Dublin City Council housing committee set to hold fewer public meetings

Dublin City Council’s new housing committee is scheduled to sit for fewer public meetings, down from as many as 11 in recent years, to a planned six this year.

After the local elections in June, the newly elected 63-member council began its five-year term, organising itself into committees.

As part of this process, the remit of the housing committee was expanded to cover social inclusion too.

The chairperson of this new committee, Fianna Fáil Councillor Deirdre Heney, said at a meeting on November 2024, that she planned to hold six meetings each year, but that she would also organise more workshops and site visits.

Most council strategic policy committees meet every two or three months, but in recent years the housing committee has met monthly, due to the demands of the housing crisis, say councillors.

However, Heney says that offline workshops allow for better discussion and problem-solving.

“I want to work collectively with all parties to get the best results for citizens,” she says. “It’s my experience that when you’re trying to get agreement and get answers, it’s really good to work together in a workshop.”

Such committee workshops are generally held out of the view of the public and media.

Other councillors on the housing committee welcomed the idea of more workshops, but also said they would rather keep the monthly committee meeting.

Green Party Councillor Donna Cooney said she doesn’t think it will be able to get through all its work in half the time.

“You have to be there driving the direction of DCC [Dublin City Council],” Cooney says. “If you really want to be effective you have to meet regularly.”

Sinn Féin Councillor Daithí Doolan, meanwhile, said that fewer public meetings of the committee would mean less transparency.

“If things don’t get debated and discussed like they need to be, that in itself leads to a lack of transparency and accountability,” Doolan said.

Other committees

Dublin City Council has five local area committees, which meet monthly to discuss local issues.

It also has seven strategic policy committees (SPCs), on which councillors sit together with other people who have relevant expertise, to oversee council policy on specific issues.

For example, the housing SPC includes representatives from the homeless charity Focus Ireland, the Irish Council for Social Housing, the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, and the Construction Industry Federation, among others.

Senior managers within Dublin City Council also attend the meetings, provide presentations and reports and answer questions, and the meetings can be viewed by the public on the council’s webcast.

Most council SPCs sit every two or three months.

Doolan, the Sinn Féin councillor, says that it was agreed in 2014, when he was the chairperson, that the housing committee would meet monthly due to the demands of the housing crisis.

“Because it was such a huge mammoth task and there was so much work to get through,” he says.

That format stuck, and Labour Councillor Alison Gilliland kept the regular meetings when she took over as the chairperson.

Benefits of workshops

“The previous chair, Alison Gilliland, introduced the workshops … and I thought they were excellent,” said Heney at the November 2024 meeting, “where we can sit down and thrash matters out offline.”

By phone on Tuesday, Heney says that better in-depth discussions take place in offline workshops, rather than in public meetings – as private meetings are more collaborative.

She recalls a workshop on soup runs a few years ago. “Everyone spoke openly, nobody was speaking to the camera, it was really beneficial,” she says.

Councillors ask different kinds of questions when the media isn’t present, says Heney. “You can deal with matters in a more direct and succinct way.”

If there is agreement in a workshop that will reduce the time spent on that issue in the main meeting, says Heney. So she isn’t worried about fitting all the work of the housing committee into less time, she says.

Councillors get an opportunity to meet the relevant council managers in a less formal way at workshops, too, Heney says.

“There is no reduction in the amount of engagement, but it’s just a different way probably of doing it,” she says. “If it doesn’t work we can change it next year.”

Heney says she wants to set up a working group within the committee to look at issues in senior citizen complexes. She also wants members of the committee to visit social housing complexes to understand the issues council tenants face, she says.

She intends to arrange visits by committee members to major social and affordable housing projects, including those at Oscar Traynor Road, O’Devaney Gardens and Cherry Orchard.

“We spend a lot of time talking about things that we actually haven’t seen,” she says. “I want to go into the city council chamber to discuss Oscar Traynor Road having seen it.”

Disappointment

Social Democrats Councillor Mary Callaghan, who is on the housing committee, said she would welcome additional workshops and subgroups – but also would prefer to retain the monthly housing committee meeting.

“I’m quite disappointed,” Callaghan said, of the reduction in the number of public meetings.

The housing committee is the hardest-working committee, she says. “It’s such a high priority, it needs a long-term sustained focus.”

Said Doolan, the Sinn Féin councillor: “I think it’s a regressive step, there is a huge volume of work and it sends out the wrong message.”

The January housing committee meeting took two and a half hours, he says. With fewer meetings, the agenda could become bigger and more cumbersome.

“We won’t have the proper debate and discussion that is warranted and needed,” Doolan says.

The remit of the committee has also expanded since the last council term, to incorporate social inclusion, which is about combating racism and xenophobia, Doolan said.

Its full name is the Housing and Social Inclusion Strategic Policy Committee.

“Social inclusion now needs to be a central part of everything we do in Dublin City Council,” he says, “and that will add to the SPC.”

Councillor Cieran Perry, who is also on the committee, said he would like to reserve judgement to see how it works with fewer public meetings. “I’m not yet convinced one way or another.”

It could be a disadvantage to new councillors, who might not have the same background knowledge of debates around models of public housing, for example, as councillors who have sat on the committee for years, Perry says.

He also wonders if it might reduce opportunities for councillors to ask questions about important issues, if they are struggling to get answers from council management.

Cooney, the Green Party councillor, says the move could push more housing issues out of committee and into the main monthly council meeting. If a councillor isn’t getting answers from managers they need to ask the question publicly, she says.

“You can find out information that wouldn’t have come to light if you didn’t have them there [at the meeting in public],” she says.

Cooney says she can’t see how the work of the housing committee can be condensed into fewer hours. “There is just a huge amount of work,” she says.