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[Press Release: October 11th, 2005] 50% Reduction in Council Meetings is Bad For Democracy says De BurcaGreen Party councillor, Deirdre de Burca has criticised the recent decision by Wicklow County Council to cut the number of its meetings by 50%. This decision was supported by a majority of Wicklow County Councillors at last Monday’s council meeting. They voted to reduce the number of full council meetings to 11 per year and to replace these with a greater number of local area committee meetings and 6 special council meetings each year.Cllr de Burca spoke strongly against the motion at last Monday’s meeting. She argued that the proposal to reduce the number of meetings was made last September, following the negative publicity that the council received in the national media after its controversial rezoning meeting last July 2004. "We saw that meeting go into the early hours of the morning as a rezoning frenzy took place" she says. "However, following the negative media coverage, all seventeen of the last-minute rezoning motions were withdrawn or significantly modified. Many councillors were very sore about this coverage and so the proposal was made that council meetings be reduced in number and that they be replace by local area planning meetings for each of the five local electoral areas." The Green Party councillor argued that by pushing council business into local area meetings, the councillors were avoiding the transparency and accountability that came from conducting their business at full council meetings where the media and members of the public were present. She also pointed out that these new arrangements would let the County Manager and his senior officials "off the hook" as they were not legally obliged to attend the local area meetings. "The Manager will be delighted with the decision we have made here today" she said. "We have also ensured that the public will know less about the council’s business as neither they nor members of the public tend to attend the local area meetings. What councillors have decided today will definitely be bad for democracy in County Wicklow."
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