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DUBLIN CITY COUNCIL members will be the first of the county’s four local authorities to have their say on whether a plebiscite of residents should take place to decide on the issue of having a directly-elected mayor.
Councillors be asked to vote on whether a referendum on having a first citizen with executive powers should be put to the people of Dublin on the same day as the local elections, on 23 May.
The three other authorities will also hold votes on the issue in coming days. All four have to back the proposal for the plebiscite to go ahead, however — and it’s expected Fingal will veto the move.
Mayor of the north Dublin authority, Fine Gael’s Kieran Dennison, said earlier this month that he expected the majority of members to vote against the plan.
Former mayor, Independent Cian O’Callaghan, said he agreed with Dennison’s assessment, but said that he is in favour of holding the plebiscite and of having a directly elected mayor.
Speaking to The Irish Times the Fine Gael councillor Dennison said his stance was about “protecting the minority against the decisions of the majority”.
On his website, Dennison argues that the proposed plebiscite “is not to decide for or against a directly elected mayor for Dublin but rather for a particular type of directly elected mayor with specific powers and responsibilities”.
Local Government Minister Phil Hogan has not stated explicitly whether he is for or against having an elected mayor with executive powers.
Speaking at a briefing on the issue last year, he said the move would be “a major shift away from what is there at the moment, a shift away from the management structure to an elected person”.
The other three councils are expected to back the plan for a plebiscite in the coming days.
Speaking yesterday, leader of the Fianna Fáil group on Dublin City Council Mary Fitzpatrick said the change in how the county is run could provide people in the capital with real and accountable political leadership.
“I have experienced at first hand in New York and other cities just how effective a directly elected mayor with executive powers can be in transforming the social, economic and cultural life of a city,” Fitzpatrick said.
The Fianna Fáil councillor — who is also running in the European elections — criticised the way the issue was being handled by Minister Hogan, and said he had set a “particularly high bar” for the plebiscite to happen.
“If, for example, 27 out of the 52 Councillors on Dublin City Council showed up on Monday and two voted against then the resolution to put the plebiscite to the people would be lost.”
Note: This article has been amended to reflect that Cian O’Callaghan is in favour of a plebiscite on the mayor proposal and of having a directly elected mayor.
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So what. Saudi Arabia is supporting Hillary, and donating money to her. I’d take Russia over an Islamic fundamentalist state any day, and it amazes me that liberals simply don’t care
@Homer’s imp son: I care but its stupid that it has to come down to these two eejits. There are other candidates out there better than Trump or Clinton, maybe not the best but better than these two, all people have to do is vote for them if they weren’t such sheep.
After America rejected the only half sane candidate Bernie Sanders, and his followers were mocked, I think it’s perfectly clear that the American people are beyond redemption
Makes sense, Hillary and her backers will go to war with Russia if she gets elected. Trump wants to improve relations. Its a no brainer ffs!
@Chris: Hillary works for the military complex financial squad anyway, make Russia the enemy and then sell more weapons to NATO countries?
Whether you like it or not America is s Republic, and as such the people have chosen the candidates. There are five names on the ballot, that’s four more than in Russia
I think Putin knows the Military Industrial Complex are backing Clinton and they are gunning for Russia.
There’s a reason the neo-con warhawks are backing her.
Well she did say Putin was the new Hitler in an interview last year….Neocons are wetting their pants at the thought of her in charge although saying that Trump is a complete clown so the options are both FUBAR.
They (Neo Zio/ Cons) hate Christian Russia and the fact that Putin outsmarted them in Ukraine and Syria.
@alan
@Alan Tright: Yes to create the same situations that caused WW1…
Alois, Are you saying that the Americans are going to assassinate the Archduke?
The whole situation is absurd, it’s like a school yard game of ‘whose side are you on?’.
Well if anyone knows what is best for America it’s Vladimir Putin. I’m sure he has the Americans best interests at heart.
Putin is a man of few words and many deeds. Trump is a man with a big mouth and nothing else.
