COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL
MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL
Monday, April 12, 2010
QUESTION NO. 19
QUESTION: Councillor E. Walsh 2009
What measures is Council management undertaking to ensure that the interests of constituents who live in the South Dublin County Council area are properly represented and addressed given the IMPACT Trade Union's instructions to their members not to answer communications directly or at all from democratically elected Councillors acting on their constituents' behalf?
REPLY:
Impact members commenced Industrial action by way of work to rule on Monday the 25th of January 2010, Siptu, the Craft Unions and LAPO commenced on the 1st of February 2010. Set out below is a summary of correspondance received by management from the Public Service Unions in relation to Industrial Action associated with the processing of Elected Members Public Representations:
L.A.P.O. Union
- Letter dated 26th of March to each City & Co. Manager from Maurice Hearne (branch Organiser Siptu/Lapo).LAPO wrote to elected representatives outlining their position
Point 8. Non Co operation with political representations from political parties/individual politicians who support the imposition of pay cuts on workers
- 25/3/10 Email from Branch Executive L.A.P.O.
We have asked our members that they are no longer to answer members net queries,for politicians from government parties or Fine Gael.
Impact Union
- Letter dated 23rd February to each City & Co. Manager from Peter Nolan (National Secretary L.G. Division)
Point 6 Political Representation Members are instructed not to process political representations from government part TD’s or Senators or local authority Councillors. This includes oral and written representations. This is to include TDs elected to the Dail and Senate from Fianna Fail, the Green Party and former Progressive Democrats who supported the Governments attack on public servants pay.
- Letter dated 16th March to each Branch Secretary which the union have verbally reported represents their up to date position, point 3 details
Refusal to deal with all political representations including Dail questions and F.O.I. Requests
The decision to extend this to all representatives reflects a concern that the action needs to be seen to be effective in stopping the flow of information that arises from processing parliamentary questions, regardless of the source of the questions.
During this period the Council has continued to positively communicate and interact with the citizens and customers of South Dublin County. Since January 1st almost 1 million page views of the SDCC website were made during a quarter of a million user sessions. 110,000 phone calls were handled by staff, this compared to 80,000 for the same period in 2009. 64,392 web-based Customer Care queries were processed. 1,254 Public Representations have been received to date, 790 (63%) have been processed fully and are closed off, 120 (10%) are open and within the timeframe allotted and 344 (27%) are currently open and outside of the allotted timeframe.
A proposed Public Service Pay Agreement 2010 - 2014 brokered by the Labour Relations Commission is currently being discussed and consequently balloted on by the Public Sector Unions.