NAAS 19 January 2003: Naas Town Council’s mayor, Cllr Timmy Conway, faces two motions of ‘no confidence’ at next Tuesday night’s monthly statutory meeting of the council, and the town clerk, Declan Kirrane, is also being asked to explain the legal grounds on why he refused to put a similar motion on the agenda for the December meeting.
The ‘no confidence’ motions from Cllrs Mary Glennon and Pat McCarthy are both based on claims that he has failed to chair recent meetings ‘in a fair and impartial manner’.
Cllr McCarthy had tabled a similar motion for the December meeting, but no motions appeared on the agenda. If the motion had been put to a vote on that night, it is almost certain that Cllr Conway would have had to use his casting vote to defeat it, which would have left his position perceptively untenable.
During a heated discussion on the matter, Cllr Conway became very agitated. At one stage he crumpled a sheet of paper outlining the motion, brought to him by Cllr McCarthy, and threw it down the council table.
Earlier, councillors had been told that ‘by tradition’, no motions were put at the December meetings. But it was recalled that at the December meeting in the previous year, three motions by Cllr Conway WERE on the agenda, including the one which agreed to twin Naas with Omaha, a move initiated by Cllr Conway without prior discussion in council.
If there is a full attendance at next Tuesday’s meeting, Cllr Conway’s position is probably safe, given the consistent pattern of voting in the council on contentious matters. It was known prior to the December meeting that Cllr Eibhlin Bracken, a longtime supporter of the mayor, would not be there.
For the same reason, it is likely that the motion by Cllr Glennon seeking to have the town clerk explain the legalities behind his failure to put Pat McCarthy’s no confidence motion on the December agenda will also fail, and Declan Kirrane may not be obliged to answer unless he volunteers the information in a ‘report’ on the motion prior to discussion.
