mayor Moran in his email last week.

The disagreements first surfaced publicly last October when Mayor Moran criticised the council’s delivery of services, particularly around Christmas in an interview on local radio.

Dr Daly later sent an internal email to staff expressing his disappointment at the comments and in an unprecedented move, councillors passed a vote of confidence in the director general.

Earlier this month, however, Mayor Moran struck a more optimistic note, claiming relations had improved. “The last four or five weeks have been phenomenal,” he said. “We’ve seen a completely different change.”

Council did not respond to a request for comment on the email exchange of last week.