Bagenalstown councillor’s criticism of staff sparks reaction

A CARLOW county councillor’s public criticism of council staff sparked an angry reaction by colleagues and the chief executive at a recent meeting of Carlow Co Council after he refused to withdraw his remarks.

Cllr Ben Ward claimed that a lack of engagement by council staff across various departments had been getting worse and that a negative culture had taken hold within the local authority.

“I’ve noticed it becoming particularly worse recently, which is about council staff returning emails, answering phone calls in different departments all across the council, all the way up from the executive and management, down to individuals within the council, and there’s a complete lack of engagement. And even when you do get that engagement, it seems to be very negative,” he said.

Cllr Ward said the problem was one of culture. “There’s a culture of being told why something won’t work and not ‘how can I try and make this work?’ It’s quite disheartening because you’re trying to do your best, you’re trying to come up with things that are going to help people, and you’re getting this response or sometimes no response,” he added.

“I think it needs to change, and the culture comes from the top,” he said, remarks which were met with surprise and dissent from the chamber.

By way of example, cllr Ward said he had recently attempted to have a plaque placed on a bench for which funding and authorisation had already been approved, only to be refused. “The answer was no, that’s too controversial or it doesn’t fit with biodiversity or something made up like that,” he said.

The remarks drew sharp criticism from fellow councillors. Independent councillor John Cassin said it was unacceptable to publicly criticise staff in such terms.

“It’s one thing to say it in private, but to openly criticise the staff members who are absolutely bent over backwards, stretching the limits of their resources, stretching to do their job under very extreme difficult circumstances … to get a kidney punch like that, it’s an absolutely scandalous thing to say,” said cllr Cassin, calling on cllr Ward to withdraw his remarks.

Cllr Ken Murnane also pushed back: “Even before I was cathaoirleach, I could never say that about the executive not getting back to me,” he said. “I have no idea what your experience is like, but I have to hope that most of the members here don’t have that experience.” 

The cathaoirleach asked cllr Ward whether he was prepared to acknowledge that his remarks had caused offence, but the councillor declined to withdraw them.

Chief executive Coilin O’Reilly also responded directly to cllr Ward. “I think, cllr Ward, that sometimes you confuse not getting your own way with us not working with you.

“I’ve worked at lots of local authorities and I would presume the councillors here have experienced lots of chief executives and executive teams, and all I would suggest is that this is one of the most dynamic and hardest working executive teams I’ve come across and, maybe, in time, you will realise that it’s slightly different than your initial opinion,” he added.