Sinn Féin councillors walk out of Dublin City Council meeting

Sinn Féin councillors walked out of the Dublin City council meeting last night, 2 April, in protest at the refusal of Labour Mayor Andrew Montague to accept an emergency motion calling for the scrapping of the Household Charge.

The emergency motion submitted by the councillors read:

“In light of the failure of Minister Phil Hogan to persuade, intimidate or coerce the majority of those whom he made liable to pay the Household Charge, Dublin City Council calls on the Government to immediately repeal the legislation providing for this unjust charge; we deplore the action of the Government in slashing funding for local government in Budget 2012 and then linking local authority funding directly to the inequitable and unworkable Household Charge thus plunging local administration into crisis and threatening services and jobs; we call on the Minister for Finance to introduce a supplementary Local Government budget to ensure that councils can maintain servicesand jobs at their current level in 2012; and we call for the development of a just and equitable system of funding local government.”

Speaking to An Phoblacht, Donaghmede Councillor Mícheál Mac Donncha said that by “tying local government funding to the inequitable and uncollectable Household Charge, the Government has plunged funding for local councils into crisis”.

“It is farcical that such a situation would not be considered an emergency and that an emergency debate was ruled out by the Lord Mayor. For this reason the Sinn Féin Councillors left the meeting to register our protest at the way in which local democracy is being attacked by the Fine Gael/Labour Government, supported by their party colleagues on Dublin City Council."