This article is from page 12 of the 2009-10-13 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 12 JPG
SERIOUS questions have been raised over the way in which Clare County Council deals with inter- nal industrial disputes, following heavy criticism of the Local Govern- ment Management Services Board CRIN SD Ema (cio cer hmmm enleolBnttcame) i the local authority.
Speaking yesterday, Cllr Patricia McCarthy (IND) said that the op- eration of the council’s Human Re- sources and the LGMSB was been shown to be a flawed system.
“If you take the cost of LGMSB by itself then it would appear to be working and saving money. But when you go deeper into the debate you see that there are anomalies there and faults in the system which are not addressed,” she said.
“It seems that our system, wheth- er it’s because of the advice of the LGMSB, has something wrong with it and it is costing us money. If our HR unit 1s operating on the advice of the LGMSB then it would seem that this system would be faulty.
‘There are a lot of things concerned to this which are not clear and need to be tightened up. If we add up the costs of our own department and the
LGMSB and ask are we getting value for money, the answer would be no.
“IT have serious serious concerns about this. At the end of the day we have a picket outside of here today, and with all avenues in the labour court exhausted. Things should never be allowed to get to this stage. PW elem cer NOI Atm ome et-nimie(osuomsKmCoyon (oi en ets. wrong and it needs to be tidied up,’ the councillor said.
Commenting on the motion, Coun- ty Manager, Tom Coughlan said that the objective of the LGMSB is to save money for the local authority into the future.
“We are questioning every euro which we spend at the moment in the context of the budget in 2010, which is going to be a very difficult budget. In relation to our overall approach to industrial relations, my view is that we try and meet as many disputes as possible on a local level,” he said.
“We are going through a very dif- ficult time in relation to budgets. We are negotiating at the moments with unions and I must thank the unions for their cooperation in that process.
“The overall objective of the LGMSB is that we will be saving money in the future as a result of this board.”