Mayor Willie wants private 'gloves off' meeting
NAAS, 4 April 2002: by Brian Byrne. Naas Mayor Willie Callaghan wants the town’s councillors to have a special ‘in committee’ meeting along with town clerk Declan Kirrane where they can sit down and ‘overcome’ problems ‘with the gloves off in private’.
And he has demanded a ‘commitment’ from all councillors that they will attend such a meeting.
His comments came at the beginning of last week’s adjourned March meeting when he said he didn’t ever want to witness again the ‘kind of carry-on’ which had occurred at previous meetings.
“I wasn’t given the respect that I should have been given,” he told the councillors angrily. “It was an absolute disgrace,” he added, echoing the descriptions of most of the reporters who had recorded the meetings of the last few months.
He then rounded on the journalists in general and complained bitterly that they had given the council ‘bad press’ in their reporting of the recent rows which have characterised the council’s proceedings. He specifically mentioned that no coverage had been given of a ‘good news’ story from the previous meeting, relating to the Naas Town Council Roads Programme 2002.
©2002knn