That’s not true… Trump also has small hands.. and we all know what that means… small gloves…
At the end of the day the planet is safer with a trump and putin then a hitlery at the helm.. the neo cons are just waiting to get going’ as one of them said ‘on nukes’ “what’s the point of having them if you can’t use them”.. and with theresa may saying nukes are not off the table and would us em’ hitlery and may together would be an absolute disaster… interesting times ahead
Clinton didn’t have any issues with potentially closer relations with Russia when she was leading the ill-fated Russian Reset: “On 6 March 2009 in Geneva, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented Sergei Lavrov with a red button with the English word “reset” and the Roman alphabet transliteration of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet word “peregruzka”. It was intended that this would be theRussian word for “reset”.”
Later found to be a very poor translation. In any case the fact that Clinton as Secretary of State tried to thaw relations is hardly news or an issue. Putin didn’t play ball, he started to assert Russian ‘power’ again and the attempt failed. Nothing wrong with trying to warm relations but we all know what Russia is really like now and that Trump is at least somewhat tied to the worst aspects of the regime there and in the Ukraine.
@Gerard McAuliffe: Ukraine is full of neo Nazis who have issues with Stalin and blame this generation of Russians for him as they ethnically cleanse anyone in Ukraine with Russian blood using neo Nazi symbols on their uniforms, far right paramilitaries and money from the IMF to buy weapons?
We would all take Putin over Hillary you know it’s true!!
@Alex Jones: Why don’t you try living in Russia for a while before you commit to browntongueing that little runt of a dictator?
Putler could certainly give Trump a lot of good advice about acquiring wealth by abusing power; it is estimated that he and his family have creamed off at least $20 billion of the wealth of Russia, a country where millions live in or close to outright poverty. Even if Trump is worth half the billions he claims to have, he is only trotting after the Russian dictator.
On the other hand, although he was – and still is at heart – a KGB thug, there is really little that Putler could teach Trump about mendacity, duplicity, bigotry, disregard for human rights and respect for other countries’ sovereignty.
Come on Fintan, name one leader who’s been financially impoverished by power. They are all corrupted by it even at small nation and local levels. It’s a lot of pots calling a lot of kettles black-arsed.
As for Putin, I think we can safely call him a dictator, and doesn’t seem perturbed by morals. He is however one of the most capable and pragmatic world leaders in a long time, the sufferings he has caused is a lot less numerous than those caused by the war on terror and similar western campaigns of the same era. So both ‘sides’ need to condemned together. The only real difference is that Putin, while benefitting himself, has been openly acting as a ruthless champion for his own nations interests whereas the US/EU leadership have been covertly championing the interests of ‘the (their) market’, regardless of the people.
@Greg Blake: Can no one see how evil Hillary and Obama is, Obama will spend 1 trillion dollars on new nukes in the next 10 years, why???
Obama is out of office in 4 months. How exactly will he achieve this spending? Must be a really nice pension.
@Dave O Keeffe: Obama is war mad, the military financial complex mad.
http://fortune.com/2016/09/13/us-israel-military-aid/
I just want to know what trump and putin are smoking lol jees louise it must be some strong stuff lol
“His remarks were a clear allusion to Trump” Sounds more like paranoia to me. Hillary and Obama are only using Russia and Putin to blacken Trump because they can’t say what was great about Obama’s reign as president because Obama and Hillary belong to the same party and to the same government?
So Hillary can’t condemn herself or Obama or say what she is going to do because it will be the same as Obama’s but she can be racist towards Russia, call the half of America who supports Trump as traitors and anti American, she spreads muck and uses her pals in the media to spin the muck, just like the McCarty Trials all over again…
“We are carefully watching what is happening in the United States and we, of course, view with sympathy those who publicly state that it is necessary to build a relationship with Russia, on basis of equality,”
If you were a leader of a country would you want the candidate like Hillary that says she would start a war with you and Iran or a candidate that wants peace, what would you want?
You have an awful happen of ending statements with question marks.
@Dave O Keeffe: Yes I do but what do people want, peace or war with Russia as Hillary said she would attack Russia and Iran, vote for Hillary and she probably start WW3. Is that what people want.
Then you ask a question and use a full stop.
have your say