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Newry, Mourne and Down District Council has been urged to do everything in its powers to end a “culture of behind closed doors” politics as councillors are being “hammered” by the public.
Newry, Mourne and Down District Council (NMDDC) is now due to trial a new system to bring about more open session debates in its chamber, following a member’s plea that elected reps were “getting it in the neck” for a lack of transparency.
In one three month period (March -May 2022) NMDDC held almost 100 items away from the media and public under one particular exemption within the Local Government Act, which concerns commercially sensitive material.
At this week’s strategy, policy and resources committee, Slieve Gullion SDLP rep, Pete Byrne said: “At times there are 20, 30 and sometimes even over 60% of items on a council agenda that are put in to confidential session.
“We got to get away from reports going into closed session that we could be putting partially or fully in to open session.
“We talked about the Belfast City Region report earlier on, in this meeting, as well as mobile phone masts and there were no costings in that there, why would that not be in open session?
“If I was sitting as a reporter, looking at this agenda the only thing I would want to talk about is probably Newry swimming pool and the Belfast City Region Deal, which were all in closed session.
“We are getting it in the neck from people and I know all councillors are getting it in the neck, by people saying, ‘we don’t know what’s happening in the council as its all behind closed doors’.
“If people are feeling as if all business is done behind closed doors, we must do everything in our power to try and fix that, because we are being viewed negatively from the public for that reason.”
He added: “We respect commercial sensitively on matters and I just don’t want to open the floodgates.
“We have never taken out commercially sensitive information, unlike some, but we’ve got to respect that we can’t just turn round to people, asking about the amount of items in confidential session and just say, ‘well that’s the policy’.
“Other councils are not getting hammered the way we are getting hammered for not being transparent enough and not being open.
“We’ve reached below 50% for this committee, which is good, but let’s make it a proposal that we can separate reports and appendices on any commercial sensitive information.”
The proposal by Cllr Byrne received support from Downpatrick Sinn Fein councillor, Oonagh Hanlon.
She said: “I absolutely agree, it is a really, really important topic and you are quite right that we seem to be under more scrutiny than other councils, in terms of what we are debating in open session.
“I know councillors will agree that we have nothing to hide and we are very transparent as far as we can be.
“We do maybe need to consider separating commercially sensitive material, in order to have an open discussion on other items.”
A local authority officer responded: “We are trialling this at the next active and healthy committee on Monday (Aug 21).
“On a particular item, one of the appendices couldn’t be in open session, but the report and another appendices could.
“Whether it is as easy going forward we are not sure, but we are trialling it to see if it is going to work.“
