This article is from page 18 of the 2012-11-13 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 18 JPG
CONFUSION reigned at last night’s meeting of Clare County Council where the councillors appeared to be asked to vote twice on the same issue – with the result of the first vote being reversed on the second occasion.
The situation concerned two motions in which Clare County Council asked the elected members to allow the council to raise two loans to cover firstly, the costs of overspends on road projects – including more than € 3 million on the Gort Road distributor road in Ennis – and a second to cover the extra cost an affordable housing scheme at Glaise na Rinne.
An applications to approve a loan for overspends involving road was approved – but only after a motion put forward to Cllr Johnny Flynn (FG) to defer the vote was defeated. Cllr Flynn requested that this vote was conducted on a roll-call basis, where the votes of each councillor would be recorded in the minutes of the meeting – but this motion was rejected by the Mayor of Clare Pat Daly (FF). The vote was then decided on a show of hands, with the way in which individual councillor voted not recorded on the minutes of the meeting.
The vote resulted in 13 councillors voting to defer the decision for a week to allow for more information to be presented with 17 voting to approve the motion as it stood.
A similar motion, which asked that a decision on taking out a loan to cover the extra costs of the afford- able housing scheme at Glaise na Rinne, was proposed by Cllr Gerry Flynn (Ind).
A show of hands vote was called on this motion of deferral and 16 councillor votes in favour of deferring the decision – a majority of the 30 councillors in the chambers at the time.
This vote was not completed however, and the number of councillor who were against the proposal to defer the decision, and those who planned to abstain from vote was not recorded.
Following a heated debate, Mayor of Clare Pat Daly asked councillors to vote again on the motion and this time, with all 32 councillors present, they voted by a majority of 18 to 14 to approve the loan and not to defer a decision for a week.