COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, May 09, 2011

MOTION NO. 4

MOTION: Councillor M. Devine

That the Manager reaffirms his commitment to the Public Representatives of SDCC that a consultative approach is employed regarding all interests of Public concern including those deemed sensitive.

REPORT:

The County Manager is committed to a consultative approach in relation to operations of the Council.  To this end over the years a number of communicaton channels were established and systems developed to faciliate the management of information from the creation of the data through to the distribution and maintenance of information thereby providing constant access of information and data to Public Representatives.

CMAS:  The Council operates a meeting administration system which is a repository of in excess of 27500 items.  All these items were either submitted by Elected Representatives or Management for consideration before and during various formal and informal meetings (approx 30 types ranging from Council Meetings, CPG Meetings, Annual Meetings, Budget Meetings, Area Meetings, Development Plan Meetings, Organisational Procedure and Finance Committee Meetings, Special Meetings,  SPC Meetings etc) held since 2004. While a considerable amount of the data available within the system is publicly available some of these meeting records are only made available to Public Representatives for reasons of sensitivity / in committee sessions etc.

Membersnet Website: This website dedicated to Public Representatives was developed as a channel of choice for public representatives through which information (eg news, documents, links etc) not necessarily available publicly is relayed to members.  Another specific purpose of this site is to ensure complete consistency in content and dissemination.

Members Representations:  This dedicated system was developed to facilitate individual Public Representatives in making their views / suggestions / complaints known to the Council in the knowledge that the system allocates consistent timeframes for response and that performance across all departments are subject to ongoing monitoring from the point of view of quality of response and compliance with target timeframes.   To date a total of almost 21,500 representations  has been submitted and responded to through this system.

The Manager has always operated an open door policy and frequently has party / individual members / grouping meetings with Public Representatives as well as collective briefing sessions on various issues. However notwithstanding the foregoing there may be occasions when for varying reasons it is not possible to consult / discuss certain matters of a purely executive nature/commercially sensitive/ or for reasons of security/H&S,  with Public Representatives at a particular time.