At meetings, Dublin City Council officials push to answer councillors’ questions away from public view

At the 15 November meeting of the South Central Area Committee, independent Councillor Mannix Flynn asked for a report about Tailors’ Hall in the Liberties.

Specifically, he wanted to know more about how the council agreed to sublet the historic council building, which is a protected structure and was recently converted into a public house with beer gardens without any change in planning permission.

Dublin City Council has kicked-off planning enforcement proceedings. But Flynn still wants to know how the situation came about, he says, and why the decision to sublet wasn’t brought before councillors.

He asked Bruce Phillips, the South Central Area manager with Dublin City Council, to provide a report to councillors.

The item wasn’t on the agenda, said Phillips. “I’m not going to attempt to respond to you on this. But I’ve noted the points that you are making. I’m happy to meet you outside of this meeting to go over the points you’ve raised.”

At the 8 November meeting of the housing committee, People Before Profit Councillor Hazel de Nortúin got a similar response when she asked for a report on vacancy in council-owned homes in Cherry Orchard.

Robert Buckle, a senior engineer with the council, said that he would come back to her privately: “I don’t want to say on the floor here this morning.”

Like Flynn, de Nortúin refused to accept the private briefing.

Taking discussions away from public view is far from a new phenomenon, but there is evidence, particularly in some areas, that it is happening more.

The council’s housing committee has seen an increased number of private meetings, with most discussions about the council’s response to homelessness and its homeless services now taking place in the homeless subcommittee, which is not open to the public or media.

Some councillors say that discussing city issues in private meetings can be beneficial, freeing people to speak as they want, and to cooperate more. That collaboration leads to better outcomes, they say.

Others, though, contrast this unfavourably with past council terms, arguing that a retreat behind closed doors is bad for accountability and the governance of the city.

Private responses to public questions

At the South Central Area Committee meeting, Flynn, the independent councillor, asked repeatedly for a report on Tailors’ Hall, the historic old guild building that the council leases to the heritage body An Taisce.

“An Taisce, which I have huge respect for, are charged with protecting the environment and indeed protected structures,” he said. “I just don’t understand how they allowed a public house to go in here.”

He asked how the situation came about, and why the sublease wasn’t brought to the South Central Area Committee for agreement.

Flynn asked the area manager for a report, suggesting that it could be provided at the next meeting of the South Central Area Committee.

Phillips suggested a private meeting.

Flynn said he would meet Phillips but he also pushed for a full report. The council owns the building, he said. “This is a very valuable building in an area that is short on community buildings.”

Right to Change Councillor Sophie Nicoullaud, who chairs the committee, asked Phillips to provide a report.

Said Phillips: “Once it’s put on the agenda that we will deal with it as part of the council meetings processes.”

Flynn pushed again for a report to be brought to councillors on the issue. “There is something very amiss here,” he said.

Nicoullaud asked again whether Philips would agree to provide a report. “Can we agree to have it for the next meeting, on the agenda?”

“I’m not trying to be evasive here,” said Phillips. “But I’m just kind of trying to respect the processes that are in place.”

In the end, he appeared to agree to provide councillors with a report. “Certainly that we can put it on a future agenda here,” he said.

Flynn says that answers to questions asked in public should be provided in a public forum so that all councillors and the public can be informed.

He has noticed an uptick in this kind of response, he says. “It’s been coming in for a while. It’s in order that you don’t get to the truth.”

By offering to provide answers to him in private, “they are excluding the public and they are excluding other councillors from the process”, he says.

Dublin City Council didn’t respond to queries sent Friday as to why answers can’t be provided publicly to Flynn’s and de Nortúin’s questions.

De Nortúin, the People Before Profit councillor, says she thinks there is an increase in responses being offered privately – and generally less accountability than in the past.

“It’s too friendly,” she says. “The chamber before Covid was a lot more robust, you could get a better debate going.”

Things seem to have changed, she said. “We have lost the fight for holding them to account, instead it’s who can get the ear of the manager.”

Labour Party Councillor Darragh Moriarty says he also thinks there has been an increase in officials offering private briefings, which isn’t ideal for transparency.

“It isn’t done in the full public gaze as it should be,” he says. “There is, I think, a growing tendency to do that.”

However, there are times when closed-door briefings are useful, says Moriarty, allowing for a  more frank exchange of views. “There might be limitations to what they can and can’t say in a public setting.”

Or, sometimes conversations can only be held in private because of legal constraints.

Offline meetings

There is a trend too of entire meetings involving elected representatives and relating to the city’s housing programme being held in private within Dublin City Council.

Three housing committee meetings were held as offline private workshops this year, meaning they aren’t webcast and open to the public.

In October, the housing committee of Dublin City Council met for an offline workshop to hear a presentation by the Land Development Agency (LDA).

The presentation covered the role of the LDA, practicalities around the cost-rental model including affordability and what happens if a tenant has a change of circumstances, according to the minutes of the meeting.

It also discussed the existing LDA land banks and the procedures for councils transferring lands to the LDA, as well as Project Tosaigh, which involves the LDA buying lands that already have planning permission.

That sounds interesting, but the presentation wasn’t shown then to the public because it was a workshop for councillors.

Councillors and officials had decided at the February 2023 housing committee meeting to hold some of their regular meetings offline as workshops.

“It was agreed that off-site visits & workshops for members of the Committee would substitute some monthly meetings,” say the February minutes of the housing committee.

In July, the offline workshop discussed homeless day services, well-being, and the affordable housing scheme, according to a work plan.

Most debate around homelessness and the city’s response now takes place in an offline forum, the homelessness sub-committee.

Flynn says he doesn’t think it is appropriate to push most of the discussions about homelessness into a subcommittee meeting that doesn’t meet in public. Homeless services appear to be deteriorating and he is struggling to get responses, he says.

However, some councillors say there is value in doing work behind closed doors, as it leads to increased collaboration and better outcomes.

Green Party Councillor Hazel Chu, who chairs the homelessness subcommittee, says that councillors can still raise homelessness queries in the housing committee if they wish.

“It is never the case that we discuss it here and we can’t raise it anywhere else,” says Chu.

She did ask Flynn to take his questions offline in September though, when he raised the case of a homeless woman assaulted by a staff member of a hostel.

“But one thing I will say is in relation to any issues, especially tragic issues that come up, I would ask that councillors go directly to staff and talk to the staff,” Chu said to Flynn.

“I think approaches where we ask in this manner, on the council, where it sounds almost accusatory, really doesn’t help,” Chu said.

The council managers have not issued a report into the incident to the housing committee since then.

Said Chu, earlier this week: “If people have a concern about things being taken offline let’s have a discussion here on homelessness every month.” No one has asked for that so far, she says.

Chu says that before the homelessness subcommittee was set up, people raising issues in the housing committee sometimes asked questions in a challenging way, rather than working collaboratively.

“It’s a lot more collaborative rather than people making it into theatrics,” she says.

A balance needs to be struck between public and private meetings, says Chu. “You need some privacy so people can work well together.”

The public also needs to be able to access information about what the council is doing, she says.