NAAS, 26 November 2002: If there’s a more gauche chairmayorman of a town council in Ireland than Timmy Conway appears to be, he or she has to become a record in the Guinness book of same.
And the two guys from the Respond Voluntary Housing Organisation, who came last night to give a presentation to Naas Town Council, must have been very bemused indeed at what they heard. Even though in the nature of their work they attend many local authority meetings and must have some experience of their highs and lows.
They didn't look old enough to remember Frank Hall’s mythical Ballymagash UDC. But some of us are. And so is Tim. And maybe that's from where he has taken the model for his chairmayormanship.
I used to attend Naas UDC because it was the best free entertainment of the month. Now it is a total cringer.
That’s not the reason I haven’t been there for a while. I’m just worked to raw fingertips at the moment, work that puts food on the family table. It’s the time of the year when I'm in heavy demand. But I’ve been reading the reports from my colleague Trish in the Kildare Nationalist. And, oh, how I’ve missed the meetings.
Though after last night, I'm wondering why. Because seeing someone making a fool of himself is not a pretty sight.
Not in a position to miss the meetings have been Tim's fellow councillors. And, from last night's observations, they're clearly tired of being dealt with in a dictatorial way. Especially those the dictator doesn't like. Even those by tradition 'on his side' are seeing their worst nightmares come true.
The nightmares that caused some of them to do their best to persuade him not to take the chairmayormanship, right up to an hour or so before the last AGM of the council. I'm told there were several meetings that day which failed to make him change his ambition.
Now the strains are showing.
Willie Callaghan was uncharacteristically quiet last night. I understand from reports of other recent meetings that this is lately not unusual. At one stage of Tim's outbursting, Willie had his head in his hands.
Seamie Moore, bothered about the lack of information on the progress of motions previously agreed by the councillors, told Tim that as chairmayorman he helped Progress Reports 'go through the Council like a flash' and with no real information being made available.
Pat O'Reilly at one stage suggested to Tim that he 'had a chip on his shoulder all night', and even town clerk Declan Kirrane had a go at the chairmayorman's pronouncement that any council member had a 'right to see' files in the council office. "It's wrong to say that any council member can walk in and ask to see any file," he declared, protective of his civil service domain. And he said that there were 'confidential' files which he 'was not prepared to circulate' to councillors.
Which begs a small question, WHO does the town clerk serve? Is 'open government' part of local government? Or is local government a 'secret service'?
Charlie Byrne, not one of the so-called 'gang of five' even if he is a Fianna Fail councillor, made the very fair observation that the chairmayorman should be 'refereeing' the meeting instead of taking sides.
At other times last night, every other councillor except Eibhlin Bracken - who for years has regularly swapped proposals and secondments with Tim on delegating to fact-finding seminars and conferences - vocally registered their objections to remarks by the chairmayorman. Remarks much of the time made against Mary Glennon.
Remarks which began at the very start of the meeting when Tim, brusquely, even truculently, and setting the tone for his performance in relation to her for the rest of the evening, refused Mary's request for a suspension of Standing Orders when she asked for 'a clarification of the right of way' into the Oldtown Demesne lands donated to the town of Naas. She has been particularly interested in this matter for some time, and recently forced the revelation from the Town Council that an original promise of 20 acres of Oldtown by owners Lehmex International has shrunk to something around 15 acres.
As it happened, pushed by a seconding from Pat McCarthy, Tim eventually felt obliged to put her request to a fast vote, that was downturned by the 'usual suspects' or the 'gang of five', whichever is the current preferential designation of the standard majority support to Tim's side of the table.
There were several further contretemps between the pair during the meeting. In a discussion on a Pat McCarthy motion about planning compliance in a local estate, Mary referred to 'enforcement of the planning laws' and was quickly shouted down by the chairmayorman, one of whose political financial supporters is a developer who regularly uses the 'build first and ask for retention' system. Most recently in Naas.
Phrases used at different times by Tim in relation to the same Mary included 'you're trying to drive us insane', 'she doesn't accept anything', 'you try to disrupt every meeting', 'don't be giving us lectures', and - to the Respond people - 'certain people here have certain agendas ... [but] I welcome you with open arms'.
That last brought almost everyone around the council table up in arms. Which might have indicated that almost everyone could conceivably have been guilty of 'having certain agendas'. If one used the principle that 'he who doth protest too much'. Which I don't.
There was a certain amount of business done at last night's meeting, which was the continuation of the adjourned previous statutory meeting. But that's another set of stories.
Meantime, and again, my personal apologies for not being able to keep KNN up to the regular standard of what you've come to expect in an independent news service. It IS a busy time of the year for me elsewhere, and I WILL be back in full flow in the New Year, Deo volante.
