Attendance record unveiled

Attendance record unveiled

20 July 2016

THE attendance record of Newry, Mourne and Down councillors has been released.

The figures, which relate to a 13-month period beginning in April last year, detail the number of monthly council meetings and committee sessions the district’s councillors have attended.

Councillors are expected to attend the full council meetings and also the committees to which they are appointed, although they are also allowed to attend meetings of any other committee.

Full council meetings are held at the Downshire Civic Centre in Downpatrick, with committee meetings held at the same venue and also in Newry.

There are 41 councillors but the table showed Slieve Gullion SDLP councillor Geraldine Donnelly stepped down in January to be replaced by Pete Byrne so there are 42 names on the list.

The figures show a huge difference in the number of meetings assigned to individual councillors. For example, Newry Sinn Fein councillor Valerie Harte was earmarked to attend 81 meetings — the largest for any politician — and managed to get to 63.

Similarly Rowallane Alliance councillor Patrick Brown was expected to attend 72 meetings, having taken over the committee meetings of councillor Patrick Clarke who resigned from Alliance and was left with just 24 full council meetings to attend, of which he managed 15. Mr Brown attended 49 meetings.

Similarly, former Newry SDLP councillor Kevin McAteer, lost all his committee positions when he resigned from the party last year which left him expected to attend just the 24 meetings of the full council.

The worst attender was Downpatrick SDLP councillor, Gareth Sharvin, who managed to make just 18 out of his scheduled 54 meetings. Mr Sharvin’s job takes him out of Northern Ireland on a regular basis.

There are other councillors who had problems attending meetings for understandable reasons. The  chairwoman last year, Downpatrick Sinn Fein councillor Naomi Bailie, who is expected to chair the 24 meetings of the full council, gave birth to a baby daughter in January, while Mournes SDLP councillor Laura Devlin, is also pregnant. Nevertheless, Ms Bailie attended 13 of the council meetings and attended a host of community engagements before going off on maternity leave in January, while councillor Devlin attended 37 of her 61 meetings.

Other councillors missed several meetings because of health issues.

Other top attenders include the local authority’s current DUP vice-chairman Garth Craig, who attended 49 out of a possible 55 meetings, while his party colleague Harry Harvey attended 48 out of a possible 56 meetings.

Slieve Gullion SDLP councillor Kate Loughran attended 57 out of 61 meetings, with her Slieve Croob party colleague Mark Murnin attending 49 out of a possible 59 meetings — an attendance record of 83 per cent.

Another top attenders include Mournes SDLP councillor Brian Quinn (47 out of 56), former council chairman Mickey Ruane (57 out of 68), Newry SDLP councillor Gary Stokes (45 out of 50) and his Rowallane and Crotlieve party colleagues Terry Andrews and Declan McAteer (47 out of 54) and (48 out of 55) respectively.

Rowallane DUP councillor, William Walker, attended 45 out of a possible 50 meetings, an attendance record of 90 per cent, with Slieve Gullion Sinn Fein councillor Terry Hearty — who has one of the longest distances to travel for meetings held in Downpatrick — and party colleague Charlie Casey each attended 36 out of a possible 41 meetings.

Councillor Hearty’s party colleague, Liz Kimmins, attended 39 out of a possible 50 meetings, with Mournes Sinn Fein councillor Stephen Burns attending 43 out of 50 meetings, an attendance record of 86 per cent.

Since the publication of the attendance figures, Downpatrick councillor Colin McGrath (18 out of 37) and Mournes UUP councillor Harold McKee (41 out of 55) have resigned from the local authority following their election to the Assembly. They have been replaced by John Trainor and Jill Macauley respectively.