Fingal County Council members have voted to exclude the public and press from a meeting at which they were due to discuss fire safety deficiencies in housing in the area.
The meeting was supposed to be held in public on Monday but Independent councillor Jimmy Guerin tabled a motion to have it held in committee.
Mr Guerin said by holding the meeting in public, the council was putting at risk the value of homes in certain estates in north County Dublin.
His colleagues agreed with him by 13 to 12, after which the mayor Darragh Butler (Fianna Fáil) ordered that the public and press gallery be cleared and the webcast of the meeting be suspended.
According to the agenda, the meeting was being held to discuss:
- “In private estates where the council discovered these serious fire safety structural deficiencies’ what steps did the council take to inform homeowners and residents of the possible problem in their estate?
- “How many social housing units have been found over the last 10 years to have serious fire safety or other structural deficiencies?
- “How many of these units were remediated and at what cost?
- “How were these costs met?”
Council management had been asked to explain why it failed to take legal action against the Holywell estate’s developers within the five year time limit after the council discovered fire safety defects in the estate in 2007.
The meeting went on for some time but was then suspended until November after Cllr Paul Mulville (Independent) pointed out that the vote to hold the meeting in private breached the Local Government Act.
For the meeting to have been held in private, 21 out of the total of 40 Fingal councillors would have had to have supported the motion.
