Just who runs our local council?

SIR, — What is going on with our councillors?

In last week’s edition I read a story about Newry, Mourne and Down Council failing to establish a new health committee despite having voted it through four months earlier.

The reason given by the council was that: “party representatives met to devise options for the delivery of the notice of motion to establish a new health committee and discussed the preferred options with the chief executives of both the South Eastern and Southern Health Trusts.”

Pardon me, but what the hell has a council health committee got to do with the chief executives of the South Eastern and Southern Health Trusts?

The aim of a council health committee is to scrutinise the actions of these two health trusts — the bodies that have already so decimated the services at the Downe and Daisy Hill Hospitals. At the Downe the South Eastern Trust removed at a 

stroke the ability of the hospital to provide lifesaving services by axing accident and emergency and cardiac services.

The health committee is a pressure group, a lobby organisation, critically examining the decision making of the South Eastern Trust and calling it out when necessary.

It therefore seems incredible 

that the council should give the 

chief executive of this body a say 

in how this vitally important 

committee operates. Talk about 

putting the fox in charge of the 

henhouse.

It is just another in a long line of strange decisions being taken within Newry, Mourne and Down Council that questions the notion that the councillors run the council. 

Do they?

Yours etc,

INCREDULOUS,

Downpatrick.